Headlines and Deadlines: ‘We know what they want’ – or do we?
Alison Gow reflects on her own paper’s experience with two traffic-grabbing stories – only its the report on a local beauty pageant that’s outperforming an exclusive interview with the CEO of Liverpool FC in the monthly web stats.
“The phrase ‘We Know What They Want’ is a kissing cousin to ‘If It Bleeds, It Leads’; murders sell papers and a news editor is always going to put the big crime story at the top of the newslist, but… a violent death isn’t always the best story of the day, and not all readers appreciate being served up a diet of crime,” she writes.
“They tell us so, in surveys, on forums, in phone calls, comments under articles, and on blogs. We can’t risk doing the same thing online – a YouTube video of some TV singer might do wonders for hits but considered retrospectively I’d say it’s a false positive and gives a skewed view of what our core audience values.”
