Stories that connect
A former executive in the Hearst Corp.’s newspaper division told me early in what is now my nearly three-year tenure as the editor of this fine publication that it used to be pretty easy to measure the success of a newsroom leader: Take a look at the subscription count and the awards won by the paper, and call it a day. (I’m sure an editor’s grade would be dinged up somewhat by, y’know, getting the company sued for a flagrant violation of journalistic or management norms.)
But these days, he noted, the digital revolution has made it not only possible but necessary to track a dizzying array of metrics: total visits; visits by subscribers vs. visits by “prospect” readers; podcast and video traffic; email newsletter subscribers who click on a story link — all of it broken down by day of the week and the component day parts. You can go blind.
Digital visits matter a great deal, in the sense that the more you visit the sooner you will hit the paywall and be asked to support our journalism by subscribing. (Let me be frank: It’s totally worth it.) But all visits are not created equal: A click on a 100-word story about a rushhour traffic interruption on the Northway has the lifespan of a mayfly, and is probably information you can get from a number of sources; a click on a deep investigation or narrative yarn yields the results of weeks or even months of work by many hands, from reporters and photographers to digital producers. We’re happy to have your support for all of our journalism, large or small, but we recognize
that the latter category is the work you can’t find elsewhere.
For more than a year, the Times Union has utilized a platform known as Metrics for News, which creates customizable reports that measure visits as well as “engagement” — the time a reader spends on a given story — as well as success on social-media platforms (how often it was shared on Twitter or Facebook, to name but two). The list of the Times Union’s top dozen performers of 2022 presents a fascinating report card. Some of the results:
Two of the top eyeball-magnets were “Seen” galleries showing the red carpet arrivals at the Schenectady High School prom (No. 1) and the 29th annual The Shoppes at Newton Plaza Siro’s Cup (No. 6), held in mid-July just before the start of track season in Saratoga Springs. I make no claims that this content is great big-J journalism, but these people — especially the promgoers — have undeniable style.
Melissa Manno scored the second-best-engaged story with her recent article on the discovery of what might be New York’s largest tree in Schaghticoke — a solid piece of science journalism that’s also a fascinating profile of arborist Fred Breglia, the executive director of the Landis Arboretum and a sort of leaf-and-bark Indiana Jones.
Saratoga County reporter Wendy Liberatore scored backto-back with two very different stories about young people in dire straits: No. 3 was her breaking-news account of the controversy over an April incident in which a boy with autism was tackled by a sheriff ’s deputy, while No. 4 was the first installment of her excellent fourpart series “The Lost Boy,” which looked back on the disappearance of Jaliek Rainwalker from the distance of 15 years.
Another mysterious disappearance is at the heart of the No. 5 story: The strange case of Robert Hoagland, who went missing from Connecticut in 2013 and lived the last nine years of his life under an alias in Sullivan County. Phillip Pantuso and Lana Bellamy collaborated with Christine Dempsey of Hearst Connecticut Media, and I don’t think anyone could have told this story with more craft and humanity.
No. 7 on our list is sports editor Bill Douglas’ report on the bruising conclusion to the Troy Turkey Trot 10K, where one of the top finishers ended up disqualified after veering into the path of another runner. A great boon in the digital presentation of the story: video of the collision, and photo editor Will Waldron’s images of its aftermath.
Steve Barnes’ profile of the Scarlet Knife, a Colonie restaurant designed to be big in every sense (including price tag), came in at No. 8, and offers a perfect example of our senior writer’s barbed wit and deep expertise in the regional dining scene.
Chris Bragg ’s heartbreaking narrative on the final months of a young man who disappeared into spirituality and conspiracy theory — and found himself subjected to an exorcism at a monastery in Cobleskill — came in at No. 9, followed by Mike Goodwin and Wendy Liberatore’s breaking-news report on the November shootout in Saratoga Springs that left a Vermont sheriff ’s deputy among the wounded.
The final slots in the engagement top dozen went to great service journalism from our
Capitol Bureau: the 2022 Voter Guide and our live electionnight results coverage — two truly collaborative endeavors.
There is no perfect metric to assess the best journalism, just as there is no contest that infallibly selects it. Some of the Times Union’s 2022 stories that I believe will have the most impact on the world include our deep data-informed investigations “Horse Racing Unbridled” and “When Schools Use Force,” which we know have been studied by lawmakers and other government officials seeking solutions to the problems they examined.
Journalism, after all, isn’t a home run derby, and any reporter or editor who chases clicks but misses impact will reap diminishing returns.
Our resolution for 2023 and beyond is to try to engage eyeballs as well as hearts and minds.