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The Adults in the Room

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Melody Bot, Aug 26, 2019.

  1. Melody Bot

    Your friendly little forum bot. Staff Member

    This article has been imported from chorus.fm for discussion. All of the forum rules still apply.

    Megan Greenwell, writing at Deadspin:


    The unstated, fuller version seems to be that he believed he could simply turn up the traffic (and thus turn a profit), as if adjusting a faucet, not by investing in quality journalism but by tricking people into clicking on more pages. While pageviews are no longer seen as a key performance indicator at most digital publications—time spent on the site is increasingly thought to be a more valuable metric—Spanfeller has focused on pageviews above all else. In his first meeting with editorial leaders, he said he expected us to double pageviews. Several weeks later, without acknowledging a change, he mentioned that the expectation is in fact to quadruple them. Four months in, the vision for getting there seems less clear than ever.

    I think this article will resonate with anyone that’s ever worked for a large media company at one point or another.

     
  2. KyleK

    Let's get these people moving faster! Supporter

    Talk about throwing a grenade before leaving a room. I'll admit I wasn't acutely aware of the specific changes there, I was aware of this happening across the industry. Good for her for standing up for a publication she was clearly proud of, and herself, and the broader messages of the article really resonated with me - despite working in an entirely different line of work.
     
  3. HarrisonMonopoly

    Regular

    I used to love deadspin. I don’t know what’s changed over the last 2 years but I find myself less inclined to go read their blogs. Whatever is going on over there, I hope the ship reverses it’s course.
     
  4. KyleK

    Let's get these people moving faster! Supporter

    I mean, the article is pretty illustrative of what's changed the past couple years. Leadership that's wanted their content watered down without strong opinions or taking sides. Stuff that is to appeal to everyone definitely risks appealing less to their existing audience.