Too busy to read?

Nick Denton told his writers the same thing nearly one hundred years later: "The job of journalism is to provide surprise."* News is only news if it departs from the routine of daily life.

But what if most of what happens is expected? Most things do not depart from the routine. Most things are not worth talking about. But the news must be. And so the normal parts of life are omitted from the news by virtue of being normal.

According to the story, "the most powerful predictor of virality is how much anger an article evokes" [emphasis mine]. I will say it again: The most powerful predictor of what spreads online is anger.

When intelligent people read, they ask themselves a simple question: What do I plan to do with this information?