1. Newspaper Editors vs the Crowd:
On the Appropriateness of Front
Page News Selection
Arkaitz Zubiaga
City University of New York
SNOW 2013 – May 13, 2013

3. The front page is the
showcase that might
condition whether or not one
buys the newspaper.

4. Either in vending machines...

5. ...or in news stands

6. Editorial meetings
● Newspaper editors discuss to select the
news that will be part of next day's front
page.

7. Editorial meetings
● Newspaper editors discuss to select the
news that will be part of next day's front
page.
● But how efficient is this news selection so
as to matching the interests of the
audience?

8. Study
VS

9. Data
● Whole year of (2012) NYTimes newspaper
stories [1]:
– Stories both in front page and inside.
● Number of times each of these stories...
– was tweeted.
– was posted on FB.
● [1] http://www.nytimes.com/pages/todayspaper/

10. Data
● For each story:
– Category: nytimes.com/date/category/headline
– Part of front page: 0 or 1
– FB posts: #
– Tweets: #

11. Daily ranking
● For each day, check the overlap between:
– Front page stories.
– Top stories on Twitter and Facebook.

12. Results
● Most popular story of the day on Twitter:
– Appeared 147/366 times on the front page.
● Most popular story of the day on Facebook:
– Appeared 73/366 times on the front page.

13. Results

16. Summarizing...
● Little overlap between front page news and
top social news.
● While editors pick hard news for the front
page, users are rather into softer news.

17. Thoughts
● It's hard to imagine front pages where news
about science, technology, or fashion
predominate.
● But would this “modernization” really help
sell more newspapers when the daily
circulation is declining?

18. Thoughts
● Recency of news: how many hours had past
since the news broke?
● e.g., the Boston Marathon bombing ranked
7th the next day on Facebook, and wouldn't
make the front page.

19. Live demo
http://bit.ly/snow2013fp

20. Thanks!
Check the live demo: http://bit.ly/snow2013fp