Media companies are all trying to figure out how data can best serve their operations. They know the importance of data and depending on what kind of business they’re running, the data looks a lot different from company to company.

The same is true for the metrics in which those companies are using to evaluate their successes and failures. There is no one answer to the question of which metrics are best. During the recent Newsroom Transformation Master Class, presented by the Newsroom Transformation Initiative, media leaders from Newsweek, Newsday, and NTM shared their company’s strategies for prioritising and engaging journalists with data.

Prioritising the “K” in KPIs at Newsweek

Between different dashboards and notifications, Josh Awtry, senior vice president for audience at Newsweek, recognises there’s a lot of noise when picking what metrics may best represent what a company is doing well and what they need to work on. He wants all data gurus to emphasise the “K” in KPIs.

“Too many organisations say, ‘Here are our KPIs’ and they promptly share like 37 different metrics,” Awtry said.

This is an example of having all PIs, he said. They’re not all important measurables.

“Your goal as the leaders of data in your organisation is to have as few numbers as possible to steer you in the right direction,” Awtry said. “Your goal is to edit mercilessly. The KPIs or metrics in your organisation mirror the cultural control on the org chart.”

A good way to prioritise is to make sure none of the KPIs overlap.

“If you’re tracking page views and uniques, you should be able to defend ‘why,’” Awtry said. “Anything where the charts are going to move in a similar direction, pick one.”

The other metrics could also be valuable, so Awtry doesn’t want companies to get rid of them altogether. He said he likes to see them treated as what he calls “diagnostic measurements.” These metrics are the reasons the KPIs might be what they are.

News companies should keep them under the hood, so to speak, and make them a secondary tab on a spreadsheet or report, Awtry said: “Make sure ultimately data is becoming less of a technological issue to overcome, which is where it was 10 years ago, and more of a cultural issue.”

Focusing on the right data at Newsday

With such a strong audience, Newsday Associate Managing Editor Shawna VanNess said the company “didn’t lack for metrics and data.” But the problem for the newsroom was that the existing data and metrics reports were really complicated. There were lots of jargon-heavy spreadsheets and up to 16 different KPIs, so it was hard for journalists to understand how their work contributed to the data points.

So, in 2022, the newsroom started what VanNess called an “extreme metrics reboot.”

“The light bulb moment was giving ourselves permission to let go of the fly-by Google traffic and really focus on our bread and butter, which is understanding what our audience is looking for,” VanNess said. “What coverage can we convert new subscribers on? What are we doing that people are willing to pay for? What kinds of coverage are attracting new business? What is helping people stick around?”

The company went from 16 KPIs to two key metrics: paths to conversion and an overall index score. The latter is a blended metric that includes things like how content did in terms of getting people to subscribe, how existing readers interacted with it, how much time people spent with it, and how it did with bringing in new readers.

Everyone in the newsroom got training about the new metrics; the dashboards are open to everyone and very user-friendly.

“The goal was simplifying the conversation,” VanNess said. “You can easily see the score on the two KPIs, and there are other metrics available for people who want or need to dig into the data more.”

Going beyond data democratisation at NTM

NTM in Sweden makes data analysis available throughout the newsroom with the implementation of an INMA award-winning data dashboard that’s built right into the CMS.

Jens Pettersson, head of editorial development, said that by making it fully integrated in the CMS, reporters can access data with a single click while they’re writing or adding photographs or video to a story.

This democratisation of the data was an important step, Pettersson said, but “fancy dashboards alone aren’t enough.” They also had to make sure they were educating the newsrooms about the importance of KPIs and the significance of things like page views or read-through rates, bringing everyone along on the journey as partners who are equally as invested in the goals.

“It’s all connected to engagement,” he said. “If you keep the audience engaged, they’re going to stick around, they’re going to keep paying for subscriptions, and you’re going to grow your digital subscribers.”

Though everyone has access to the data at any time, Pettersson said it’s very helpful for editors to talk to each reporter on a regular basis.

They can review a month’s worth of stories, see what’s working and what’s not working. With any new strategy, “you need to involve them, have discussions and explain the reasoning behind the decisions,” to make sure they know the changes are meant to help them do better journalism—while also ensuring enough revenue to continue producing news and employing journalists for decades to come.

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