The Watchdog Growls
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Clicking with the Arts
Some newspaper websites are so driven by clicks that stories go up on the front page for a few minutes and quickly get put back in cold storage if they don't draw mice. A/B testing is increasingly common in the web world, and reader usage data more and more drives editorial decisions at many publications. So how many newspapers would put a theatre review on their front page, even if for a few minutes? Okay, this big picture at the top of the page and its accompanying review were only up for a few minutes Tuesday night, but arts stories have frequently been making the Times's front. And the arts bug near the top of the second-from-the-left column is regular play.
It’s an anomaly for sure, but is it the city or the newspaper that’s odd? New York is considered the art and theatre capital of the country. So NYtimes.com is merely fulfilling its role as a regional newspaper by placing journalism on these subjects up front. If you examine the positioning of the Entertainment category at LAtimes.com, you find something analogous from the newspaper in the entertainment capital of the country.