The Most Popular Story, Anatomy Of

Thankfully, we in the writing business are not ranked on our popularity ratings alone. We are taught to nurture our beats, search for lively stories - both in the mainstream and under the surface - and to cover those areas with passion, curiosity and an eye for detail.

Or at least to make sure people know about FREE STUFF!

That's right. Free stuff. Here's an either inspiring or disturbing example from the front lines of journalism.

Last week, a press release arrived announcing a promotional giveaway of free theater tickets. Your humble correspondent submitted a short item. (Too short to even call it a story.) The item ran inside our section, not in a particularly high profile location. And then what?

That two paragraph tone poem has become the most e-mailed story of the last week. That's right. At last count, nearly 1,984 people had e-mailed the item through Boston.com. If you're counting, that's exactly 1,969 more e-mailings than experienced by this seemingly newsworthy item about the MFA's decision to return art to Italy.

The journalistic lesson from this case study? From here on out, the Exhibitionist will only write about free stuff.