And if a Web site can calculate its most-recommended articles on the basis of a fairly crude reader poll, it could someday post a more sophisticated rating based on, say, the number of unique hits multiplied by minutes spent per page. Or a list of "Quick Reads!" for the wired lip-mover, by dividing reader-minutes-per-page by word count. ("James, can we lose the 'neo-Miltonic presumptuousness' in the second graf? Your MPP/WC's been off the charts lately.")

So what does the universal mind reward? On MSNBC's list, opinion does well; Barnicle's musings immediately after the Littleton school massacre enjoyed a several-days reign at the top of the charts. Passionate subjects invite passionate response. Hot-button political issues score big; most non-war foreign news doesn't (though a story on an Israeli-Russian weapons deal scored an impressive 6.26 this week). None of this confirms anything we don't already know. But it makes it harder than it already is to ignore that knowledge and run a piece simply because we think it's worthwhile -- and just wait until this sort of metrics comes to television, improving its already obsessive viewer research.

Of course, my objection is selfish and self-serving: Features like MSNBC's top 10 basically contract out my job, turning the readership into a massive communal media critic. So let me offer another reason, even more selfish and self-serving. Despite journalism's propensity to wring its hands over studies and polls, one of the most solemn duties of writers and editors is to disregard your opinion. Publications need to be aware of their readers, but good writing is at heart antidemocratic. A camel, they say, is an animal designed by committee -- but at least a camel's an interesting-looking creature. An Earth populated by democratic ballot would be full of golden retrievers.

In print publications, certain departments depend on an at best fragile feeling of editorial obligation to keep them running; rare is the magazine that can justify a book review section -- not to mention, say, dance or visual arts coverage -- on readership alone. Glamour magazine couldn't even justify continuing the only women-in-politics column in a major women's mag, killing it last fall. Improved metrics could only worsen this tendency. The online-media business is already founded on mealy-mouthed rationalizations about how editorial/business compromises -- commerce links next to articles, selling placements within search-engine results -- are really just foresighted, win-win strategies to empower users and give them what they want. As we get better and better at giving readers exactly what they want, what will be the percentage in trying to give readers what we think they need?

In the future, the mark of a quality publication will be not how well it knows its readers but how it resists knowing its readers too well. As theologian Mike Barnicle could verify, the fruit of the tree of knowledge is original sin. And this knowledge, applied in the profit-challenged online publishing biz, could provide us yet further means to "know" our journalistic principles, in the Biblical sense. Giving props to Yahweh, The Prime Mover, The Man Upstairs, I Am Who Am, etc., Barnicle reminds us, "God doesn't rely on polls or focus groups." The rest of us, though, will take all the help we can get.
salon.com | May 6, 1999

Because James Poniewozik's hits have dropped in the last fiscal quarter, he will no longer be writing about obscure and esoteric subjects. Watch this space for his XXX-citing salute to "Babes of the Internet," coming soon! -- The editors

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