Yahoo news editor laments staff trend to pander to readers

I / Tokyo July 10, 2009, 12:20 IST

The editor-in-chief of Yahoo's online news service lamented a "dangerous trend" among its own newsroom staff to pander to readers in picking articles, which often results in ignoring newsworthy items that may not earn much traffic.

Michihiro Okumura, 40, head of the influential online news section, recently said that about 20 Yahoo Japan employees who select news items from among some 3,500 articles offered daily by around 150 media organizations can be "tempted to cater to readers needs and often choose sports and entertainment news."

Yahoo Japan does not report news by itself, but distributes articles under eight categories such as domestic, international, business, sports and entertainment.

The site run by former newspaper and television reporters attracts about 60 million readers and earns 3.76 billion page views per month, according to Okumura.

The most-read articles are generally gossip and about 60 per cent of all news items viewed by readers per month consist of entertainment, sports and crime news in Japan, Yomiuri Shimbun a former reporter said.

Usually, international news items draw little interest, he added.

To point towards the trend he cited an example of Kosovo "Kosovo has not gained independence" was viewed by only 2 per cent of total readers on the day they were delivered.