Measuring success
Successful Web sites make it more difficult for weeklies and monthlies to keep timely content on their pages, changing the way periodicals measure success of news stories and columns in print, says Jason Tanz, senior editor at Wired.
"We are now competing with the Web," he notes, "so we have to do things the Web doesn't do."
"We are a technology magazine, and there's a ton of technology online and people aren't going to be turning to us for the raw data," Tanz adds. "They're going to be turning to us for the stories and the kinds of things magazines traditionally provided, and those might not translate so quickly to the Web."
During the glory days of print journalism, reporters waited days or weeks for feedback on their articles from readers. Now, reporters publish news stories to the Web moments after they're approved by a copy desk or news editor, and reaction is swift as bloggers post stories or readers share stories with one another.
That use of Web technology has a multi-fold result. For one, reporters and editors can quickly follow up a story or gauge public sentiment after a piece's dissemination.
Reporters can also measure their own popularity by the number of comments posted or by how many times it is linked to by other blogs or Web sites, says Sklar.
"There's a different page-view culture [than a few years ago]. Gawker is the biggest example of that with its pay-for-page views," she says. "It's like the question of 'if a tree falls.' If you write something and it's not picked up [elsewhere], does anyone read it?"
Yet few journalists surveyed expect the Gawker model to catch on. Just 18.4% of respondents say they believe more publications will start compensating employees in a pay-per-performance model, while 30.1% disagree. The majority (51.4%) of respondents say they did not know.
When asked to select the ways in which they measure the success of their work, 70.1% choose feedback from colleagues, while 50% pick comments from readers online. Less than half cite links from other media (41.8%), a place on the most-read or most-e-mailed list (38.1%), and letters to the editor (34%).
But electronic measurements can give journalists another way to show management that they are worth the investment during an age of newsroom cuts, says Hernandez.
"We just had 22 layoffs in our newsroom," he reports. "Anyone who is remaining, in this newsroom or in any other, has to look hard at themselves, their productivity, and their relevance to the organization. I remember the days when people would just turn in stories on cruise control. The business cannot support that now; you have to bring something to the table."
And journalists are also aware that they are contributing to the financial health of their entities. More than nine in 10 respondents (91.4%) say an "extremely" or "very" important goal of their work is to make their publications successful by creating appealing content.
The PRWeek/PR Newswire survey on assessing the attitudes and ideas of traditional journalists and bloggers, specifically regarding their duties, workload, interaction with PR pros, and opinions of the future of media, was conducted by PRWeek and Millward Brown.
E-mail notification was sent to approximately 8,675 traditional journalists and 956 bloggers. A link to the survey was also posted to a journalist group message board on Facebook.
A total of 1,231 journalists (1,152 traditional journalists and 79 bloggers) completed the survey online between January 14-30, 2008. Results aren't weighted.