The NYT’s most e-mailed list
This week’s Onion feature is probably already true: “‘Most E-Mailed’ List Tearing New York Times’ Newsroom Apart.” It’s about how the fluffiest features on love and pets are far more popular than the hardest news stories, which is a bit duh.
Last year, Eat the Press did some fantastic, over-the-top coverage of when one NYT story about marriage and killer whales was #1 on the most-emailed list for several weeks. Which led to this quote from Jack Shafer of Slate:
The Shamu story establishes once and for all that men are the new women. You can now use the New York Times to write the most dehumanizing and insulting shit about them and everybody will laugh in recognition.
I applaud this new cultural switch. Please excuse me while I go shopping for handbags.
I love that even at The New York Times, an incredibly self-important newspaper, it’s romance, sex and doggies* that readers really respond to.
*Not necessarily at the same time.
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Have you noticed the difference between the most e-mailed and the most blogged list? The most blogged list almost always consists of less pap than does the most e-mailed list
Bret
April 7, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Good point. I imagine fluffier bloggers go elsewhere for the latest, most up-to-date news. The NYT attracts a very specific kind of hard-news, intellectual blogger.
Although, the most blogged list is so deathly serious sometimes that it’s a wonder any of those bloggers are happy.
Tom Giratikanon
April 7, 2007 at 11:30 pm