Want to scare the bejesus out of a seasoned newspaper editor? Show him or her a list of the most-viewed stories on the paper’s Web site.

Forget all that hard work producing penetrating investigative reports, brilliant political analyses, heart-wrenching stories that comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable and win Pulitzer Prizes.

People want sex, crime, violence, tragedy, celebrity and scandal.

At least that holds true for people who read articles on the Web, and the jury’s still out on whether they’re any different from those of us who prefer the printed product. That reality is both exciting and horrifying.

It’s exciting to glimpse into the psyche of the newspaper reader, that elusive animal editors forever have been trying to understand. Thanks to the Web, we now know what they want. That’s the horrifying part.

Honestly, though, does it really surprise anyone? So people like a good tragedy. Sure, we all wanted to believe our highly educated local population would pick - insert William F. Buckley Jr. accent here - "serious journalism" over the stuff you find at the supermarket check stand. But who can resist the quick, sugar-rush news fix that scandal and tragedy deliver? That doesn’t mean people don’t want the real stuff, too, right?

So what was the most-hit story of the year on the Tribune’s Web site? Well, let’s skip that one for the moment. It wasn’t even a local story.

The top local story of the year was: "Rebel flag shakes up assembly." A couple of Hickman High School students in February unfurled a Confederate flag during a multicultural assembly. The story had plenty of scandal, but it also had enough additional news value - issues of race, parenting, school policy - to keep the editorial sensibilities in balance. Same with No. 2: "Gunman opens fire at Jehovah’s Witness Hall" from two weeks ago.

The list quickly deteriorates from there. "Jared chews the fat at MU" was No. 3. Huh? I never would have picked that January geeker about the guy who lost weight eating Subway sandwiches as the third-biggest local story of the year on the Web. He spoke to a nutrition class at the University of Missouri-Columbia and held up a pair of old pants. If you want to know the honest truth, that’s a story we might not have covered at all in an earlier era of journalistic narcissism, when newspapers were almost a utility, like electricity, and no self-respecting household would have thought of going without a subscription. Jared wouldn’t have been "important" enough to cover. Now we’re a little wiser about the realities of media competition, and we try to give readers what they want in addition to what we think they need. But I digress.

The Web list doesn’t merge with the list of top stories of the year as picked by the Tribune’s editors until No. 6, a photo slide show of the March storms, and No. 7, the first-day news about Quin Snyder resigning as MU’s basketball coach.

Absent from the Web list are many of the editors’ picks: who won the November elections and why; MOHELA (how many people even know what that stands for?); the Boone Hospital Center lease; the new city manager, Bill Watkins. Sorry, Bill. I guess there’s not enough scandal in your life.

But plenty of people went to www.columbiatribune.com to learn about beer that won’t upset your tummy. In a curious twist, the No. 1-viewed story on the Web this year came from the wire: "Brewer taps gluten-free beer market." People with celiac disease from all over the country, apparently, linked to our version of the AP story in April, which scored more than 92,000 hits.

It’s enough to make a cynic ask why we bother covering the weightier stories at all, given that they don’t always grab the attention like a good tragedy will. Here’s the reason: It’s our job to be the watchdog. We keep an eye on the public process so that anyone who’s interested can take a peek inside and change things if they don’t like what they see. That doesn’t always result in stories that play well on the Web, but it’s our civic duty, and we take it seriously.

So next time Jared Fogle brings his size-60 pants to town, we’ll be there to cover it. But we’ll also keep covering Bill Watkins, pants or no pants.

A little advice, Bill: If you show up for work with no pants, it just might land you on the list of top Web stories next year.