Chicago Tribune
That's because what motivates a person to e-mail a story is often different from what motivates that person to read one, says Steve Johnson. "Talk to people involved in digital publishing, and mostly they'll tell you that a story rises to the level of being e-mailed when it contains practical advice or cautionary tales -- on travel, say, or diet -- or when it has a 'holy-cow' factor," he writes. "Sometimes that means hard-news stories, as in, 'Holy cow, Israel is dropping bombs in Lebanon.' More often, though, it seems to be on the order of, 'Holy cow, a man tried to molest a cow.'"
Makes sense, and explains the breathless prose style of top headlines on Digg or Cosmo. --MM