No sooner had I posted yesterday about the NY Times story on how a high school parent’s complaint to the Humans of New York went viral, than I opened a link in twitter that was unexpectedly relevant.
A blog called NewsWhip was showing the real front page of numerous newspapers and then, “using NewsWhip Spike’s publisher view, which breaks out stories by social shares, place of publication and other details,” it showed what each front page would have looked like if the layout had been based on the articles most popular with online readers.
And the lead NY Times article for that day (below) would have been the one I blogged about last night.
If you go to NewsWhip, here, you can see similar reworkings of front pages. Lots of fun. I felt quite reassured that the most popular stories were not all about movie stars or gruesome accidents. When I go to online news, I make a point of refusing to click on those. I don’t want the content generator to keep featuring them, and maybe if no one clicks on junk news, they will stop highlighting it.
Right, people-powered front page from the NewsWhip blog.
Suzanne's Mom's Blog 
Ha! I am careful never to click on the junk news links, too, and so glad to know there are others. And, on my rare visits to Facebook, I really, really never click on the stories that tell me to “like this post” if I think people should love their mothers, or whatever!
I agree about Facebook boiler plates. I want to read original thoughts of the people I know. Alas, most friends post what you might call Hallmark greeting cards, which they think express their original thoughts. But if that placard is being posted by thousands, it doesn’t seem original to me.