At Yahoo, Using Queries to Steer News Coverage – NYTimes.com.  So if the searches are the driver of the content, what role does journalism play?  What will be investigated if people don’t know about it to do a search?  There always seems to be a need to investigate to find out the truth, rather than just passively responding to the lowest common denominator.  Democracy is fine, but news is more than a popularity contest.  Perhaps a meritocracy would be a more helpful model.