WHEN Paris Review turned up at the Manhattan loft of writer Peter Carey for an interview on the art of fiction, he answered questions on his work, early life and writing habits - in much the same way as writers such as Graham Greene and Ernest Hemingway had before him.
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But towards the end, his interview struck a modern note.
Yes, he still kept in touch with news in Australia via the internet. But he had gone off his home-town paper. It had gone tabloid, he said. Like many, he was a broadsheet man who in the internet age suddenly found himself adrift in a tabloid world.
Carey's complaint about Australia's news websites is a common one - many sites are a moveable feast of murder, gore, gossip and depravity.
They lack gravitas. They shy away from the geopolitical and celebrate the personal - the singer known by the first name, the notorious murderer, celebrities' weight problems and plastic surgery, luring readers in with tantalising hooks about naked newsreaders, hair-straightener murders and lesbian prom dates.
Disquiet about the tabloidisation of news is not just distaste about the content, but a broader concern. The numbers getting their news online are enormous, and they keep growing. Many young readers are digital natives and have never had a newspaper habit. Yet critics say that there's not enough fibre in the news mix, and the more we get our news from news websites, the more we ignore issues that are of national concern - stories that lack the boobs, bloopers and ''Plus-size Model Photoshop Shock'' that get people clicking.
But here's the thing - news websites are giving you what you want.
They are not all staffed by gossip blogger Perez Hilton, but by journalists guided by sophisticated analytics to measure not just what you are reading, but for how long.
In broadsheet land, news editors are picking the mix of stories in the paper from instinct using two measures - what will readers like and what they need to know.
Some of the stuff we need to know may be quite dull. But if a paper aspires to be a journal of record, then it will risk boring some of its readers in order to achieve this.
News websites will also run dull but worthy stories, but their ability to see exactly what readers are reading - and when and for how long - means they know with unsettling precision that their ratings will take a hit whenever they run something on, say, the national broadband network or elections in the Ivory Coast.
News websites do not fly blind; quite the opposite. They are acutely sensitive and reactive to readers' tastes, wants and habits.
The analytics show the editor when a story is on the wane, hence the inbuilt churn in news websites: they turn over stories when you tire of them.
Journalists spend their time searching for fresh content for restless readers. That is why many news websites feature wild stories sourced from far-flung press in Indonesia (smoking toddler), China (Chain Boy - the boy who was chained to a pole) and Panama (the ''Gollum'' found beaten to death by teens.)
News websites (except the ABC) are commercial enterprises. To ignore what readers want to read and their insatiable appetite for fresh, entertaining, rolling news throughout the day is to imperil your readership base and your advertising revenues.
Yet, from time to time, editors of even the most commercial websites will take a hit in the ratings and run a worthy story prominently even if few people seem to want to read it (the Haiti earthquake is one example from my time at ninemsn).
But in the main, news website editors trust their readers' judgment and will not adopt the burden of running things because they deem it to be in your best interests.
Yes, people may be a bit too interested in entertainment news (though they'll always say in the surveys they want more world news), but a good story and fresh breaking news - such as the overthrow of then-prime minister Kevin Rudd - will always do well.
But if you think most news websites are too tabloid, you can easily change it. Find the story on the national broadband network (it will be there, though you may have to search) and click on it hundreds of times. Send the link to your friends.
Somewhere in some newsroom is an editor refreshing a graphic. His mouth is hanging open and his tea is dribbling out on to the keyboard. The broadband story is shooting up the charts! People are wanting to read about Stephen Conroy!
He decides that as the story is going so well, he will place it on the home page. He looks for a picture of Conroy that will attract even more eyeballs (and hopefully clicks). The story's position on the home page generates even more clicks. Conroy cracks the Top 10!
The next day in news conference, the editor says: "The national broadband network story was really popular yesterday." Cue guffaws. "No, really. I think we should do a follow up."
There you go - you have just altered the news cycle. Readers really do have the power in online news.
Brigid Delaney was a deputy news editor of ninemsn. She has worked as a print and online journalist in Australia and the UK.
