It was a slow news day. Any controversial government news is usually released in the late afternoon (This time, it was the Dept. of Justice’s decision to not punish Bush administration lawyers for their memos on “enhanced” interrogation). The other top American news that day were follow-ups on Joe Stack, the man who crashed his plane into the IRS, the Winter Olympics, and devlopments in the Afghanistan war. Still, it’s interesting to see what the non-Tiger-watching organizations put on their front pages. Click on the images below to see a larger version.

U.S. Newspapers and Magazines
Associated Press	Los Angeles Times	New York Times
McClatchy	Newsweek	New York Post
USA Today	Wall Street Journal	Washington Post
TIME
U.S. Broadcast
ABC News	CBS News	MSNBC
NPR	CNN	FOX News
Europe
BBC	Der Spiegel	Financial Times
Times of London	The Sun
Asia
People’s Daily	Shanghai Daily	Times of India
Yomiuri *Not in English, so it could all be about Woods for all I know
News Aggregators
Drudge Report		Huffington Post
Social/Computerized News Aggregators
Digg Top News	Google News	Reddit News

Even three hours after what was generally considered a highly-scripted 15 minutes of non-revelations (the Golf Writers Association of America boycotted it), Woods pretty much dominated the most visible spaces on general news websites. Of the major American news organizations, CNN probably had the most real estate devoted to Tiger; New York Times, the least. Both Drudge Report and Huffington Post had Woods as the lede. Asian publications (the few that I could read) gave little space.

Among social/computerized news aggregators, Google News gave Woods front placement…unsurprising considering its algorithm is driven by what news organizations have. Neither Reddit and Digg had any mention of it in their news sub-sections. This may be a little unfair, as these sites’ users may be me more strict in keeping all sports-related news strictly in their sports subsections. But I did check their frontpages (which are the top stories from all the major sections) and Tiger didn’t make an appearance. Also, for many of the other sites, Tiger stories were not always in the top 5 most read…then, or a day later. Maybe everyone watched it on TV and decided they didn’t need to read it online? Or maybe there’s an overestimation of the general interest in Tiger news that doesn’t involve new mistresses’ names or him retiring from the sport?

The post Day of the Tiger: How Newspapers, Networks, and News Aggregators Played Tiger Woods on Friday appeared first on danwin.com.