News-Record.com

All right, you say, that makes sense because the election results didn't hit the Web until deep into the evening. Wednesday would be the big day for election news online.

But you would be wrong. Only one political story made the top 10 list.

While most of the local news articles in Wednesday's paper pertained to the election, the most viewed story online Wednesday concerned a murder-suicide in High Point.

The distinction is significant. The audiences are different for newspapers and news Web sites. People value each information source for different reasons. And it’s all good.

On the Web, people choose to read whatever they like. On our site -- as with many newspaper sites -- that translates to stories about crime, traffic tie-ups, violent weather and catastrophes. People are interested in quick bits of usable information. Do I know the person arrested? When are the storms going to hit? Who got robbed? Is the wreck cleared off the interstate yet? Will this give me something to talk about to the cube rat at the next desk?

In the newspaper, we don’t have the luxury of knowing which specific stories in the newspaper are read by the most people. We know that more people say they read Page One than any other page, which makes sense. Next comes the front page of the Local section, and then the front page of the Life section.

While high readership is one motivation in covering a story, it is not the only one. We consider the public service value of the story as well as its timeliness. What is news at 2 in the afternoon may not be news at 6 a.m. the next day when the paper is delivered, particularly if it has been online all afternoon.

We don't want to blow a story out of proportion by putting it on Page One. Crime is an issue on the minds of many people, but a story about four Greensboro teenagers charged in a robbery in Chapel Hill -- another popular Web story Wednesday -- isn't one of the most important stories of the day. In fact, some of the stories published online are not published in the newspaper.

In the newspaper, we also try to give readers a sense of place. The Triad is unique with its own style and personality. Because the Web is worldwide, we reflect the Triad in different ways, but a sense of place is of less importance.

These days, calling the journalists in the newsroom a "newspaper" staff is an anachronism. Their work is published in the newspaper, of course, but it is also published throughout the day (and night) online. Monday through Friday, News-Record.com bristles with new and updated information. Some of it we expand upon for the newspaper. Some -- video, audio and discussion forums -- we can't duplicate in the paper.

I said earlier that the distinction is all good. In a typical Sunday paper, we publish 100 to 125 stories and that doesn't include the ads, obituaries, letters and Parade. On the Web, you can find virtually anything. It is about having choices and using whatever suits your needs. One isn’t, or shouldn't be, a substitute for the other.