There was a study conducted once that had people qualitatively measure their mood while being insulted and complimented by total strangers. I only remember hearing about this study sometime in middle school, but its results have stuck with me ever since. It was determined that one insult from a stranger carries the emotional weight of four compliments.

You’re pretty, your shoes look awesome, you’re kind of fat, I would kill for that hair, your jokes are hilarious. Even exchange.

Obviously this ratio isn’t formulaically rock solid. If I hadn’t said “kind of” in that previous sentence, the insult would have cut deeper, and so forth. Additionally, this ratio was determined based off strangers. It’s reasonable to believe the ratio would increase somewhat exponentially depending on how well you knew the person insulting you. If I tell you you’re stupid, I’m just a jerk. If your mother tells you you’re stupid, that problem is a few levels deeper.

The point is, though, that insults are more impactful than compliments. This idea plays out in media, too. In fact, it played out here at The Daily Illini all last week.

One could argue that newspapers are held to a much higher standard, and that one bad or insulting story would crush the impact of hundreds or even thousands of good ones. For some reason, insults sting harder in print.

Last Tuesday was one of the proudest days for our sports section here at the DI. We ran some of our best work of the year, heck, some of The Daily Illini’s best work of the year. But no one wanted to read those stories because there was something bigger looming in the opinions section.

I’m not writing this column to discuss the content of Renee Wunderlich’s column; anyone smart enough to matriculate here should be mature enough to have reined in their emotions about the piece by now.

This piece by Sean Hammond has garnered, as of this writing, 135 Facebook recommendations. Wunderlich’s column sits around 2,700. Going back to our insult-compliment ratio, it looks like it takes 20 pieces of journalistic work as good as Hammond’s to equal the attention of pieces that get such an inflamed response as Wunderlich’s did.

As journalism turns a corner to the Internet era, it becomes more and more pageview-driven. That’s how advertisers determine where they want their banners placed, and how it’s determined where the money goes.

So with about 20 times the attention, columns like Wunderlich’s are 20 times as desirable to advertisers and thus to newspapers themselves.

I understand that if you are a student-athlete at the University of Illinois, you absolutely had to read Wunderlich’s piece. But while you’re on the site, look around a little bit. Hammond’s profile of summer paralympic athlete and winter paralympic hopeful Tatyana McFadden was eye-opening; it’s the kind of story that reminds you of sport’s place in the real world. It’s also the reason journalists get out of bed in the morning: in hopes of capturing enlightening and fascinating stories like that. There was lot more good work in last Tuesday’s section, but I’m not going to summarize each one because I’m not writing this just to promote The Daily Illini’s sports section. This trend exists with national media, too.

ESPN, the Wal-Mart supercenter to our corner convenience store, produces a ton of great journalism. It also produces lots of bad and faux journalism. It has made debate one of its cornerstones, and what is debate if not inflammatory? (More intelligent, among other things.)

Fans, athletes and media nerds such as myself like to point out the bad aspects of ESPN. We tweet when the announcer flubs a last name during a game, we scream at the TV as if Skip Bayless will heed our advice to shut up and move to Antarctica. I’ve posted stories on my Facebook page alongside a message that reads (and I’m paraphrasing here) “Look how bad this is!” And that’s what my friends will read, despite the great work of Grantland being a couple clicks away.

It’s a problem we all have because it’s in our nature. Most discussions about the downturn of journalistic quality in America conclude that it can be traced back to money and consumerism. Realistically, it’s on the consumer to discern what’s good and what’s bad, to thumbs-up the good stuff and shun the bad stuff.

Statistically speaking, Renee Wunderlich’s column was the best thing to run in The Daily Illini last week. If you want to disagree, you have to do so in a tangible way. A condemning comment is as valuable to advertisers as a praising comment. Don’t be afraid to comment more on the stories you do like, so we know what kind of work you want us to strive for.

Make four comments, maybe. Because it takes a lot of effort to balance these kinds of things out.

Eliot is a junior in Media. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @EliotTweet.