My column of a week ago about news sites needing to focus less on news continues to bring in some thoughtful responses. I think the real challenge to online news managers is to broaden and expand the definition of news we've inherited from daily papers and broadcasts. The 10 biggest accounting firms' or '50 largest private employers' are typical list topics. These lists take a lot of time to pull together, but they are far and away the single most read pages in any business journal. People in a particular industry pore over the standings to see how they do vs. their competition.
Customers check out where the companies they use stand in relation to the competition.
Job seekers sift the data for clues. People try to find out how their neighbor's business is doing. I think this info would fail most newsworthiness tests taught in J-schools. If you have a newsworthy item about the newspaper new media business, please send me a note.