New York Times and Social Media

Recently I was talking with a bunch of editors about their role in choosing editorial content. How much of a role should the editor have, and how much should the consumers of the media be allowed?

Near as I can tell from recent visits to NYtimes.com, the "Gray Lady" is humoring the mob, but is not impressed.

Editors, of course, know better than almost anyone else what their readers want to read. On the other hand, I would argue that there's always something to learn from the mob.

Take this example from The New York Times, for instance. The NYTimes.com includes a page that lists the terms that are searched for most often on the website (the voice of the mob).

 

Now look at the list of topics that NYTimes.com editors believe are of highest interest to readers (as evidenced by the Times Topics list):

Now compare the "Most Searched" list to the "Times Topics" (the list of People, Subjects, Organizations and Places that Times editors put together for easy searching by their readers). Interestingly, you'll find that the two lists barely overlap.

Not only that, but some of the keywords that people were searching for, such as "China," don't easily fit into one of the Times Topics categories: would you find China under the Places heading? Or would it make more sense to search for it under Subject?

In other words, it would seem - from looking at the Most Searched page and the Times Topics page - as though people are searching the Times in different ways than the way the Times editors assumed they would.

Don't get me wrong: I believe in the role of the editorial voice, and I believe that an editor is likely better than any other given individual at picking which content is most relevant to readers. However, I also believe that the editor is not better than every other individual.

 

Comments

[Scott]

Very interesting blog post. It makes me wonder if the user search behavior for those topics represents the primary or secondary interest of most visitors? In other words, did a visitor read through choice editor selected articles first, and then search for further information of secondary interest?