The economy was again the top story last week for both public and news media, but it was the interest in the coverage of Troy Davis's case that has some scratching their heads.

According to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ), there was a clear racial divide in the interest in Troy Davis’s execution last week.

Overall, the execution of Davis in Georgia for the convicted 1989 murder of an off-duty police officer drew significant interest, with about 10 percent of Americans saying it was the news story they followed most closely for the week.

According to the research, however, African-Americans followed the story much closer than others. About two-in-ten African-Americans (22 percent) said the execution of Troy Davis was their top story of the week, ranking nearly as high as overall interest in news about the economy (27 percent). Conversely, only nine percent of whites cited the execution as their top story.

Although a relatively small number of whites said that the execution of Troy Davis was not their top news story of the week, a higher number, seventeen percent, said that they did follow the news surrounding the Georgia death row inmate.

An even larger number of African-Americans, 42 percent, said they followed the news story very closely, compared to 20 percent of the population overall.

Now that he's gone, it will be interesting to see which populations continue to follow the news surrounding Davis’ last request to “look deeper” into his case.

In related news, Davis's funeral is scheduled for Saturday, Oct 1. His family and friends plan to hold a memorial service for him in Savannah tonight.

To contact or share story ideas with Danielle Wright, follow and tweet her at @DaniWrightTV.

(Photo: Jessica McGowan/Getty Images)