Numbers games

The shift from analog to digital provided a wealth of performance metrics that could, in theory, be used to evaluate the contributions to the business made by the content side. In an ad model, the idea was you could simply focus on pageviews. After all, every publisher managed to RPM (revenue per thousand pageviews), this could match up quite nicely. Gawker was a proponent of this approach. The popularization of Chartbeat put this information squarely in front of reporters. Gawker famously had a big board showing pageview totals. In the mid-2010s, pageview mania swept digital publishing, sending a generation of young journalists into the content mine to write listicle drivel aimed at Google and Facebook algorithms. These were not happy times.

Subscriptions provided an antidote to this pageview-oriented approach by making the content the product. After all, people are paying for the content, so there’s a clear number to use as a KPI. Some publishers have taken their pageview quota approach, which they pass off as “goals,” and ported it over to subscriptions, where most strategies have been focused on piling on big subscriber numbers.

At Insider, “metrics reform” is even a main demand from its union. It’s never a great sign when union members are posting complaint flyers about how “my fate at the company relies on my ability to continue pulling in subs” and lamenting, “I am not alone in feeling anxious over numbers.”

I can understand the impulse to turn to numbers. They’re neutral and get around known problems with qualitative assessments, where bias and politics can creep in. A publisher wants to reward those who are driving the business forward vs coasting along (or, apparently, treating Sunday “as the new Saturday” and spending Monday hungover). But subscription quotas – sorry, goals that determine whether you keep your job – are a long-term mistake for a few basic reasons.

They reward the wrong things. The problem with pageview quotas is they incentivized clickbait. You just needed to get someone to click. Success was a good headline, not a valuable insight that built loyalty. Similarly, subscription quotas invariably overemphasize last click, not what led up to that click. People are paying for access to a bundle of content, not a discrete piece of content. Subscription quotas reward just what got someone over the line, not all that led up to the decision. Ironically, this is the same screwed-up attribution approaches advertisers take that publishers endlessly grouse about.) That incentivizes a reporter to produce the type of content that will push someone over the line, like an honorific list. As one reporter groused to me, it disincentivizes beat reporting that’s foundational for long-term success.

Motivations are different for editorial people. I find a lot of operator and business-side types don’t understand what motivates reporters and editors. Their frame of reference is typically sales. With sales people, it’s all about money. If there’s a strategic area that needs more focus even though the sale is harder, you give added rewards to people selling this. Let me tell you, that doesn’t happen in editorial. More to the point, most top journalists are driven by wanting to do good work, not by the thrill of chasing numbers. Hanging a metric over people’s heads like a sword of Damocles is going to distract more than motivate. It’s not an effective strategy to retain the best people and get the best results in the long run.

Quotas are morale killers. Regularly producing content is hard. It’s a grind, filled with anxieties and constant deadlines. Ask any ex-journalist, they’ll tell you that their newsroom job was far harder and stressful. There’s a reason journalists can be over-caffeinated and grumpy. Quotas exacerbate that to a degree where the upside doesn’t outweigh the downside. One reporter recently told me, “It totally has sapped my motivation. I really hate it. Just feels like you’re trying to do good work in spite of the system.”