Why No Most Viewed?

I have been annoyed for a long time at the fact that the New York Times make available its lists of the most emailed, most blogged and most searched articles -- but not the most viewed. These lists, while I suppose interesting, completely fail to tell me what the most important article in the newspaper was. The one that, if I want to know what everyone else knows, I should read.

Instead, the most-emailed list tells me which articles people find either funny or relevant to people in their lives. For instance, travel articles (like this one on Yosemite, currently in eighth place) make this list with what seems like a disproportionate frequency. But this isn't surprising if you think about the circumstances. People reading these articles are likely to have trips planned to the destinations being written about. And they are likely to have companions on these trips. And of course, they want to send them the article. They also have friends and acquantinces who know they have the trip planned, and who want to make sure that they've seen the article. So they email it too. None of these reasons, however, mean that I should read it. Since I don't plan on visiting Yosemite any time soon, the article is of literally no value to me. But there it is, on the list.

It seems like another big reason that articles get emailed is for their human interest value or humor. For instance, the article in the number two position on the most-emailed list is "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Worries," a feature story on "nakations" -- nudist resorts and vacation destinations. This story is entertaining. It is funny. It is a good read. And at the end of it, you want to share it with your buddy or your significant other, with a jokey note.

When I worked at the Post, we used to call these stories "talkers." There's no news value, but it's something you want to talk to people about -- and these days, something you want to email them about.

All of that is fine and good -- but it still doesn't help me figure out what people are reading.

Likewise with the "most searched" list, which right now looks like this:

bush
health
china
obama
food
education
immigration
iraq
tibet
modern love

All of these terms are too vague -- food?!?! -- for me to have any idea what stories people are reading. The top search term, "bush," returns 126,530 results. Not helpful. The most interesting thing to see here is that the Modern Love column is obviously popular and should be more prominently placed on the home page so that people can find it without searching.

I also suspect that reporters would like to know which articles were read the most. While they may get this info from periodic internal analytics reports, it would be nice to see it in real time.