By Ryan G. Murphy, Digital Media Editor

This week, MSNBC announced that it set an online video stream record with nearly 19 million streams of the Michael Jackson memorial. In its press release, MSNBC said the Jackson coverage produced more streams than the 2009 Presidential Inauguration.

CNN also said it had a banner day with 10.5 million streams, ranking second behind the inauguration. That’s quite a feat for both networks considering the historical significance and anticipation of, Obama’s presidency.

For those of us who’ve worked in digital journalism, and have scanned through the pages of our Omniture accounts to find that our “Sexy Celebrity” or “Baby Bump” slideshows rank among the most visited pages, it’s no surprise that the Michael Jackson coverage ranks at the top.

If nothing else, the Michael Jackson coverage serves as a grand reminder that our audiences love sexy stories. You know the type – a celebrity death, a political sex scandal, Britney Spears being Britney Spears. The stories that deliver big numbers and have us joking in the newsroom that “yes, this just in, Anna Nicole Smith is still dead.”

These stories and slideshows have their places on our sites but it’s so important, especially for local stations, to reinforce to your staffs that sexy stories aren’t the reason we’re in this business.

As a young, local web producer in New York, there were two roles that I embraced. The first was working with the news staff on breaking a big local story on the web. The process was exciting and organic. It gave me a chance to flex my journalism muscles, write on strict deadline and learn from newsroom veterans. It was new media at its best.

The second was producing sexy slideshows like “Did you know so-and-so posed in Playboy,” or “famous last words” – something from the news water cooler to boost numbers. More often than not, if the slideshow was a success, I’d be lauded for my efforts, which reinforced – perhaps errantly – that sexy was the way to go. As time went on, I produced more and more of these slideshows and started focusing more and more on the traffic and less on the importance of all things local.

In hindsight, it’s easy to see why I felt like this. The culture in many of today’s newsrooms is very focused on revenue so, from the top down, we can have a tendency to view high traffic as the sole measure of success. Don’t get me wrong, we want to see high traffic, but it should be a long-term growth gained from providing consistent and accurate coverage. Yes, people love sexy stories, but they also want to know what’s going on in their towns and neighborhoods. They want to have a source to turn to when something big happens to them.

If you are constantly feeding your audiences water-cooler brand stories to get ratings and clicks, they are eventually going to identify your news brand with that kind of coverage. I may be a traditionalist, but I think most RTNDA members are looking for something more – to maintain their position as viable journalism organizations in the community, and not become TMZ.

Local stations who can offer their audiences dependable, comprehensive coverage are the stations that are ultimately going to find success. Perhaps in the wake of the Michael Jackson coverage, it’s a good time to remind people on your staff that sexy stories are good in the short-term, but ultimately are not the true measure of what effect you have locally.