Report Reveals Readers' News Sense

A new study has unveiled the differences between news agendas set by readers in comparison to those assembled by professionals.

Research from the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) has revealed that when readers have control over news coverage, stories in areas such as technology, science and lifestyle tend to be more popular.

The report, entitled The Latest News Headlines – Your Vote Counts, also found that user-driven news websites covered more articles when compared to mainstream online news sites but had fewer follow-up articles.

Staff at the PEJ uncovered the trends after studying the output of online news from 48 mainstream news groups during one week in June 2007 and comparing this to content displayed on four user-driven sites - Reddit, Digg, Del.icio.us and Yahoo's Most Recommended and Most Viewed.

"The user-news agenda, at least in this one-week snapshot, was more diverse, yet also more fragmented and transitory than that of the mainstream news media," states the report.

"This does not mean necessarily that users disapprove or reject the mainstream news agenda ... they may gravitate to them in addition to, rather than instead of, traditional venues. But the agenda they set is nonetheless quite different."