Is Forbes.com losing staffers due to page view pressure?

Michael Calderone of the New York Observer writes Wednesday that nine staff writers from Forbes.com have recently left, and as many as 50 in the last two years have left, due to what some former staff members call an increasing pressure on increasing page views.

Forbes.com Jim Spanfeller said that he wasn’t happy about the turnover, but some of it was coming due to increased competition and rivals stealing employees.

Calderone wrote, “In interviews with more than a half-dozen former staffers, several issues arose—and aren’t ex-employees just ripe for griping?—but there was one persistent criticism of management: an increasing pressure about page views.

“In an e-mail to The Observer, one former staffer called Forbes.com ‘a page-view sweatshop.’

“When questioned about such criticism, Mr. Spanfeller said that’s a ‘fair thought.’

“‘One of the fundamental differences of online versus offline [is that] online is completely trackable,’ he said. ‘You have 60, 70, 80 stories [in print], and you don’t know how well consumed each one is.’

“Therefore, Mr. Spanfeller said, ‘not looking at the data would be foolish,’ and ‘tracking page views is something that is very important.'”

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