Horse-Sex Story Was Newspaper's Most Popular Of 2005

[matcom]

<snip>

As I look back at the year in news, it's clear I should have focused more on people having sex with horses.

That's the conclusion I reach after reviewing a new list of the year's top local news stories. Only this list is not the usual tedious recounting by news editors or pundits who profess to speak for you readers. This is the people's-choice list.

It's not a survey of what news you say you read.

It's what you actually read.

By tallying clicks on our Web site, we now chart the most read stories in the online edition of The Seattle Times. Software then sorts the tens of thousands of stories for 2005 and ranks them. Not by importance, impact or poetic lyricism, but by which stories compelled the most people to put finger to mouse, click, open and, presumably, read.

Which brings me back to sex with horses. The story last summer about the man who died from a perforated colon while having sex with a horse in Enumclaw was by far the year's most read article.

What's more, four more of the year's 20 most clicked-upon local news stories were about the same horse-sex incident. We don't publish our Web-traffic numbers, but take it from me — the total readership on these stories was huge.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002711400_danny30.html

[4morewars]

1. This is hugh, I'm series !!!!!11111

:applause:

[underpants]

2. anti-abortion extremist Neal Horsley

http://www.newshounds.us/2005/05/06/bizarre_sex_habits_of_the_extreme_rightwing.php



NH: "Absolutely. I was a fool. When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule."

AC: "I'm not so sure that that is so."

NH: "You didn't grow up on a farm in Georgia, did you?"

AC: "Are you suggesting that everybody who grows up on a farm in Georgia has a mule as a girlfriend?"

NH: It has historically been the case. You people are so far removed from the reality... Welcome to domestic life on the farm..."

[StopTheMorans]

3. that's horseshit!

:hide:

[LoZoccolo]

4. They make you pay for it now, but /Editor and Publisher/ had an article...

...about how the horse story was covered and the various journalistic issues surrounding it, and at the end it said something like "the family was thankful that the reporter did not use humorous phrases like 'horsing around'", thus using the phrase in the Editor and Publisher article instead!

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/search/article_display.jsp?schema=&vnu_content_id=1000981095