> You know, completely gaslighting the fact that the readers had zero say in the coverage decisions of the NYTimes and other outlets to run the Titan sub covera

> You know, completely gaslighting the fact that the readers had zero say in the coverage decisions of the NYTimes and other outlets to run the Titan sub coverage so incessantly. The opposite is true, actually: these news services are incredibly, probably overly, sensitive to what stories are driving organic traffic and which are not. They all have multiple dashboards that track site traffic minute by minute and make editorial decisions on an hourly time scale. Specifically they rewrite headlines, metadata, ledes, and add/alter keywords within copy if a story seems to be underperforming. On a daily basis they make writing assignments based on this data. Big news services can to some extent “push” stories at the beginning, but not for long, maybe a day or two at most. They’re so dependent on traffic for the business model, and so close to the edge of not making money, that they have be acutely aware and reactive to organic traffic patterns.