"We work in an industry obsessed with measuring everything: visits, users. I'm worried about what gets lost along the way. Many newsrooms have been debating for years whether or not they should let reporters know the performance of their stories. This idea of reducing everything to a single metric that supposedly indicates whether something was useful worries me. In the long run, it might not serve our best interests."
"Relying on a single indicator to determine whether something was good or bad doesn't help, because it also ignores what else was happening at the time: what other stories were on the homepage, the other ways we competed for people's attention. And if we make decisions about what to cover, how, and for whom in such a reductive way, it ultimately also reflects a lack of imagination and curiosity."
Newsrooms rely heavily on quantitative metrics like visits and users to evaluate content. This reliance can obscure qualitative aspects of reader needs and reduce editorial satisfaction. Informing reporters about story performance remains contentious because single metrics oversimplify value and usefulness. Single indicators fail to account for contextual factors such as competing homepage stories and attention dynamics. Making coverage decisions based solely on reductive metrics narrows curiosity and imagination in reporting. Accurate audience understanding requires combining quantitative data with qualitative insights to better serve readers and society. Independent media must prioritize holistic audience research to balance organizational and societal interests.
Read at english.elpais.com
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