Miley Cyrus VMAs: The Onion Blasts CNN Over Running Twerking Recap As Top Story

While the entire Internet was buzzing about Miley Cyrus' VMA performance yesterday, we still expect a little more from our journalistic bastions than we do Twitter, tumblr and Buzzfeed. That's why it is so surprising that CNN.com ran a twerking recap as their top story (aka the most important thing IN THE WORLD today), a move that got the news organization openly shamed by The Onion.

In a piece titled "Let Me Explain Why Miley Cyrus' VMA Performance Was Our Top Story This Morning" that is credited to real-life CNN.com contributing editor Meredith Artley, the satirical news organization calls CNN on its shameless traffic-chasing.

Via the article:

So, you may ask, why was this morning's top story, a spot usually given to the most important foreign or domestic news of the day, headlined "Miley Cyrus Did What???" and accompanied by the subhead "Twerks, stuns at VMAs"?

It's a good question. And the answer is pretty simple. It was an attempt to get you to click on CNN.com so that we could drive up our web traffic, which in turn would allow us to increase our advertising revenue.

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. 

The page get even more cynical and inside baseball from there, talking bounce rates and referring to readers as nothing more than "eyeballs." The piece also takes time to point out other, more deserving events that were happening Monday: the people being gassed in Syria, civil unrest in Egypt, the 50th anniversary of MLK's "I Have A Dream" speech.

The ultimate kicker has to be the following sentence, though.

Another side note: The Miley Cyrus story was in the same top spot we used for our 9/11 coverage.

Of course, the piece doesn't just blast Artley for her decision, it derides viewers for what they are doing to modern journalism.

You want to know how many more page views the Miley Cyrus thing got than our article on the wildfires ravaging Yosemite? Like 6 gazillion more.

That's on you, not us.

For her part, Artley has taken the ribbing in stride. 

@socialnerdia @TheOnion I'm reading it as more of a joke than something to call the legal team about.

— Meredith Artley (@MeredithA) August 26, 2013