Why don't they use an algorithm?

In agonizing over whether reader click and picks should influence story placement, MSM is ignoring the example of other entities which must rank the content presented to viewers. First of all, MSMers need to think about the possibility that each viewer will get an individualized helping of the stories from their "brand" of newspaper and get over their total devotion to a single "look and feel" for the "Front Page" of their compilations of news stories. Secondly, they need to develop algorithms and "robots" or "agents" in the way that Amazon and some newsfeed operations are doing. Basically, the reader wants to get news that ties into their particular interests and they would like a way to customize their news reading for that. I believe that most people would like to have some stories presented to them based on other factors, such as what is read by most other readers, what opinion leaders are reading, or like blogs do, what someone with a point of view is recommending. There are services that are working to incorporate what you look at with what your social network folks look at, but they haven't gotten to tipping point yet.American Journalism Review: "Los Angeles Times Washington Bureau Chief Doyle McManus cites a November 30 story by then-Times defense correspondent Mark Mazzetti about the U.S. military planting stories in the Iraqi media. The scoop by Mazzetti (who has since joined the New York Times) began as the lead story on the L.A. Times' Web site. But it briefly disappeared and subsequently resurfaced in a less prominent position when it was displaced by a fresher, but routine, wire story about a speech Bush gave that morning on his Iraq war strategy. A news editor in the Washington bureau called latimes.com to complain, but the story never regained its lead status. 'Shrinking our best story of the day to a one-line refer below an [Associated Press] dispatch on a Bush speech..is not optimal,' McManus says."