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The challenge of measurements

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At the end of every month, and then again for the quarter, just like every business on the planet, we take a peak at a series of measurements to evaluate how the paper is doing as a business.

Revenue and expenses are easy to measure. The advertising department’s performance is as well. How many dollars in advertising did you sell?

News, however, is a bit different.

As recently as the 90s, the news industry struggled to quantify a reporter’s work. Yes, we knew that people purchased the paper for reporting, but they also purchased for crosswords, comics, the sales inserts, and all sorts of other things over which a reporter had no control.

The Internet made things easier – sort of. In the late 90s, we started counting how many hits the website would have, but then people said hits are irrelevant. We can count page views! That does provide some measure of how often a story is being read (or at least loaded up on the page) online.

Of course, some people (and a growing group at that) tell me page views are not a true measurement. It is actually comments on the story (what if they are all screaming at the paper?) or how many people shared a story via social media. Or, in reality it is unique visitors. Or, no, it is all about time spent on site.

Really, it almost seems like the digital world is plagued by the “measurement du jour.”

Even with all that, we still have to figure out what impact did a particular story have on newspaper (print) sales?

Then there’s the marketing game. I just received extensive research from the firm Scarborough Research, which details local market share of all media. Is that the proper measurement?

It makes quantifying a reporter’s work, and measuring the “success” of a story, very challenging.

Right now, at the DNJ, we’re using a combination of the above. Page views are a critical measurement, since we offer advertising options based on page views. However, we also take into account how many papers are sold that day, comments received and shares earned, unique visitors, time on site (or on story), and to be honest, gut hunch, phone calls and letters to the editor.

Very unscientific, but it is the best we have at the moment.


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