There are quite a few ways to answer your question, so I'll do my best to address all of them that come to mind. First, why does anyone need to know anything?

There are quite a few ways to answer your question, so I'll do my best to address all of them that come to mind. First, why does anyone need to know anything? There's a favorite passage of mine in Walden about news being gossip, and those that read it being women over their tea, which cuts to the trivial nature of most news, but Thoreau failed to recognize some things because his focus was on living his own life and not worrying about the lives of others. He had no use for the type of information he derides, but never acknowledged that others may have use for such information. So, with that in mind, let's think about this from a few perspectives beyond our own myopia. The audience. Audience can be broken down into various sub-groups, but I will focus on the likeliest readers of Vulture. Media professionals may need to know this information because this information gives them greater insight into their own work. If Netflix produced and distributed a popular show in a novel way, I would very much like to know details like exactly how popular this show has been. Media consumers may like to know this information as well. If a new show (let's call it Jumping Off A Bridge) airs and it is reported that 5 million people watched, perhaps the show is good. If 5 million people are watching Jumping Off A Bridge, perhaps I would enjoy Jumping Off A Bridge, too. Such is the world of entertainment news, which is most definitely not hard news, but clearly has an audience. (Let's also not forget that audience is what advertisers want.) Which gets me to why journalists would need this information. There is a particular news value called magnitude. If something affects a large portion of their audience, then the news should be reported. As Vulture is a media blog, of course their audience is likely the one or both of the subgroups I mentioned above. However, this information has little value on, say, the front page of The Minneapolis Star Tribune or even most pages of The New York Times, as the number of viewers could not possibly affect a sizable number of their readers in general. Cultural proximity matters. Do journalists have a right to know this information? Sometimes, sometimes not. That's really irrelevant to journalists. The purpose of their work is to provide relevant information to their target audience, whether that is tech start ups or the 112 people of Podunk, Kansas or the citizens of the United States who expect and need a fourth estate as watchdog over its governing bodies.