Secret Bible verse foretells housing crash ...

I KIND OF LIED. About the secret Bible thing. And the housing crash. And the diet. The porn star I can probably dig up. I’m guessing a lot of Bible verses are secret to them.

It’s just that these are desperate times. Newspaper ads are disappearing, people get their news online and bloggers do what I do for free. To secure my job, I had to get on the “most e-mailed” list on latimes.com. And last week’s experiment with e-mailing myself 200 times was ineffectual. Though that column got funnier every time.

To find out how to create the most popular story possible, I called Richard Rushfield, a senior editor at The Times website. He told me to focus on the “most e-mailed” instead of “most viewed” list, because the latter is updated every hour and changes rapidly. A “most e-mailed” article, which is updated daily, can stay on the charts for up to three weeks and enter the national consciousness. Entering the national consciousness is the biggest dream of any columnist. Other than a deal with a Sunday morning news show.

When I asked Rushfield what kind of subject I should report on, he dismissed that kind of pre-Internet thinking. “The Web is entirely headline driven,” he said. “Get it all in the headline and then write about an Iraqi timetable for withdrawal.” I was greatly relieved, until I thought about how difficult that timetable-withdrawal thing sounded. My limited knowledge about withdrawal is that it should have happened about two seconds ago.

The guaranteed way to get on the most e-mailed list is to get picked up as a Drudge Report headline. A typical No. 1 L.A. Times story gets 40,000 votes, but a Drudge plug guarantees you a minimum of 50,000. Drudge, Rushfield tells me, is really into freak weather occurrences, child rape and cable TV ratings. I briefly considered “Weather Channel Trounces American Idol with Docudrama About Beverly Hills Tornado That Attacked Dakota Fanning,” but I think that’s actually the plot of an upcoming indie movie.

Not only were all 10 of the all-time most e-mailed articles listed on Drudge, but they were difficult to replicate because they were classic, Homeric narratives, such as the rare Ferrari that was totaled on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu by a bankrupt Swedish creator of car-race video games; the woman who murdered her Marine husband to get insurance money for breast implants; and Marilyn Monroe’s psychologist saying she had an affair with Joan Crawford. I’m not about to waste an idea like that one on a column. Not when there are more Will Ferrell movies to be made.

My safest move was to stick to the topics that traditionally rise to the top of The Times’ list: real estate prices, health cures and religious controversy. Basically: money, health and God, in that order.

“And the word ‘porn’ always helps a lot,” Rushfield advised. “Sadly, the word ‘porn’ doesn’t appear as often as some would like on our home page.”

I’ve been fighting that battle for a long time.

The other trick is to get a really good picture with your story, which is tough when your column only comes with a pre-Lasik photo online that a friend took of you six years ago, when you were 10 pounds heavier and, if memory recalls, kind of hot and hungry. Point is, I’m much better looking in person.

The No. 1 most e-mailed story of all time is about a 7-foot-tall Russian boxer that happened to run with a really weird photo of him. To woo online readers to my column, I considered suggesting a sweet picture of the Bible, or a really expensive Bel-Air house, but I thought a porn star might be easier for the photo editor.

I’m not proud of what I’ve done. Then again, I wasn’t proud of what I was doing before this. But if this is what it’s going to take to keep from getting a real job, then I’m going to give the people what they want.

Oh, and the real estate market is a massive bubble waiting to pop; porn stars lead boring, insular lives; and the only diet that works is fewer calories and more exercise.

And the weirdest thing is, you already knew that.