We’re certain it’s more effective than polling, checking the “most read” items on the nation’s news sites, the perfect method to measure the care factor when it comes to the budget.

It seems Fairfax readers are managing to read, not so much between the lines when it comes to the coverage, but around the federal budget coverage:

Except, that is, in Canberra, where they care very much. About their jobs, that is:

News Limited readers, on the other hand, are eating up the budget coverage. At least as far as calculating how it effects their bottom line:

And yet, and yet, amid all the Twitter outrage over The Australian’s reds edition, its most-read story is less about the bottom line, and more about whether or not a newsreader simulated oral s-x on live television:

Lends one a certain sense of perspective …