Ethical issues in analytics driven journalism
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These slides were presented at the 2015 annual conference for the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics in Costa Mesa, California. The presentation explores how newsrooms across the country use data analytics to make editorial decisions, engage audiences and support their business models.
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Ethical issues in analytics driven journalism
- 1. ETHICAL ISSUES IN ANALYTICS-DRIVEN JOURNALISM SALEM SOLOMON CASEY FRECHETTE
- 4. YEARS PUBLISHING PULITZER PRIZES STAFF SIZE MONTHLY UNIQUES 164 114 1,250 30M 4 0 60 19M
- 6. PAGE VIEWS
- 7. PAGE VIEWS
- 10. MAKE EDITORIAL DECISIONS ENGAGE AUDIENCES EVALUATE REPORTERS
- 11. 73% HOW MUCH TO COVER A STORY 72% STORY PLACEMENT ON SITE 63% HOW TO WRITE HEADLINES 62% HOW TO DESIGN SITE PAGES NEWSROOMS USE METRICS TO MAKE MANY DECISIONS…
- 12. 1. REPORT TRUTHFULLY (Ch. 2) 2. SUPPORT SELF- GOVERNANCE (Ch. 11) 3. HOLD THE POWERFUL ACCOUNTABLE (Ch. 6)
- 13. 2. ENGAGE AUDIENCES MONITOR, LISTEN, INTERACT 1. MAKE EDITORIAL DECISIONS INDEPENDENCE, INTERDEPENDENCE 3. SUPPORT WORK GENERATE REVENUE
- 14. PART TWO HOW ANALYTICS CAN ENHANCE JOURNALISM
- 25. IF I WERE BEING PAID BY THE CLICK FOR THIS COLUMN, I MIGHT HAVE BEGUN IT THIS WAY: WILL AN OPPRESSIVE EMPHASIS ON “CLICK BAIT” MEAN THAT THE NEWS ENDS UP IMPRISONED BY TRANSGENDERED MODELS POSING IN DISGRACEFUL LISTICLES ACCOMPANIED BY KIDNAPPED NUDE KITTENS? BUT I’M NOT. SO LET’S JUST SAY THAT THERE IS A GROWING TREND IN MANY CORNERS OF JOURNALISM TO TIE THE COMPENSATION OF JOURNALISTS TO THE AMOUNT OF WEB TRAFFIC AND/OR ARTICLES THEY GENERATE. “
- 27. THE MARKET REQUIRES GIVING THE PUBLIC WHAT IT WANTS; DEMOCRACY REQUIRES GIVING THE PUBLIC WHAT IT NEEDS. “
- 29. PART THREE THE POTENTIAL HARMS OF ANALYTICS
- 32. IF NEWS EDITORS ALTER EDITORIAL DECISIONS BASED ON THE NUMBER OF CLICKS A STORY GENERATES, UNPOPULAR BUT IMPORTANT STORIES MAY BE IGNORED. “
- 43. PART FOUR IDEAL SOLUTION AND OBSTACLES TO THE IDEAL
- 44. NEWSROOM LEADERS SHOULD FOCUS ON THE IMPACT OF THEIR STORIES AND USE METRICS TO INCREASE THAT IMPACT. “
- 45. JOURNALISTS NEED TO TAKE A MORE NUANCED VIEW OF ANALYTICS.
- 46. CRITICAL QUESTION #1 WHICH ANALYTICS SHOULD BE USED?
- 47. PAGE VIEWS TIME ON PAGE TIME ON SITE BOUNCE RATES NEW / RETURNING VISITOR RATIO SCROLL DEPTH TIME SAVED / TIME WELL SPENT
- 48. CRITICAL QUESTION #2 WITH WHOM SHOULD ORGANIZATIONS SHARE ANALYTICS?
- 49. REPORTERS COPY EDITORS ASSIGNMENT EDITORS PHOTOJOURNALISTS MANAGERS STRINGERS SOCIAL MEDIA EDITORS WEB EDITORS COMMUNITY MANAGERS EXECUTIVES
- 50. CRITICAL QUESTION #3 HOW SHOULD ANALYTICS INFORM THE OVERALL EDITORIAL PROCESS?
- 52. CRITICAL QUESTION #4 WHAT EDITORIAL CHOICES ARE AVAILABLE ASIDE FROM USING CLICKBAIT?
- 53. 60 WORDS AND A WAR WITHOUT END: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE MOST DANGEROUS SENTENCE IN U.S. HISTORY
- 54. CRITICAL QUESTION #5 HOW SHOULD SUBSTANTIVE WORK BE BALANCED WITH WORK THAT GENERATES TRAFFIC?
- 56. ACCESS TO ANALYTICS CAN BE USED TO IMPROVE STORIES THAT MATTER.
- 58. THANK YOU.
Editor's Notes
- SALEM
- SALEM
- SALEM The Verge, a digital news site that covers technology, science, art, and culture, was founded in 2011 in partnership with Vox Media.
- SALEM Compared to a major media company like the New York Times, which has 1,250 editorial staff, The Verge is tiny with only about 60 people. However, it has quickly risen in prominence due to its tech-savvy staff writers and now has a global reach with 19 million unique monthly visitors (Vox Media, 2014). The New York Times, by comparison, averages about 30 million unique visitors a month (The New York Times, 2014).
- SALEM
- SALEM What makes The Verge intriguing from a journalistic perspective...
- SALEM ...is its policy to restrict reporters from accessing page views, a popular Web metric that shows how much traffic individual stories generate.
- SALEM It’s not that The Verge doesn’t trust its reporters, many of whom are young, with the data. The decision was made by the site’s leadership team to enhance its journalism. “Our core strength is that we do the news and it’s out there, but you want to come to us because we’re smarter and more authoritative and better,” Patel, the current editor-in-chief, said. “And I don’t think you can measure that in terms of page views” (Fischer, 2014, p. 1).
- SALEM As newsrooms embrace more digital tools, editors and writers find themselves searching to make the best use of this new platform while still protecting the core principles of the profession. Some argue that the digital era threatens journalism’s traditional formats. However, digital technologies also present new opportunities and offer the industry ways to evolve and better understand its audiences.
- SALEM Web analytics are at the center of this dilemma (Farhi, 2010). The Verge downplays the role of page views in its journalism, but newsrooms around the country have begun using metrics to determine editorial decisions, from selecting what reporters should cover to deciding what matters most to their audiences (Lee, Lewis, & Powers, 2012).
- SALEM According to a 2013 survey conducted by the American Society of News Editors (ASNE), Web metrics are also being used to judge the performance of reporters. The ASNE study surveyed 114 of its members and found that editors use Web analytics to evaluate reporters’ work and decide whether a multiple-day story is important enough to continue covering (Jenner & Tandoc, 2013).
- SALEM Journalists help citizens make up their minds about important issues by reporting truthfully. The primary purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with the information they need to be free and self-governing (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2007). They also serve a constitutionally-protected watchdog role, shedding light on governments and holding those in power accountable.
- SALEM To meet these responsibilities, journalists must balance three interconnected goals. First, journalists must exercise appropriate editorial judgment, balancing the need to be independent from the people and institutions they cover with the need to listen to the communities in which they function. Second, journalists must engage their audiences in meaningful ways. In the digital age, this means not only monitoring how audiences receive the news but also addressing issues and questions generated by readers, viewers, and listeners. Third, journalists must sustain their editorial work with appropriate business models.
- CASEY
- CASEY Analytics can inform editorial decisions by providing insight into what news audiences want.
- CASEY Editors can use page view metrics to track site traffic and give priority to stories that resonate most with readers. Editors can also monitor the terms visitors search to gain insight into trends they might not otherwise see. They can use time-on-page analytics to determine what stories not only attract readers but also hold their interest. Based on geographic data derived from visitor IP addresses, they can analyze who visits their sites to gauge whether they are reaching the communities they hope to serve.
- CASEY Journalists must make good use of space, time, and resources and, thus, prioritize the newsworthiness of the stories they cover. However, audience members are the final arbiter of what they want to read and what is worth their time. In digital news, the barrier between producer and audience is thin. Citizens believe they have the right to interact with journalists about their work. They eagerly fact-check them. It is easier than ever before to hold journalists to account for how well they do at meeting audience needs and producing comprehensive and proportional reporting.
- CASEY
- CASEY This is a sample analysis from EyeQuant, a technology that simulates eyetracking.
- CASEY Analytics can help news organizations make business decisions.
- CASEY Raju Narisetti, a senior vice president for News Corp., believes that page views, a basic but ubiquitous way to measure how many people have viewed a given article, count as evidence of reader engagement and loyalty. Narisetti says that critics who deride these as “vanity metrics” are missing the fact that they are “critical to both our journalism and the business model that supports our journalism” (Narisetti, 2014, p. 1). Because advertisers care about page views, Narisetti argues, so must journalists. CRITICAL TO BOTH OUR JOURNALISM AND THE BUSINESS MODEL THAT SUPPORTS OUR JOURNALISM
- CASEY News organizations can no longer afford to keep financial and editorial decisions separate.
- CASEY Successful news startups mix business and journalism, finding ways to make both editorial decisions and money (Briggs, 2011). Journalists may be uncomfortable dealing with money, but their training and values can be applied to maintain editorial independence, even when considering how their decisions will affect the bottom line.
- CASEY Analytics provide insight into audience preferences. Editors can use this information to give readers and viewers more of what they want. However, studies have shown that audiences are prone to click on “soft” rather than “hard” news and, therefore, reliance on metrics can steer news outlets away from difficult and complex reporting (Boczkowski, 2010; Boczkowski, Mitchelstein, & Walter 2011; Boczkowski & Peer 2011).
- CASEY Some reporters see this as a push for “clickbait,” or provocative stories that grab the attention of casual readers (Anderson, 2011). Here’s how the late David Carr saw it in a column from last year: IF I WERE BEING PAID BY THE CLICK FOR THIS COLUMN, I MIGHT HAVE BEGUN IT THIS WAY: WILL AN OPPRESSIVE EMPHASIS ON “CLICK BAIT” MEAN THAT THE NEWS ENDS UP IMPRISONED BY TRANSGENDERED MODELS POSING IN DISGRACEFUL LISTICLES ACCOMPANIED BY KIDNAPPED NUDE KITTENS? BUT I’M NOT. SO LET’S JUST SAY THAT THERE IS A GROWING TREND IN MANY CORNERS OF JOURNALISM TO TIE THE COMPENSATION OF JOURNALISTS TO THE AMOUNT OF WEB TRAFFIC AND/OR ARTICLES THEY GENERATE.
- CASEY Clickbait stories are adept at distracting an office worker for a few minutes, but are typically not very good at informing or enlightening the reader about important topics (Shire, 2014).
- CASEY The clickbait phenomenon highlights a key tension faced by journalists: attracting audiences to support advertising-based business models, and informing the public about important events. These two forces -- marketplace and mission -- shape journalists’ work in critical ways, but they don’t always coincide. “The market requires giving the public what it wants; democracy requires giving the public what it needs” (Barger & Barney, 2004, p. 199)
- CASEY The line between clickbait and serious news isn't always clear, and this further complicates news organizations' efforts to respond to audience demand while making independent editorial judgments. Websites displaying bizarre criminal mugshots or mugshots of attractive people have proliferated in recent years. Some sites have even been accused of blackmailing users who ask for their mugshots to be taken down. Reputable news outlets like the Tampa Bay Times now have policies of publishing all mugshots of people arrested in the area in a given time. This is justified as a public service, but mugshots generate high traffic for the site. At The Tampa Bay Times, the mugshots are taken off the site in 60 days. Critics charge that newspapers have exploited the Freedom of Information Act to build profitable online databases of arrest records, even though “an arrestee has a privacy interest in his mug shot, [and] that this interest outweighs the public interest in disclosure” (Wolfe, 2013).One could argue that Web traffic is driving the Times and other news sites to devote significant resources and prominent Web page real estate to these mugshot galleries. Metrics are, therefore, driving editorial decisions.
- SALEM
- SALEM
- SALEM In 2012, USA Today formed a national news desk and installed a large-screen display of website traffic metrics. Journalists use this display to monitor what stories are trending and, based on what they see, make real-time editorial decisions (Edmonds, 2014). Within 18 months, USA Today advanced to fourth place in digital traffic, trailing only major news outlets such as Yahoo!, CNN, and NBC. Focusing on this success, however, raises questions about a news outlet’s ability to fulfill its role of informing the public. When analytics reveal what stories garner audience interest, editors are likely to promote those stories to further increase traffic, regardless of their inherent newsworthiness (Tandoc, 2014).
- SALEM If news editors alter editorial decisions based on the number of clicks a story generates, unpopular but important stories may be ignored.
- SALEM Because clickbait is so effective at driving traffic, a reliance on Web metrics risks devaluing the role of news organizations. When given the choice between reading about the escapades of singer tweet, a majority of readers will choose Cyrus -- by a factor of 12 to one (Lotfi, 2013). But journalists working at news outlets that do not have a niche mission or niche readership have the role-related responsibility to present information that relates to self governance, even if those stories are not the most attractive.
- SALEM In one of its most popular posts of 2013, The Onion skewered CNN for its propensity for celebrity gossip with a parody post by Meredith Artley, Managing Editor of CNN.com. The gist of the post? Miley drives traffic. That makes advertisers happy. And CNN wants happy advertisers.
- SALEM Analytics can cause problems for audience engagement, too.
- SALEM Analytics can pose a danger if they become a means to monitor audiences and surreptitiously influence their behaviors. Oftentimes, news consumers are unaware of when and how they are tracked, and media companies can monitor visitors who have not established a site account or logged in.
- SALEM This is a list of all the third party scripts running on The Huffington Post homepage. Many of these over 30 scripts are tied to advertising and social media partners and track visitor behaviors in various ways.
- SALEM Here’s a typical way our privacy can be compromised. We visit an online retailer and buy something -- or not. A cookie is stored on our computer. Next, we visit a news site -- Slate.com in this case. Because Indochino is part of the Google Ad Network -- and Slate.com uses that network to host its display ads -- Slate feeds up an add for a couple of shirts along with the article we just clicked to read. We haven’t logged in, but Slate knows where we just were because of that cookie. Next, we browse Facebook on our phone. This time we are logged in. And there’s that Indochino ad again. Ultimately, all these pieces tie back together because platforms and publishers give information to advertisers.
- SALEM Recent experiments by Facebook, an increasingly popular source of news, raise additional concerns about the use of analytics to manufacture the engagement that visitors experience. For one week in January 2012, the social media site tampered with the content presented to nearly 700,000 of its users (Kramera, Guillory, & Hancock, 2014). Facebook regulated the number of positive or negative posts to which users were exposed and tracked their sharing habits to examine a phenomenon known as “emotional contagion.” Results of the experiments show that controlling the emotional makeup of a user’s News Feed -- the stream of status updates, photos, videos and other links at the heart of Facebook -- can influence the emotions users subsequently share. Facebook’s study caused controversy given its covert nature, but news organizations are no stranger to controlling the content they show based on visitors’ habits. For instance, they show visitors’ habits as “most read” or “most emailed” story lists.
- SALEM
- SALEM When analytics are used solely to drive traffic, they can lead to personnel decisions that may be shortsighted. The Oregonian, for example, required its reporters to make at least three posts a day and to write the first comment on substantive stories. The editorial staff were told that as much as 75 percent of their work performance would be based on Web metrics, including the frequency with which they churn out content, according to internal Oregonian documents obtained by the alt-weekly Willamette Week (Mesh, 2014). Reporters were told to stir up conversation among readers to generate interest and additional clicks. Journalists’ perceived impartiality can be compromised by the instruction to engage with readers merely to provoke reactions.
- SALEM (We can mention that this is actual data for OregonLive, which may seem to provide valuable insight into how to make hiring decisions, but the numbers are estimate and can be far off in many cases.)
- CASEY
- CASEY Journalists share the common goal of informing their communities. News organizations can mitigate possible harms caused by analytics-driven journalism by making editorial decisions that are consistent with this mission. Newsroom leaders should focus on the impact of their stories and use metrics to increase that impact. This priority should never be inverted to generate buzz and clicks through whatever means necessary. Doing so prioritizes the need to generate revenue over sound editorial judgment and meaningful audience engagement. Instead, journalists should use their unique training and values to engage with the business side in a way that prevents money from becoming a corrupting agent.
- CASEY To utilize analytics in a way that complements all of their role-related responsibilities, journalists need to take a more nuanced view of this powerful tool. Ignoring metrics isn’t a viable option when most news organizations still rely on display advertising to fund their operations. Following analytics blindly is equally perilous. Based on the preceding analysis, I propose five issues that news organizations should explore to utilize Web analytics in ways that help them to better fulfill their role-related responsibilities:
- CASEY CRITICAL QUESTION #1 WHICH ANALYTICS SHOULD BE USED?
- CASEY
- CASEY CRITICAL QUESTION #2 WITH WHOM SHOULD ORGANIZATIONS SHARE ANALYTICS?
- CASEY
- CASEY CRITICAL QUESTION #3 HOW SHOULD ANALYTICS INFORM THE OVERALL EDITORIAL PROCESS?
- CASEY
- CASEY CRITICAL QUESTION #4 WHAT EDITORIAL CHOICES ARE AVAILABLE ASIDE FROM USING CLICKBAIT?
- CASEY A 10,000 word Buzzfeed news piece with in-depth reporting and many visual elements… from Jan., 2014 Was also turned into a 60-minute episode of the popular RadioLab podcast, extending its reach even further, and showing all the possibilities with multimedia treatments.
- CASEY CRITICAL QUESTION #5 HOW SHOULD SUBSTANTIVE WORK BE BALANCED WITH WORK THAT GENERATES TRAFFIC?
- CASEY Buzzfeed is a great example of a place attempting -- and in many ways, succeeding -- to do both. We get one version of the site off the homepage and subsections like “Quizzes,” and a very different version in the “News” subsection.
- CASEY Access to analytics can be used to improve stories that matter. The potential to drive traffic while informing and educating is as important in new media as it is in traditional journalism. The medium of transmission will continue to change, but the principles should not. Ultimately, it is vital to measure how well news organizations meet their role-related responsibility. Measuring what the public is interested in is easy, but not equivalent to measuring what is in the public interest.
- Questions? (And contact info.)
- Fin.