I’ve noticed it becomes relatively easy to anticipate which articles will reach the front page once I’ve started reading the trending sites. However, I wonder whether there’s any way to anticipate which sites will begin to trend on the front page. My first instinct is that it’s just a matter of circumstance, of one person sharing one article from a non-trending site that trends on the front page. In practice, however, it’s hard for me to believe that such a small event could decide whether or not a story gets covered by a more mainstream site after a journalist finds it—I’ve been seeing quite a few references to Hacker News articles as of late in mainstream news articles. It could be that Hacker News really is the initial component in starting news trends.