Thursday, December 02, 2004

Data-driven headlines

Eric Peterson is one of many to look at what's going on at Las Ultimas Noticias. The Chilean newspaper is using click data to see what stories are popular and picking headlines for the next day's paper based on that data. Clever to use of online data (clicks on their website) to change an offline publication (their print newspaper).

As Danna Harman describes, the technique has been part of turning the paper from "a middle-of-the-road piece of nothing" into "Chile's most widely read newspaper today."

But some are concerned that newspapers "just cater to the lowest common denominator" if they use this kind of data without exercising good judgment.

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