Sunday, October 20, 2013

To Save Journalism, News Needs to Buy Into Data

Digiday reporting:
Smart news organizations will move from a “tracking” mentality that simply lists what audiences are doing to focus on what any such insight could mean for both journalism and the business of journalism. Newsrooms need to embrace the kind of number-crunching more common to marketers.
That means a focus on conversion: how to turn browsers and readers into loyal customers, and using data to uncover tactics that help surface better news recommendations. It means embracing real-time analytics, sometimes starting off with expensive third-party analytics providers but, increasingly, through homegrown tools, which are vital for newsroom decision-makers to try and constantly fine-tune digital offerings.
The challenge in most established newsrooms remains the ability — and willingness — of journalists and editors to pay attention to data and to actually want to act on it without reflexively falling back on age-old and often mistaken notions that actually responding to reader-behavior is nothing but pandering. Talking about data in the morning news meeting is a great start but quick actions have to follow the rhetoric throughout the day.
I also worry about a growing movement to throw out or disdain valuable metrics simply because a vocal minority believes they are irrelevant.
http://digiday.com/publishers/data-save-journalism/

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