By Monday morning, as regular blog readers know, we have a pretty good sense of who has been reading what in the Observer online. That means we get a sense of what subjects excite the fickle digital palate. We then feed those insights into our thoughts about the news run for the week.
Takes up delicate tools for the measurement of site traffic. Plays traffic monitoring jingle.
Not surprisingly, the late edition update of our front page terror story topped the league. But coming round the outside, second place was nabbed by Sam Taylor's magazine piece about ditching hectic London life and moving to France. From this combination we deduce that the spectre of former Belmarsh detainees sneaking out of their back doors and using smuggled pay-as-you-go phones to text nefarious plans for mass destruction to one another so panicked the nation that everyone started work immediately on a Dordogne escape strategy.
Robin McKie's piece about the imminent extinction of humanity, which also scored highly on the site over the weekend, won't have calmed any nerves.
The other really big seller was Liz Hoggard's Bjork interview, which got more hits than the front page splash. From this we conclude that our readers, having determined to move to France in flight from the impending apocalypse, during what might turn out to be their last hours on earth, would rather listen to quirky Icelandic popstrels than to Tory politicians. Odd that.
Puts on Debut, enjoys opening strains of 'Human Behaviour'.
