"the newsroom was electric," an editor told me after the discovery of nine-year-old Shannon
Matthews, who went missing for 24 days in February 2008. "Minutes after publishing the
story, we watched the clicks go up like a petrol pump. In just an hour, we had 60,000
hits!"
As newspapers and broadcasters move online they are finding new ways to judge what makes a
big story. Using the latest "web analytics" technologies, publishers can now monitor the
trails of the clickstream"--a measure of what their users are choosing to read, watch and
share. Never before has the marketplace of journalism been so visible.
This brave new world has positive aspects. Media companies can offer precisely targeted
"behavioural" advertising, allowing their clients to aim messages at well-defined groups of
users. When advertising budgets are being squeezed, such innovations may save the media
industry's skin. The new technology also helps news organisations to learn how their
customers like to get their news. Most importantly, the clickstream provides editors with
feedback that helps them to repackage previously less popular but important news--like
stories from Afghanistan--for the widest possible audience. It could make public service
content more accessible--and all news more engaging and relevant.
But there is an obvious dark side. In their thirst for feedback, news sites now feature
provocative league tables, ranking stories by "most clicked" or "most emailed." With
exceptions, the rankings are dominated by those that summarize the weirder, more unusual
aspects of human existence, at the expense of serious but more abstract issues like
international development or the environment.
The irony of this was not lost on the satirical magazine the Onion, which ran a story in
2007 claiming that the "most emailed" list was "tearing the New York Times newsroom apart."
Under pressure to "craft articles with those magical 'click and send' qualities," the
article claimed, Pulitzer prizewinning reporters had "requested transfers to the Home &
Garden and Travel desks," where their digital profile is more likely to bloom.
Yet such things are, in truth, deadly serious. As newspaper circulation figures fall
sharply, it's only logical for publishers to huddle under an umbrella of popular stories.
By reflecting the interests of the crowd, they can attract millions of eyeballs and more
advertising. This process in turn, artificially narrows news around a handful of "tent
pole" stories--like Shannon Matthews or the plight of Jade Goody.
The dangers of blindly following the crowd here are clear. As Paul Starr argued recently in
the New Republic, journalists have long been "our eyes on the state, our check on private
abuses, our civic alarm systems." New technologies offer a great opportunity but, if
mishandled, the future of civil society is in peril.