How Insider measures the performance of its reporters

Kayleigh Barber of Digiday looks at how Insider is using metrics to measure the performance of its reporters.

Barber reports, “At Insider, where each reporter must earn a specific amount of page views, unique visitors or subscriptions every month, that responsibility — and the system that enforces it — has gone from draining to confusing as the Axel Springer-owned publisher has shifted more of its focus to subscriptions.

“Now, in the wake of Insider staffers’ decision to form a union, changes are likely coming for a system that some writers found so stressful it prompted them to quit.

“‘As we’ve grown as a newsroom and the breadth and depth of our reporting, sometimes that clashes with a rigid metric system,’ said Rebecca Ungarino, a senior finance reporter and an organizing committee member of the Insider Union.

“While opinions vary on whether this measurement system is necessary, or healthy for an editorial operation, at least having a better understanding of it (as well as negotiating how it works) was a key part of the Insider Union’s platform when it was announced earlier this week. The union was organized by a group of U.S.-based journalists in the Insider newsroom.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.