An interesting memo was published in Valleywag. The subject of writer pay at a tech blog provoked additional questions on Publishing 2.0. It will fuel a few more blogger keystrokes until the Consumer Electronics Show and MacWorld.
Here’s the rub: Measuring the value of content.
Old media was simple. Great reporting and writing usually won the front page or magazine cover. Pulitzer Prize journalists went on to write books. Audited sources provided audience and readership by age, job title and more. Advertisers aimed their dollars with expectation of a return.
New media is wide open. Lead stories on many competitve news blogs change by the hour. Most news blog contributors are freelancers. Advertisers are attracted by big numbers, so blog sites in it for profit (some funded by VCs) must deliver. Visits and blog links primarily gauge a site’s rank or authority.
Are they the best indicators of quality produced by writers?
The system is not there yet.
A few suggestions for any editor running a news blog that sells ad space and pays its writing staff:
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Measure the time visitors spend on your site and what writers they read the most.
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Measure the links that visitors click within a post (limit links to five; indicates they read beyond catchy headline).
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Measure ad CTRs and how the performance corresponds to daily posts.
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Establish a respected professional body to recognize good writing and reporting with annual awards.
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Measure the number of RSS subscriptions generated per day.
Raw traffic and links to a site are two ways to show reach and influence. But they don’t show full depth of quality unless factored in with more analytics.
The online publishing world is not perfect by any means.
And newspapers were once monopolistic bully pulpits for owners with political agendas.
In time a balanced model emerges.
1 Comment
January 10, 2008 at 4:41 am
Very informative ……….. Good work