What does journalism today have in common with the 1960s steel industry? Quite a lot, argued Dawn Williamson of Chartbeat, speaking today at "Les Nouvelles Pratiques du Journalisme" conference, hosted by the Ecole de journalisme de Sciences Po, Paris, in collaboration with Columbia Journalism School.

Before the 1960's the steel industry was dominated by big, inefficient, expensive steel plants. But then something changed. The industry was revolutionised by the introduction of "mini-mills" - smaller, cheaper, faster plants. Yet the big steel companies didn't want to adopt minimills, says Williamson. They were suspicious of the quality of their new competitors.

Today, Williamson argues, news sites like The Huffington Post, Gawker and Business Insider are the "mini mills of the journalism industry". Through a combination of news aggregation, blog hosting and user engagement, they're producing a journalism product that's faster and cheaper.

Big, traditional news organisations like The New York Times have criticised the quality of their new competitors. Yet Williamson argues that, as they gain a foothold in the market, sites like the HuffPo are moving up the food chain, and starting to hire their own journalists - some from the New York Times itself. According to her argument, creating the new business model is perhaps the first step, improving quality the second: "be the disruptors and then move your way up the chain."

According to Williamson, something that characterises these new sites is "a lot of data driven decision making." These sites are "very good at pushing decision-making power further down the chain of command," she says, letting journalists and editors make decisions. They understand that it's important to provide journalists with data in an easily understandable format, rather than sending spread sheets to a back office team.

Chartbeat, and its subsection Newsbeat, are real-time engagement monitoring tools that have been successfully used by big news organisations. Williamson gives the example of FOX News, which used analytics from Newsbeat to adapt their coverage of the Gabriela Gifford shooting to audience demands. FOX noticed that lots of the search terms about the assassination attempt related to Gifford's family, and they tweaked their coverage accordingly. Another example is Al Jazeera, who bought popular search terms to do with the Egyptian uprisings, and were therefore able to dominate coverage.

Monitoring engagement and analytics is not a "race to the bottom," stresses Williamson. It's not about encouraging Kim Kardashian stories, "it's about making sure what you're writing about is getting into the hands of your audience."

In today's new media environment "data is not a report to read," says Williamson, "it's an environment to live in".