Risky business: How metrics obfuscate journalistic values with traffic volumes in digital news production

Abstract

Based on ethnography from Australian digital newsrooms, this research shows how content production is split into two forms: Original news reporting is considered an act of ‘journalistic discovery,’ while content produced to appease metric indicators is considered an act of ‘metric confirmation.’ By conceptualising the digital space as a “glut of occurrences” (Tuchman, 1978: p.44-45) to be filled, the two case studies shown in this work inform how temporality and metrification intertwine to posit metric confirmation as low-risk, low-cost, high-gain work, while acts of journalistic discovery are comparatively high-risk and high-cost, with unknown outcomes. I argue that the inundation of metrics into newsrooms obfuscates other more crucial news values and poses challenges for the future of journalism when digital distribution is increasingly dependent on third parties while responsibility for commercial success has been shifted onto editorial staff.