Journalism: a craft with some useful metrics

Martin Belam on the reasons for his latest post:

And having just sat through an event where one of the questions was a worry that knowing something about SEO or writing for social risks “losing the craft” of journalism, I thought it was worth drawing attention to Richard’s words.

That idea of “losing the craft” of journalism is just fascinating to me, because it’s something I encounter so often. The root of it is about the complete absence of any detailed feedback on the reaction to a single story published in print. We never truly knew who read what (and believe me, wether they mean to or not, people lie and lie and lie in market research). Thus, we’ve come to rely on our instincts for our sense of news.

The problem with that is journalism is not art for art’s sake – it’s a public service. It exists to inform people about… stuff.

(I wanted to use a more precise word there, but given how BIG journalism is, and how much it covers, “stuff” seems more appropriate.)

We now have a feedback mechanism to explore how our work is being received, thanks to the sort of analytics we can get online. And that means we can improve that work in pretty close to real time so it finds a larger audience. That’s not losing the craft of journalism, that’s improving it.

Why be a crafter when you can be a master crafter?

Journalism requires an audience. If you have a good story, using the sort of techniques Richard Beech talks about help it find an audience. And if your story isn’t worth finding an audience for – why the bloody hell are you writing it?