A front page is a list of what matters, made by people who are willing to be held responsible for the list. That is what makes it different from a feed, which is a list of what will hold your attention, made by no one in particular. The difference sounds technical but is moral. When an editor chooses the lead story, she is saying: this is what you need to know today, and I will stand behind that judgment. When an algorithm chooses the lead story, it is saying: this is what you are most likely to click, and I have no judgment to stand behind. We have spent twenty years treating the algorithmic front page as a neutral improvement — more choice, more relevance, more of what you want. But a page assembled by engagement is not neutral. It is biased toward the outrageous, the novel, and the easily shareable, which is another way of saying it is biased against the important, the complex, and the true. The front page is not a personalization problem. It is a public good. We should build it the way we build other public goods: slowly, in public, with names attached — and with the understanding that what is on page one says something about who we are.