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> The website publishes an average of 1,200 pieces of content a day with increasing amounts geared toward social media. Recent examples include “15 awkward phot

> The website publishes an average of 1,200 pieces of content a day with increasing amounts geared toward social media. Recent examples include “15 awkward photos of world leaders that explain 2015” and a spoof video called “The Galactic Civil War” that tells the story of Star Wars as if it had been directed by documentarian Ken Burns. > Analytics dashboards will soon be added to reporters’ computers, and traffic figures will eventually be looked at as part of performance reviews, Mr. Baron said. Having traffic figures as a goalpost in journalist's performance reviews is worrying. Especially when the company is churning out 1200 pieces a day. Sounds like Bezos is pivoting the Washington Post from news to entertainment. Hard to tell the difference these days.

pp19dd 11y ago
Just to point this out, traffic always drove shaping of journalism. That's exactly how beats are established and budgeted. For example, typical metro desk stories are always popular but not always overly staffed because the news pretty much writes itself. Education takes more work, but it's not that important to audience so you pick a person or two wisely to run it, maybe throw a general assignment reporter on a few stories. Investigative pieces, for those you throw your best people and if it's newsworthy - that is, in the matter of public interest - you wastefully throw resources at it to get the story out. You can't do that for every story though, so editorial meetings are harsh. The only difference is that for traditional print, the metrics lagged behind by months to a year (these were done by circulation analysts or media analysis companies that do this for a living, with lots of phone calls and even more interpolation). With interpolation, you can imagine how you can under- or overestimate a situation. With print interpolation, it's even worse: they would ask people if they didn't read a newspaper this week, did they at least glance at one that someone held, or left on a bench? If they said yes, they got a checkmark for a partial reach. Based on these delayed and inaccurate numbers, people sometimes got or lost their jobs. More often, they got reassigned to do something else. It's always been like that. Now, with near-realtime feedback, you better know how a piece or a series or a section front is doing and can react to it in a more timely manner and make adjustments (ex: throw more people on the project, or pull people away from it and have them try something else). For example, ebola as a news topic is not doing so well now because it's pretty much contained, so lets get that reporter onto something else. Don't assume that this modernization change is going to be a rowship with a whip and a piper. Besos has a decent track record on enabling journalists to do their job better, seen both from the outside and the inside. And yeah, metrics can be misread, misused and misinterpreted, but that's always been a possibility.
- roymurdock 11y ago
  > “15 awkward photos of world leaders that explain 2015” and a spoof video called “The Galactic Civil War” I'm not sure you can call this "journalism". Sure, you're giving the people on social media networks what they want: funny, linkbaity stuff they can share. The pageview metrics will support and encourage that. But what individual people want and what society needs is often misaligned, if not diametrically opposed. I think I'm just disappointed because quality journalism and investigation takes time and is a losing business proposition, so it often requires patrons with large pockets and an altruistic outlook. Bezos could have been that patron. But it seems like he's going in the opposite direction with the Washington Post for business/financial reasons. Not that I should have expected anything else...it is a private company and not a gov-funded org or a charity.
  - pp19dd 11y ago
    Just for sake of some humor and perspective, compare the clickbaity stories you dislike to a police blotter story from print. One of my favorites from Baltimore is this one, in its entirety: "Someone entered the rear yard of a house in the 5900 block of Johnson St. on Saturday morning and removed a tomato from a tomato plant. The tomato was valued at $3, police said."
  - jahnu 11y ago
    Playing the Devil's Advocate here a little, but Garfield isn't journalism either and we get that in newspapers.
    - roymurdock 11y ago
      We get 3 pages of comics (my favorite part of the newspaper, especially bizarro, foxtrot, and marmaduke) and 30 pages of news. When you switch the ratios, you're not running a newspaper anymore, you're running an entertainmentpaper. Which is fine, as Rupert Murdoch has proven time and time again.
      - criley2 11y ago
thefastlane 11y ago
when examining an organization and what it does -- whether it be a newspaper, a university, or whatever -- it's always worth doing so in light of its charter. The Washington Post is a forprofit entity. Contrast that with, for example, Harper's magazine, which is owned by the nonprofit MacArthur Foundation. I'm surprised that there are any forprofit journalistic entities that haven't completely succumbed at this point (the FT comes to mind) to the pressures/patterns that the WashPost has.
Natsu 11y ago
I associate WaPo with clickbait and avoid its articles based on the domain alone. This would tend to explain how it got that way.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  Any particular reason for that? They've been an excellent newspaper for decades and I'm personally not noticing a quality decline, so I find your stance baffling.
  - Natsu 11y ago
    I only see them via Google News (which I've also cut down on, considerably). The articles are calculated to get maximum viewership. I don't need to read most of them to know what they'll say.
- BuffaloBagel 11y ago
  You're confusing The Washington Times with the Washington Post.
  - Natsu 11y ago
    I wish that were true.
vellum 11y ago
So the Taylorization of journalism begins. I wonder if Bezos will start monitoring bathroom breaks as well. https://research.gigaom.com/2013/02/if-amazon-is-the-future-of-work/ https://research.gigaom.com/2013/02/if-amazon-is-the-future-... > ...temp workers scramble like rats in a maze, pulling boxes off shelves, directed by handheld devices that not only show where the goods are stored but the most efficient path to walk. These devices also monitor each worker’s performance, coaxing them to move faster, move faster, move faster.

pp19dd 11y ago

Just to point this out, traffic always drove shaping of journalism. That's exactly how beats are established and budgeted. For example, typical metro desk stories are always popular but not always overly staffed because the news pretty much writes itself. Education takes more work, but it's not that important to audience so you pick a person or two wisely to run it, maybe throw a general assignment reporter on a few stories. Investigative pieces, for those you throw your best people and if it's newsworthy - that is, in the matter of public interest - you wastefully throw resources at it to get the story out. You can't do that for every story though, so editorial meetings are harsh. The only difference is that for traditional print, the metrics lagged behind by months to a year (these were done by circulation analysts or media analysis companies that do this for a living, with lots of phone calls and even more interpolation). With interpolation, you can imagine how you can under- or overestimate a situation. With print interpolation, it's even worse: they would ask people if they didn't read a newspaper this week, did they at least glance at one that someone held, or left on a bench? If they said yes, they got a checkmark for a partial reach. Based on these delayed and inaccurate numbers, people sometimes got or lost their jobs. More often, they got reassigned to do something else. It's always been like that. Now, with near-realtime feedback, you better know how a piece or a series or a section front is doing and can react to it in a more timely manner and make adjustments (ex: throw more people on the project, or pull people away from it and have them try something else). For example, ebola as a news topic is not doing so well now because it's pretty much contained, so lets get that reporter onto something else. Don't assume that this modernization change is going to be a rowship with a whip and a piper. Besos has a decent track record on enabling journalists to do their job better, seen both from the outside and the inside. And yeah, metrics can be misread, misused and misinterpreted, but that's always been a possibility.

roymurdock 11y ago
> “15 awkward photos of world leaders that explain 2015” and a spoof video called “The Galactic Civil War” I'm not sure you can call this "journalism". Sure, you're giving the people on social media networks what they want: funny, linkbaity stuff they can share. The pageview metrics will support and encourage that. But what individual people want and what society needs is often misaligned, if not diametrically opposed. I think I'm just disappointed because quality journalism and investigation takes time and is a losing business proposition, so it often requires patrons with large pockets and an altruistic outlook. Bezos could have been that patron. But it seems like he's going in the opposite direction with the Washington Post for business/financial reasons. Not that I should have expected anything else...it is a private company and not a gov-funded org or a charity.
- pp19dd 11y ago
  Just for sake of some humor and perspective, compare the clickbaity stories you dislike to a police blotter story from print. One of my favorites from Baltimore is this one, in its entirety: "Someone entered the rear yard of a house in the 5900 block of Johnson St. on Saturday morning and removed a tomato from a tomato plant. The tomato was valued at $3, police said."
- jahnu 11y ago
  Playing the Devil's Advocate here a little, but Garfield isn't journalism either and we get that in newspapers.
  - roymurdock 11y ago
    We get 3 pages of comics (my favorite part of the newspaper, especially bizarro, foxtrot, and marmaduke) and 30 pages of news. When you switch the ratios, you're not running a newspaper anymore, you're running an entertainmentpaper. Which is fine, as Rupert Murdoch has proven time and time again.
    - criley2 11y ago

thefastlane 11y ago

when examining an organization and what it does -- whether it be a newspaper, a university, or whatever -- it's always worth doing so in light of its charter. The Washington Post is a forprofit entity. Contrast that with, for example, Harper's magazine, which is owned by the nonprofit MacArthur Foundation. I'm surprised that there are any forprofit journalistic entities that haven't completely succumbed at this point (the FT comes to mind) to the pressures/patterns that the WashPost has.

Natsu 11y ago

I associate WaPo with clickbait and avoid its articles based on the domain alone. This would tend to explain how it got that way.

oldmanjay 11y ago
Any particular reason for that? They've been an excellent newspaper for decades and I'm personally not noticing a quality decline, so I find your stance baffling.
- Natsu 11y ago
  I only see them via Google News (which I've also cut down on, considerably). The articles are calculated to get maximum viewership. I don't need to read most of them to know what they'll say.
BuffaloBagel 11y ago
You're confusing The Washington Times with the Washington Post.
- Natsu 11y ago
  I wish that were true.

vellum 11y ago

So the Taylorization of journalism begins. I wonder if Bezos will start monitoring bathroom breaks as well. https://research.gigaom.com/2013/02/if-amazon-is-the-future-of-work/ https://research.gigaom.com/2013/02/if-amazon-is-the-future-... > ...temp workers scramble like rats in a maze, pulling boxes off shelves, directed by handheld devices that not only show where the goods are stored but the most efficient path to walk. These devices also monitor each worker’s performance, coaxing them to move faster, move faster, move faster.