Colin McEnroe Show: How Web Site Traffic Changes Reporting
Are traffic metrics impacting editorial decisions at newspapers?
In 2006, it became obvious to any political journalist paying attention in Connecticut that site meters could change the way we do business.
Both Mark Pazniokas and I discovered that, if we wrote the right kind of Lieberman story, our online traffic would go crazy. A 2,000-visitor day could turn into a 50,000-visitor day. Fortunately, we both had way too much integrity to pander to that phenomenon.
Well, maybe Pazniokas did. I got kind of fascinated with making the site traffic thermometer hop into the red zone. I tried to figure out the tricks that guaranteed that kind of success.
It was more human nature than ruthless career advancement. Who doesn't want 70,000 readers instead of 800?
We've never been able to measure interest so precisely. It's kind of a wonderful tool, but it's also a source of deep intellectual corruption.
You can join the conversation. Do you think journalism's standards are declining? What do you click on when browsing the Web? Leave your comments below, e-mail colin@wnpr.org or Tweet us @wnprcolin.
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The idea that a journalist gets paid by the hits or the clicks really brings us to an age in which we'll all be writing about Lady Gaga.
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This is one of the underlying stories in the Bysiewicz saga. Putting her name in the title of a blog post increased my traffic significantly. In fact, it still does. I suspect the same was true for both you and Jon Lender. I would have a hard time believing Lender would have written the number of columns that he did if it didn't feed the meter. I can't imagine being a political columnist right now. I'd be spending a lot of time praying that Tom Dudchik linked to my article. Right now, one can argue he's one of the most influential people in CT politics.
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