Newspaper seeking page views and bloggers to link back

 
With the rise in importance of newspaper websites, and the acute use of statistical tools they enable, some editors may seem more concerned with page views than content.

The Daily Telegraph’s hub-and-spokes newsroom exemplifies the cult of the eyeball. Web operations stand in the middle, and digital screens constantly list articles with the most page-views. “It's like a page-view shrine,” writes Achenback.

Consequently, journalists seek page views, and count on outside bloggers to help them in that matter. The Drudge Report, a new media news website, is the leading source of readers coming via links into newspaper websites (in the US).

Mackenzie Warren, online editor of the Fort Myers News-Press, recalls using a fake email address to lobby the Drudge Report. "I'd say, 'Great story down there in Florida.' Then I'd throw in some incendiary adjective, and next thing you know our story would be at the top of his site and our traffic would be on fire," says Warren.

Prior to the digital era, journalists were, according to Achenback, merely concerned with their literary prowess and in-depth investigation. “Our literary efforts levitated above the commercial fray; the business side of the operation was somewhere else in the building.”

But this has changed with rising business difficulties and new measurement tools. Unfortunately, “you do have a recipe for the chasing of eyeballs to the detriment of coverage of substantive issues," says Bob Steele, who teaches journalistic ethics at the Poynter Institute.

“What if it turns out that most readers are sick of Iraq, or don't want any foreign news at all? Do you just toss it out? That's not journalism, it's marketing," says Howard Kurtz, media reporter for the Post.

And newspapers’ journalism is undoubtedly orienting itself towards marketing, if it blindly follows the trail of page views. Which, by the way, are still far from being perfectly interpreted.

“News outlets will never get anywhere if they're obsessed with chasing readers. They can, however, collaborate with them,” writes Achenback.

Page views and online stats can be helpful indicators. But the point of having editors and journalists decide on a story’s importance – instead of a publication entirely run by readers - is also to incorporate their professional insight into determining the newsworthiness of an article.

Source: Washington Post through I Want Media