CNN recently updated its homepage. I'm not a great fan of how it looks, but they did add 'Newspulse', a listing of the most popular stories. The screenshot is of the tool - they have a smaller add-in for the front page with the top five stores and the bar chart. I'm not sure what the 'popularity' measure is - page clicks I would presume, but it's an interesting slice and dice affair.
I'm not really sure I care about the data - the whole point of the web, as compared to television or radio, is that I get to chose what I consider important, not other people. And if it's popular, surely I've already seen it? Anyway, if you are going to do it then I'd make some changes.
I've just focussed on the charts - there are other changes I'd make to layout. I've kept the bar charts as comparing the relative popularity of stories is of interest, but I've de-emphasized them. I've added sparklines (a type of information graphic characterized by its small size and data density) which show how the popularity of a story has changed over the time period chosen. You can see when a story broke compared to others, how quickly it gained and lost momentum, and whether it's still on its way up, or is old news..
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