Strange sex. Strange sex. Strange sex.

Oh, excuse me. I was just agonizing over what we should report on in the new year.

Should our coverage change now that our new Web site is receiving more page views than our print circulation?

Must this dinosaur newspaper editor adapt to an entire younger Internet generation afflicted with attention deficit disorder?

I really got nervous after reading Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat's year-end tally of the most clicked stories on his paper's online edition. By far the year's most read story concerned a man who died in Enumclaw after getting too up close and personal with a horse.

In fact, five of the Times' 20 most-clicked local news stories or columns dealt with the incident.

Westneat lamented that none of his column's made the top 20 while colleague Nicole Brodeur landed one - about the horse story.

Editor and Publisher editor Greg Mitchell reined in some of my outrage in a response to Westneat's column.

He pointed out the original news story became a link on the "outrageously popular Drudge report Web site."

Matt Drudge is a conservative. I guess conservatives are only squeamish about sex between consenting humans.

Mitchell also pointed out the item had undoubtedly been placed on humor and various specialty sites.

So the story's overwhelming popularity was based on national and international interest in an unusual item.

"...editors need to analyze where traffic is coming from before jumping to conclusions on what a core audience really wants," Mitchell concludes.

Whew!

But even knowing I don't have to run stories like that, it will be a difficult adjustment for me.

I love the smell of newsprint in the morning.

Curling up in my big chair with a cup of coffee, browsing through the paper and letting my eyes wander where the page takes me excites me.

But meanwhile, while I'm upstairs blissfully turning the newspaper pages, Marge is downstairs busily clicking as she hop scotches through news Web sites from around the nation and the world.

What's important is not where you get your news but what news you get.

As a cranky curmudgeon, I have my concerns about what's happening in the news business.

First, it's great to be able to quickly find information that interests you. But also there is news you should know to be a good citizen in a democracy.

Our coverage is heavy on council and school board meetings. I understand meetings bore normal people. Reportedly, a local council member, too ill to attend in person, fell asleep while watching the council meeting on the government access channel.

But important actions take place at those meetings.

If the council passes a new tax, that affects a city resident - even an apartment renter -- more than what happened in an Enumclaw barn.

Secondly, everybody's an expert on something, but not everybody is an expert on news judgment and standards.

Former MSNBC.com editor Merrill Lynch writes that young people "want those presenting the news to them to be transparent in their assumptions, biases and history."

Certainly, reporters don't come to the keyboard with blank slates, but trained journalists can research and write objective news articles.

As Knight-Ridder's Washington editor writes, "Our job is to be neither with them or against them. It's to find out the facts, as best we can, and to report them as fully, fairly and accurately as we can."

When the mainstream media has received a black eye recently, it is because reporters diverged from that formula

The blogger you read may be using good news standards or he could just be a yahoo on Yahoo.

Which brings me to me final concern: Opinion is not news.

It's wonderful we have so many avenues now to hear and express opinions. I love talk radio. The more the merrier.

But if you can't handle the truth, don't watch the Fox (faux) News Channel and call it news.

Oh, oh, I've gone on for 21 inches about a serious subject and I don't want to lose my Web audience:

Strange sex, Strange sex. Strange sex.

Eric Mathison is editor of The Highline Times, a sister paper to this one. He can be reached at wseditor@robinsonnews.com