New York Times “Most Popular” Section Decomposing

My favorite little section in the NYTimes.com website used to be their little widget halfway down the page on the right side listing their ten “Most Popular” posts in each category.  Recently though, the quality of the articles that are listed has vastly decreased.  The section used to contain the most interesting or relevant news of the day, but now it is mostly ill-considered opinion pieces by Paul Krugman and others.  Each of those writers has his or her compensation based at least partially on page views and they all have begun to try to game the system and the quality of the articles has greatly suffered for it.

Solution: Bring back the most popular actual news pieces of the day instead of editorials & opinions.