You can have your earth-shaking special elections in Massachusetts, but in general, the image above is a depiction of what the U.S. media actually talk about, culled from 55 media sources.
The table below comes from Jourmalism.org which lists its top ten, note some differences.
Health care, economic crisis, global terrorism dominate, after that importance is in the eye of the beholder, spinster, and pollsters.
See a number of tables at the Journalism site.
While in college I researched the New York Times for the mix of stories it ran on its front cover and nothing seems to have changed much. I still don’t understand why people read Newsweek. I think they are lying big time about their readership numbers.