A culture of clicks

How audience metrics can help online news editors, publishers and journalists become more successful

Web analytics. Courtesy by Pixabay.

In short

Measuring audience behaviour can both be seen as a blessing and a curse for journalism. This report focuses on the application of web analytics and audience metrics in journalism and its implication for journalism as a business, practice and institution.

In many newsrooms, a cultural transformation is taking place where audience metrics are being increasingly embraced after a period of institutional resistance.

Through audience metrics, journalists and editors can

1. arrive at a direct verdict on the popularity of a story, enabling them to make fast editorial decisions.
2. better decide what stories should be published on the homepage of the website, informing publishers when a story is not performing well, while making suggestions for replacement.
3. access a headline testing service that suggests which headline should be used for stories to be attractive to the audience.
4. create a ‘most read’, ‘trending’ or ‘top’ stories section, allowing further content promotion.

A reckless use of audience metrics can however lead to “culture of the click” in newsrooms: the audience’s desires become a central element in editorial decision-making as news websites are giving in to a survival instinct and therefore adopt a market-oriented policy. Hence, journalists should be wary of negative consequences, such as audience metrics:

1. running counter to journalists’ normative ideals and objectives of authority, professional autonomy and gatekeeping,
2. leading to a click-based segmentation of the audience, marginalising the smaller parts of the audience in favour of the majority’s desire for certain topics.
3. leading to a “cult of the quantitative”, whereas data can be unreliable and incomplete and qualitative insights and editorial judgement are still valuable.

As a consequence, we make the following suggestions. News organisations should:

1. Build a common understanding of metrics amongst all employees in the newsroom. Only then, acquired insights could be used to make correct and beneficial editorial decisions.
2. Consider audience metrics as an end to a mean hence being a first step in the process of formulating objectives, choosing un-complex and comprehensible tools, collecting data efficiently, making profound analyses, focusing on the outcomes to take action and implementing & evaluating changes.
3. Use metrics to advance journalism’s societal role: expensive and time-consuming investigative stories should be alternated with shorter daily updates, important and less popular topics should be made attractive by linking them to the public’s personal lives, and topics that are most popular amongst the audience should be looked further into.

In this white paper, we first give a concise overview of web analytics in journalism. Secondly, we explore the influence of audience metrics on the different aspects of journalism, with attention to technological, industrial and societal drivers behind the evolution. Then, the advantages and disadvantages will be thoroughly explained. Finally, advice will be given on how to incorporate analytics in an efficient and effective way in journalism, aimed at minimising the threat to journalists’ professional authority and autonomy and journalism’s societal role.

Audience metrics: a short introduction

Digitalization has resulted into a decline of traditional media and, consequently, a destabilization of existing Western business models that highly relied upon mass audiences and mass advertisers.[1] As many legacy news media see their subscription rate declining, the success of their online counterparts and digital subscriptions is gaining importance.

Merely concentrating efforts on online news production and dissemination is, however, not enough. Just consider the large amount of competition from other online news websites, the decrease in advertising and subscription revenues and your get an idea of the subsequent financially uncertain future of journalism. Hence it becomes paramount for online news outlets to know their audience, and this is where audience metrics come into play.

Audience metrics or web analytics tools provide journalists and publishers with information on their online audience and their usage behaviour and preferences. More specifically, through electronic measurements, journalists obtain real-time data — and, if applicable, predictions — of a story’s success in terms of the number of views, time spent by readers on an article, other web pages that were viewed at the same time, geographical regions of the audience, the direction of the traffic, amount of shares on social media…[2] In short, these data enable journalists to act according to the performance of content and to take measures to attract a wider audience. This is especially relevant for rather market-oriented newsrooms that aim at increasing revenues and relevancy and maximizing traffic by understanding and optimizing their online customers’ web experience.[3]

Although audience metrics seem to constitute a rather positive evolution in the business of journalism, the disruption also generates negative consequences concerning the practice of journalism. In many digital newsrooms notions as gatekeeping and agenda-setting seem to have made room for an “agenda of the audience”[4], where soft news, preferred by consumers, is gaining prominence over hard news (public affairs). Consequently, journalists are inclined to set aside their cherished autonomy in favour of the current “culture of the click” that is pervading contemporary digital newsrooms, meaning that audience clicks highly affect online news placement.[5]

Hence, it is essential that audience metrics are being implemented in a clever way so as to improve the online department of newsrooms in their entirety and to minimise the threat to journalistic values and norms. In other words, what is at stake, what are the positive and negative consequences of audience metrics, and how should they be properly implemented.

Audience metrics: the issues at stakes

The use of web metrics in the newsroom has a high impact on the business of journalism. Still, digitalisation of news does not only mean a technological shift but also involves a fundamental cultural transformation for all media professionals involved[6]. Digital newsrooms desire a closer connection and more interactivity with their audiences through tracking data in order for them to understand their audiences better.

[I]n the new media world where we talk about interactivity, personalisation and niche audiences, knowing your audience is now more important than ever -Jonathan Halls[7]

Nevertheless, the degree of influence of audience metrics on the different aspects of journalism depends on several aspects. Previous research illustrated that the integration of audience feedback into news-making decisions is highly dependent on journalists’ perception of the field of journalism and their conceptions of the audience. As journalists are, however, always struggling to keep their autonomy and to increase readership, they seek to amass capital, whether it be economic (convertible into money, such as advertising and audience size), cultural (knowledge and competences of journalists), social (individuals’ networks and relationships) or symbolic capital (prestige), all of which are convertible into one another.[8] Where the audience used to be a form of economic capital in the past, most online journalists conceive of their audience as a form of symbolic capital, too, as news organisations fulfilling their role in society are perceived to have a better reputation. The more instability a newsroom perceives, the more it is susceptible to audience influences based on audience metrics, and the more it will adapt its news content to their wishes.[9]

Other than the conception of the audience, also journalists’ perception of their own professional roles are influencing journalistic practices and the application of audience metrics. News organisations that envision journalists as marketers in the first place will prioritise the commercial aspect of journalism. They will look to reach the largest possible audience by tailoring content according to feedback in the form of likes and shares or trending topics on social media. This shows that audience metrics can have an impact at the routine level of journalism as well as the social institution level; traditional gatekeeping routines are altered and audience metrics further lead to the collapse of the traditional divide between editorial responsibility and the marketing of news.[10]

Earlier research showed that most news organizations do monitor audience clicks by now, but strongly deny or nuance their influence on news selection, which highlights the conflict between what journalists are economically encouraged to do and what they feel they should do according to the norms they rely on.[11] Although journalists have long tended to normalize web analytics, a process of modifying existing norms and incorporating the influence of new technology in journalism is taking place.[12]

Lastly, the way in which newsrooms make use of audience metrics can strongly differ, dependent upon the size of the news organization, its concept of news as a product or as a service, its degree of economic uncertainty, whether it is strongly or weakly market-oriented, the perception of economic benefits of web analytics, and so on.

Audience metrics: the good, the bad & the dedicated?

The good…

The integration of audience metrics in journalism can be regarded both as a blessing and a curse, and different positions amongst scholars, news workers, publishers and the public can be distinguished. As for the assets of audience metrics, a few can be determined.

Firstly, using audience metrics is an efficient way of assessing trends over time regarding the type of content that clicks best and engages audiences most. Instead of building on subscription data, focus groups or letters and e-mails to the editor, digital newsrooms are able to get a more direct verdict of the popularity and quality of an article. This permits editors to make content-related decisions fast, and provide updates and follow-ups to stories that have received good traffic.[13]

Secondly, web analytic tools allow for the selection and filtering of stories that are suited for the homepage of the news website. Algorithms in the software make the selection of attractive topics easier by making recommended selections and de-selections, based on audience metrics.[14] An analytics platform that is suited for this selection process is the real-time predictive analytics platform Visual Revenue.

Thirdly, some analytics tools include a headline testing service that informs editors which headline will generate the most clicks for a story. Headlines with more provocative language or accompanied by pictures are likely to draw the audience’s attention more, according to previous studies.[15]

Moreover, audience metrics tools allow for content promotion and distribution. One example is the generation of ‘top stories’ or ‘most read’ lists, that are often screened on the homepage of news websites. This will result in those stories to be read by an even larger public.

As such, audience metrics may be seen as the saviour of an industry that deals with a large amount of competition and shrinking news audiences. Audience metrics allow journalists access to what the audience wants, which enables them to provide compatible content and increase traffic, leading to economic benefits for the organization as a whole. More specifically, increasing online readership means increased advertising revenues and, consequently, higher overall revenues.[16] Ironically, readers generally welcome the use of web analytics as it creates the opportunity to impact content flows breaking the traditional hierarchy of knowledge and authority of journalists.[17]

The bad…

Multiple arguments can be found, however, against audience metrics. First of all, it is questionable whether the use of web analytics is compatible with the normative ideals of journalism. Autonomy, authority and the journalist’s role of gatekeeping, all are undermined by the use of audience metrics. Contemporary newsrooms are struggling to find a balance between coping with financial issues and allowing deeper audience interference within their professional field on the one hand, and privileging their editorial autonomy on the other, as most journalists believe in their editorial judgement to define what information serves the public interest best.[18]

Secondly, web analytics lead to the danger of dividing the audience into disengaged segments, based on consumer preferences. Targeting specific subgroups of the audience may help newsrooms to survive, but at the same time this practice strongly decreases the general diversity of ideas in journalism. The consequence is that content clicked upon by the largest number of people is prioritized, and the minority that clicks on less popular, but sometimes more valuable and high-quality articles will be marginalized. This click-based segmentation of the online audience influences content decisions at the service of the majority of the audience, which involves journalists responding to what the (major part of the) audience wants instead of what the public in a democracy needs in order to be well-informed.[19]

This leads to a third disadvantage of web analytics, namely, the dissolution of journalism’s community-building role in a democracy, which involves encouraging, facilitating and providing a space for public discourse.[20] More journalism has become based upon market logics where soft and low-cost news outshines the riskier and more expensive investigative journalism. In short, the journalist-audience relationship has become flattened.[21]

A fourth downside of the use of web analytics is the often unreliability and shortcomings of data. For instance, people clicking on a page might not always mean they actually read the content; they might as well have clicked on a link by accident, or have been redirected to a page by another site.[22] Moreover, metrics tools claim to count ‘unique visitors’, but in fact they count the devices people access a page from, meaning that a person accessing a page both from his mobile phone, desktop computer and tablet will be counted three times instead of one. The metrics also do not tell publishers why an article was viewed. Most of the time extraordinary or surprising news gets the most clicks, but the metrics do not provide any help to making hard news more attractive to the public.[23] Indeed, the data are merely quantitative, not qualitative; they do not give information about individuals and neither do they tell what should be published in the future.

The dedicated…

Although they have been slow to embrace analytics, the majority of the most respectable news organisations like CNN, The Guardian, BBC, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, amongst others, have gradually been giving in to measuring audience behaviour. Other companies, like new players Huffington Post, VOX.com and Buzzfeed, have incorporated analytics in digital publishing from the start, and are precedents for many older, more traditional media.

The Guardian, one of these more traditional news outlets, has been able to excellently incorporate analytics in the newsroom. In 2012, the newsroom developed a dedicated in-house real-time analytics tool, called Ophan. The main advantage of the tool is the fact that it provides all employees with minute-by-minute data on individual articles. Journalists can access the tool on mobile devices and directly see detailed graphics on page views, audience’s geographical location, shares on social media, attention-time of each article they published over the last two weeks, as well as whether they have been promoted on the website’s homepage or not, audience’s loyalty, bounce rate, direction of the traffic… [24]

Screenshot from Ophan, the Guardian’s editorial dashboard [25]

The innovation of the newsroom is that it does not merely provide meaningless statistics, but rather helps journalists and editors to understand their audience’s behaviour, which will enable them to make conscious editorial decisions for future stories. On top of that, the journalists are assisted by an audience team that gives advice in writing and adapting headlines, promoting content across social media, choosing the right timing of publication, and so on. In brief, Ophan made room for a ‘culture of data’ where everyone in the newsroom (editors, journalists and the audience team) is enabled to view and interpret analytics with the purpose of making better editorial decisions and evaluations.[26]

Recommendations for publishers and individual journalists

Many news organizations still approach web analytics in a rather rudimentary way, meaning that analytics are not incorporated in the decision-making process, and referring to the lack of a beneficial ‘culture of data’ within the organisational structure of the newsroom. This is the case both in the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as in the rest of Europe.[27] In what follows, advice will be given on how to make the implementation of web analytics more efficient and effective.

Combine tools, culture and organisation

If newsrooms want to implement web analytics for economic benefits on the long term, it is of the utmost importance that the newsroom’s goals will be taken into account, which becomes possible by developing a combination of tools with a good organizational structure and a well-defined newsroom culture.

Analytics capability assessment triangle developed bij the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism

The analtycis capability assessment triangle developed by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism can help newsrooms to make the right strategy [28].

• Tools refer to the technological resources used by the organization for tracking the audience. In fact, there is a whole array of tools available, but not all of them are equally efficient. A distinction should, for instance, be made between in-house tailored tools, such as Ophan (by The Guardian), or generic tools, such as Google Analytics, Clicky or Chartbeat.
• The organisation of the newsroom refers to the structured approach that is taken towards analytics, meaning that the newsroom contains one or more individuals who are professionally able to help the entire newsroom.
• Culture refers to the use of analytics in the editorial decision-making process by every single member of the newsroom.[29]

When it comes to tools for tracking audience metrics, it is recommended that newsrooms adopt a combination of several analytics tools, including generic ones and — if possible — in-house tailored ones, as to obtain a maximum amount of information on audience behaviour. For instance, Omniture could be used to analyse data over a specific (longer) period of time and make comparisons with earlier periods. This tool could be combined with Chartbeat, which measures day-to-day traffic and tells the journalist how a story is performing on social media. [30]

As for the organization of the newsroom, an audience team could be assembled, which in turn could be subdivided into different sections, following the example of the Wall Street Journal, where one team checks through what platform the newspaper is engaging with its audience most (be it on social media, messaging apps or through blogs…), a second reflects upon better future opportunities of engaging with the audience, a third examines the success of stories and specific sections, and a fourth creates content for new platforms. All of the teams work together.[31]

Concerning the culture of the newsroom, it is essential that all journalists and editors understand the implications of the data and are able to apply them to editorial decision-making. This will not happen by itself, so journalists should be encouraged to act on audience metrics by helping them gain an understanding in the data and analytics tools. Only this way, the newsroom will establish a good ‘culture of data’.[32]

The data can lead us to understand the kind of journalism that people might want, particularly on different platforms - Chris Moran (The Guardian’s audience editor)[33]

Collect data as a start of the process, not an end

Considering implementing audience metrics as the end goal is a fault made by many online news organizations. In fact, if newsrooms want to optimize their websites, they should follow a certain predefined process — outlined by Waisberg and Kaushik (2009).

1. Define the organization’s objectives
2. Choose the analytics tools accordingly. As each news business is different, a certain tool might be interesting for one, but not for the other.
3. Collected the data in an efficient way, save them accurately and make them easily accessible by individual journalist and editors for further analysis.

As for the analysis, the first step is examining the data, which provide insights into number of visits, bounce rate, the amount of pages that were seen in each visit, the average time spent on the site, percentage of new visits, whether visitors have landed on the website through typing the URL, by being referred from another website or via search engines, and more, depending on the tool’s features.

The next step should be taking action to make the business more profitable and the news articles more attractive. The outcomes thus should clearly be focused on.

The last step is finally implementing changes, starting with approaching employees (journalists) and understanding their data needs. When one journalist has made a positive editorial decision based upon metrics, chances are high he or she will tell the colleagues, who in turn will be motivated to use audience metrics. If more motivation is necessary, giving journalists additional trainings or organizing contests in which the journalist of the most visited page gets a reward, could be an option, too.[34]

Advance the community-building role of journalism

If journalists cater to what the majority of the audience finds interesting, other (smaller) groups are being disregarded and excluded, leading to an unengaged and fragmented community. To solve this problem, newsrooms should find a balance between responding to the public’s demands and the higher goal of serving a well-functioning democracy where news that is to the public interest prevails.[35] Making weighty and more serious or difficult matters attractive to the public could be done, for instance, by correlating an issue to their personal experiences and lives. Professional values of the journalist should thus never be disregarded and the journalist should be more encouraged by the overruling organization to remain to a large extent in charge of news selection.

It is recommendable for publishers to specialize in a few topics that the metrics have proven they excel at, and build their brand around these. This way, journalists will be more likely to improve the quality of their articles instead of pursuing click bait.[36]

Another solution to help preserve the balance between professional judgement and what the audience wants, is alternating high-value enterprise journalism, that is to say, long articles with profound analyses of an issue, with shorter, daily articles about the same subject with the main points/ developments, accompanied by pictures, graphics or videos to make the issue all the more understandable.

Moreover, different beats should be covered in a different way. For government and business or economical content, for instance, investigative and watchdog journalism do well, while sports and food should be covered in a more subjective or analytic voice.[37]

Statistics combined with payment system

What could be an interesting source of inspiration for many news outlets is the way in which Forbes Media is handling web analytics. The media company links its statistics engine to its payments system and does so without attacking the quality of journalistic output. In fact, each journalist should figure out in what niche he or she fits best, and what content people are interested in, while aiming for authentic quality.[39] This approach to combining audience metrics with journalism turns out to be favourable, and should probably be more profoundly examined and applied by other organizations.

Final notes: advancing audience insights

The technological shift that has been — and still is — transforming journalism at the level of business, practice as well as institution has thus far extensively challenged traditional journalistic values and norms. Despite initial institutional resistance, audience metrics have pervaded newsrooms and are gaining an increasing importance due to the high level of competition and the financial instability and uncertainty of the online news business. Although the way in which journalists conceive of their audience and themselves, and the degree of instability and financial challenges of the organization influence the impact of audience metrics, a cultural transformation in most digital newsrooms is happening. In this cultural transformation, a reckless use of audience metrics can lead towards a “culture of the click” in newsrooms, meaning that the audience’s desires become a central element in editorial decision-making as news websites are giving in to a survival instinct and therefore adopt a market-oriented policy.

On the one hand, the use of web analytics tools means a positive evolution in journalism, enabling fast, audience-centric editorial decisions, both on stories that should be prioritised on short term basis as on the themes a newsroom should invest in on a long term basis.

On the other hand, audience metrics run counter to journalists’ normative ideals and objectives of authority, professional autonomy and gatekeeping. They can lead to a click-based segmentation of the audience, marginalising the smaller parts of the audience in favour of the majority’s desire for certain topics. Thic can affect journalists’ community-building role of creating a space for public dialogue.

As a consequence, in order to advance audience insights, a more strategic, integrated ‘culture of data’ is needed in newsrooms. News organizations should start with combining the use of several measuring tools (both generic and in-house tailored ones) with the creation of an audience team that examines audience engagement and makes suggestions for improvements, and with the building of a common understanding of metrics amongst all employees in the newsroom. Only then, acquired insights could be used to make correct and beneficial editorial decisions.

The road towards a successful and effective implementation of web analytics in journalism is one that implies an array of reforms both at the level of journalism as an institution, a business and a practice. This is necessary if news websites want to remain competitive and beat financial challenges in the future, without depriving journalists of the authority and autonomy to decide what is newsworthy. Audience metrics are here to stay.

[1] Picard, R.G. (2014). Twilight or New Dawn of Journalism ? Digital Journalism, 2(3), 273–283. DOI : 10.1080/21670811.2014.895531

[2] MacGregor, P. (2007). Tracking the Online Audience. Journalism Studies, 8(2), 280–298. DOI : 10.1080/14616700601148879

[3] Kaushik, A., & Waisberg, D. (2009). Web Analytics 2.0: Empowering Customer Centricity. The original Search Engine Market Journal, 2(1), 5–11.

[4] Anderson, C. W. (2011). Deliberative, Antagonistic, and Algorithmic Audiences: Journalism’s Vision of its Public in an Age of Audience Transparency. International Journal of Communication, 5, 529–547. DOI: 1932–8036/20110529

[5] Anderson, C. W. (2011). Between Creative and Quantified Audiences: Web Metrics and Changing Patterns of Newsworks in Local US Newsrooms. Journalism, 12(5), 550. DOI: 10.1177/1464884911402451

[6] Boczkowski, P. (2004). Digitizing the News : Innovation in online newspapers. Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press.

[7] As cited in MacGregor, P. (2007). Tracking the online audience. Journalism Studies, 8(2), 282. DOI : 10.1080/14616700601148879

[8] Benson, R., & Neveu, E. (2005). Introduction: Field Theory as a Work in Progress. In R. Benson and E. Neveu (Eds.), Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field, 1–28. Malden, MA: Polity Press

[9] Tandoc, E. (2014). Journalism is twerking ? How web analytics is changing the process of gatekeeping. New Media & Society, 16(4), 559–575. DOI : 10.1177/1461444814530541

[10] Tandoc, E., & Vos, T. (2015). The Journalist is Marketing the News: Social Media in the Gatekeeping Process. Journalism Practice. DOI: 10.1080/17512786.2015.1087811

[11] Welbers, K., van Atteveldt, W., Kleinnijenhuis, J., Ruigrok, N., & Schaper, J. (2015). News selection criteria in the digital age : Professional norms versus online audience metrics. Journalism, 1–17. DOI. 10.1177/1464884915595474

[12] Tandoc, E. (2014). Journalism is twerking? (See footnote 9)

[13] MacGregor, P. (2007). Tracking the online audience. (See footnote 2)

[14] Tandoc, E. (2014). Journalism is twerking? (See footnote 9)

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Christin, A. (2014, August 28). When it comes to chasing clicks, journalists say one thing but feel pressure to do another. Niemanlab.org. Retrieved from www.niemanlab.org on 8 December 2016.

[18] Tandoc, E., & Thomas, R.J. (2015). The Ethics of Web Analytics: Implications of using audience metrics in news construction. Digital Journalism, 3(2), 243–258. DOI: 10.1080/21670811.2014.909122

[19] Ibid.

[20] Dewey, J. (1927). The Public and its Problems. New York: H. Holt & Co.

[21] Tandoc, E., & Thomas, R.J. (2015). The Ethics of Web Analytics. (See footnote 18).

[22] MacGregor, P. (2007). Tracking the online audience. (See footnote 2)

[23] Rosenstiel, T. (2016). Solving journalism’s hidden problem: Terrible analytics. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/research/solving-journalisms-hidden-problem-terrible-analytics/

[24] Lichterman, J. (2015, January 29). Constantly tweaking: How The Guardian continues to develop its in-house analytics system. Niemanlab.org. Retrieved from http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/01/constantly-tweaking-how-the-guardian-continues-to-develop-its-in-house-analytics-system/ on 8 January 2017.

[25] Cherubini, F., & Nielsen, R. K. (2016). Digital News Project 2016. Editorial Analytics: how news media are developing and using audience data and metrics. Retrieved from http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/editorial-analytics-news-organisations-embracing-analytics-and-metrics-most-have-far-go

[26] Ibid.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Ibid.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Tandoc, E., & Ferrucci, P. (2015). A tale of two newsrooms: How market orientation influences web analytics use. In W. Gibbs, & J. McKendrick (Eds.), Contemporary Research Methods and Data Analytics in the News Industry, 58–76. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. DOI: 10.4018/978–1–4666–8580–2.ch004

[31] Cherubini, F., & Nielsen, R. K. (2016). Digital News Project 2016. (See footnote 24).

[32] Ibid.

[33] Speaking in Paris at the Sciences Po’ Journalism School Conference in Dec. 2015, as cited in Cherubni, F., & Nielsen, R.K. (2016). Digital News Project 2016, p.32. (See footnote 24)

[34] Waisberg, D., & Kaushik, A. (2009). Web Analytics 2.0. (see footnote 3)

[35] Tandoc, E., & Thomas, R.J. (2015). The Ethics of Web Analytics. (See footnote 18)

[36] Rosenstiel, T. (2016). Solving journalism’s hidden problem. (See footnote 23)

[37] Rosenstiel, T. (2016). Solving journalism’s hidden problem. (See footnote 23)

[39] Bartlett, R. (2013, December 2017). The Forbes ‘feedback loop’: Web analytics in the newsroom. Journalism.co.uk. Retrieved from https://www.journalism.co.uk on 8 December 2016.

[40] Vu, H. T., (2014). The online audience as gatekeeper: The influence of reader metrics on news editorial selection. Journalism, 15(8), 1094–1110. DOI: 10.1177/1464884913504259.