Metrics at Work: a case study about the tensions in the journalistic industry

Abstract

This article aims to present a debate over the increasingly complex and widespread use of measurement indicators and performance of digital content in the journalistic industry, considering the case study of La Nación, one of the leading news institutions in Argentina. The paper reconstructs the introduction and architecture of metrics measurement in the newsroom of La Nación, and the journalists’ perceptions and experiences regarding these organizational changes. The focus will be on the adoption of the Score, an algorithmic metric developed in-house at La Nación, designed with journalistic input and eventually modified to include economic factors.

The findings confirming the tensions between professional and commercial logics produced by adopting digital metrics in the newsroom; and suggesting that journalists experiences metrics as strong disciplining influence. All this is involved in an uncertain context implicating the financing of Argentinean digital media along with the decline in the traditional journalistic business model.