Sometimes the answer to this question is just plain scary.

When journalists talk among themselves about “what readers really want” … they almost always take the high road. Too high a road.

Readers want incisive reporting and elegant writing, journalists say. They want global news. They want hard-hitting investigative journalism That Makes a Difference and creates an informed citizenry.

Well, no. Actually, they don’t. And too many of us who have worked in journalism, particularly in print, never could quite accept that.

Take, for example, the five “most sent stories on espn.com” at the moment that I am writing this entry.

1. Bill Simmons’ five-days-later critique of Bill Belichick going for it on fourth-and-2 at Indianapolis. OK. That’s fine. No longer really relevant, but it’s an inside-sports kind of thing we would expect would get a lot of readership. This one doesn’t really support where I’m going.

2. Clippers announcers Ralph Lawler and Michael Smith suspended for insensitive comments about an Iran-born center who plays for the Memphis Grizzlies.

3. The death of Drew Brees’ mother is ruled a suicide.

4. The Georgia football mascot, a bulldog named Uga VII, dies of a heart attack.

5. Stefanie Spielman, wife of former NFL player Chris Spielman, dies of cancer at age 42.

Now, there is nothing wrong with any of those stories. Actually, there is a lot “right” with them.

In each case, readers are looking at those stories, and many of them are e-mailing them to other people — because they expect they will be interested, as well. They are voting with their laptops.
Meanwhile, traditionalists among journalists probably would suggest only the Simmons piece ought to be in the top five.

What do we have, in the other four stories? A story about political-correctness, two morbid off-the-field personality stories … and a goofy story about the death of a dog.

Not one bit of hard, on-the-field news in there.  No reporting on a major trade or deal or injury. Nothing about hirings or firings or statistics or feuds.

But we do have something about the premature death of a dog who wore a sweater and sat on the sidelines of University of Georgia games.

American newspapers were putting stories about Watergate and Al Qaeda and Afghanistan on the front page when they really ought to have been running stories about Oprah, Lindsay Lohan and quick-weight-loss diets.
Print journalists never really did quite figure out “what readers want,” and that probably has something to do with the dire straits in which U.S. print finds itself.