Stuff Readers Like

Further to this post on the media and What Readers Want, it's always useful to have a gander at the New York Times's most emailed stories. For sure, this is no infallible guide but it is a useful snapshot of reader opinion in as much as it's a list of the stories readers most frequently recommend to their friends. Here's today's list.

1. In Shift to Digital, More Repeat Mammograms
2. Latest College Reading Lists: Menus With Pho and Lobster
3. Equestrians’ Deaths Spread Unease in Sport
4. Magazine Preview: The Aria of Chris Matthews
5. Findings: And Behind Door No. 1, a Fatal Flaw
6. Maureen Dowd: Toil and Trouble
7. Well: Keeping Priorities Straight, Even at the End
8. The Food Chain: As Prices Rise, Farmers Spurn Conservation Program
9. Wine Bars Grow Up and Squeeze In
10. A Disease That Allowed Torrents of Creativity

You'll notice what's missing: hard news stories. And this from the readers of America's best newspaper, the paper with more resources than any other and that prides itself (however dubiously) upon being a "paper of record".

Instead it's a list of lifestyle items with a couple of features and some opinion thrown in. Plus, of course, the mandatory story concerning animals. Editors should always remember that readers - especially, though far from exclusively, women readers - like animals more than they like people.

Comments

[Julien]

William E. Blundell, the former features editor at The Wall Street Journal, says in The Art and Craft of Feature Writing that readers like, in descending order of preference: 1. Dogs, followed by other cute animals and well-behaved small children; 2. People, provided they are active participants in the story; 3. Facts, when they are relevant and move the story forward; 4. People who are observers, experts, etc. ("Now we're getting into elements low on the interest scale"); 5. Numbers. "This is cyanide to reader interest."