Agile journalism and Web analytics are friends

I had been thinking about different ways to approach web analytics for news publishers, and specifically journalists, for a while when I came over Eric T. Petersons white paper "The Coming Revolution in Web Analytics" where he discusses what the future holds for web analytics, and what third-generation tools need to do to make it happen.

Peterson's emphasis on making decisions in real time is one that resonates highly with the agile software development methodology. Iterative processes, high information saturation and high degree of freedom have proven successful catalysts of creativity in this domain.

I wanted to check if anyone had written about the parallels of agile methods in software development with the new working environment of journalists. Google is my friend, so I entered 'agile journalism' and got about a thousand hits. So, it's not an entirely new idea.

Actually, the first use of the term 'agile journalism' that I can find (on Google) is in Arthur Symons "Studies on modern painters" where he describes the style of Helleu as "superficial draughtmanship", but at least "far more alive", "chic in all its hasty expressiveness a wholly Parisian art, hardly more serious than agile journalism, but how clever of its kind!" Symons recognizes, perhaps somewhat prematurely, the value of agility in reporting from a scene.

Several bloggers have also commented on the similarities of the shift towards agile methods in software development with media's "shift" from print to online publishing. Newspapers have "a gigantic machine with many small cogs, devoted to producing something that is frozen in time"  but enter the web and journalists must "change their way of thinking" .

Florin Duroiu recently even pointed out his epiphany that "process journalism really is agile journalism".

Others feel, more bluntly, that "the future of journalism is agile", but is anyone linking 'agile journalism' to web analytics? Googling 'agile journalism + 'web analytics' gave me no hits, and a quick scan of the initial search result didn't seem to include any discussions about how web analytics can help journalists be agile.

I have come to appreciate that journalists and front page editors really can benefit from having access to certain metrics if it enables them to react fast and see the response. The focus is not on the tool, but on the questions that arise instantly from looking at data that, for instance, don't make sense compared to the past. Can I change the picture, or the headline to drive more traffic? Are there any related articles I can link to in my text to drive down the bounce rate?

Of course, web analytics can't tell you about people's emotional response. But it can tell you that you're doing something wrong, and enable you to make up for it fast. I think the revolution in web analytics will come, at least for journalists and editors, when they get easy access to reports that are tailored for them and an assurance that anyone can be an analytics expert.

Agility comes with the willingness to experiment, and web analytics may just be the safeguard to allow that to happen.


Image: Wikimedia Commons - Paul Helleu "Madame Helleu Sur Son Yacht Letoile" 1898-1900

Chief editors: Content producers should have access to performance data

I've spoken to a handful of people lately who seem to be skeptical about letting content producers have access to data about their stories and front pages. Some chief editors may fear that their reporters will spend too much time looking at numbers while they should be out there catching the good stories. Some web analytics experts may be afraid of their jobs.

Web analytics departments in news corporations focus on ad optimizing and long-term conversion analysis. In many cases, that's money well spent too (if they can convince advertisers that they are measuring useful stuff).

And of course, news media executives love to use metrics to brag about traffic increase, while still lacking a way to monetize it.

Not even journalists themselves seem to care about using web analytics to perform better. For example, in this article at journalism.co.uk about using web analytics to improve the web, there's no mention of anything remotely relevant for a journalist.

Bloggers have long realized they can use web analytics to improve their blog. The news media should follow up. It's well-know that web users scan instead of read, which is the first reason you should not just go ahead and publish online at midnight whatever you have in print the next day. Since online readers are impatient, they scan for important keywords, links and actionable items such as videos, that make their reading easier.

If they don't find what they're looking for, they will search elsewhere -- oh no -- at a competing site.

Of course, online you have an advantage over print; you can change stuff -- at no cost! As often as you want! And you should - right now!

Because if you do, your next reader will stay instead of going to your competitor's site.

For frontpage editors, this may involve changing the headline, or picture, to see abrupt increases in popularity of a particular story. For reporters, it might involve adding linked related content or multimedia

Fortunately, everyone can be a web analytics expert.

And while you're at it. Don't just send the reporters an email with the performance data. Let them look it up in the analytics tool themselves. And don't forget to display all the snacksy key data on a big screen in the desk room!

So this is a pledge to all chief editors: make performance data available to content producers, and your front-page editors and journalists will soar by actually knowing how the users respond. Depending on what tool you have, they may even get the relevant data in time to make cool changes, and make your users happy enough to stay and read on.


Image: Creative Commons