Why CNN gave Miley Cyrus top spot over Syria

The Onion cooked up a brutal item today: a fake op-ed from CNN.com's managing editor, Meredith Artley, explaining why the above was CNN's homepage this morning.

There was nothing, and I mean nothing, about that story that related to the important news of the day, the chronicling of significant human events, or the idea that journalism itself can be a force for positive change in the world. For Christ's sake, there was an accompanying story with the headline "Miley's Shocking Moves." In fact, putting that story front and center was actually doing, if anything, a disservice to the public. And come to think of it, probably a disservice to the hundreds of thousands of people dying in Syria, those suffering from the current unrest in Egypt, or, hell, even people who just wanted to read about the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech.

But boy oh boy did it get us some web traffic. Which is why I, Meredith Artley, managing editor of CNN.com, put the story in our top spot.

The real Meredith Artley took it in stride.

CNN did, at other points today, prioritize the destruction in Syria and the burning of Yosemite. [Pastpages via Farhad Manjoo]