I thought this might be an appropriate place to flag up AA Gill's comments in the recently published X City Mag for City Journalism alumni:

"The first thing I do in the mornings is listen to the Today Programme and read five newspapers. That's your business, that's your trade, you have to be on top of every story (...) I don't email anybody, I don't blog, I don't Twitter..."

To adapt Naughton's words: that sounds like relentless attention to the whims and vagaries of fickle journalists to me...

The feature doesn't seem to be online but is in the online edition on page 33 here: http://xcity-magazine.com/2011/04/xcity-magazine-digital-edition/

I can't see Demand Media for news being the only successful business model - as what would it feed off? News organisations need to make news as much as report it.

Due to various strategic mistakes such as charging nothing for their content and not investing in their online formats, the newspapers have allowed others to come along and poach their traffic. But it would be another strategic error to respond to this by all going along Demand Media route.

With any of these, I fail to see what’s wrong with taking account of what viewers like and respond to. If you can’t get interested anyone in your story, what’s the point of writing it?

I don't think that's exactly what John is railing against. Any good journalist, in any era or medium, takes account of what viewers like. That's just understanding your market.

But the issue is that there's the potential (and at the moment it's only potential) for journalism to become entirely data-driven, in the sense of only chasing stories along lines of ones which have previously worked. The ultimate end of this is something which looks like Demand Media, but for news: generic, repetitive news stories covering only things which have been successful before.

So what's the problem with that, you might ask? Simple: what has been of interest in the past is only one factor in determining whether a story, or topic, will be successful in the future. In marketing, asking customers what they want is rarely the best way to get the most successful product. Quite often, it will get you a product which sells - but you'll also end up doing exactly the same thing as your competitors, and you will stagnate.

So, yes, let's use the data analysis tools which we have to work out what works and doesn't. And sometimes, let's ignore it and take a punt - because otherwise, "news" will become characterless and boring.