Print or Web, this has always been the case, with ad rates set by circulation, the publication's ability to prove reader engagement, and its ability to demonstrate buying power on the part of its readers.
Prior to the Web, however, these metrics were derived from quasi-scientific readership surveys, seat-of-the-pants intuition, and in part, the ability of the "space" salesperson to convince the potential advertiser that his or her medium sells widgets better than competing pubs do.
This is rapidly changing. Thanks to the Web, the potential advertiser is demanding -- in full knowledge that the publication has the technology to deliver -- pure inescapable statistics and analysis of readership stats.
How soon can you get here?
What I am concerned about is how publications are responding to this turn of events. It is no secret that all online publications are already, some to lesser and greater degrees, tailoring the information it serves up to gain a wider audience, to get better stats, to capture more advertising dollars.
So in the future while I can still criticize Apple or IBM from a "separation of church and state" point of view, if my criticisms fall on deaf ears -- that is, if few people care to read it -- I may not be asked to cover those topics.
I fear that in pursuit of better stats a publication will surrender its editorial judgment -- its expertise in relating to readers what in its estimation is worthwhile for them to read about.
I fear tech pubs will devote less coverage to areas that matter simply because fewer readers are committed to reading a particular story.
And of course, this is not just true of trade publications. Here's the lead paragraph from an article in The New York Times last week reporting on the fact that Lara Logan, CBS's chief foreign correspondent, was being reassigned:
"Lara Logan, the CBS News chief foreign correspondent who deplored the lack of media coverage of Iraq and Afghanistan last week, will no longer be based overseas, the network said on Wednesday."
"Lack of media coverage" of a war no less. Why do you think that is?
Readers lose not just because they may not get all of the news that will affect them, but also because it changes how journalists will think about coverage in the future.
My hope is that this cynical trend, like so many others, will prove cyclical and that, over time, journalism will circle back to more even-handed coverage.
