Short post, but this is an article worth reading if you are interested in how a legacy print magazine is trying to fit into Bloomberg, a real time data organization.

Bloomberg is in the business of selling data terminals and everything else supports that cause. They are damn successful doing this and pride themselves on being the most influential news organization in the world. True or not is up to you, but they do produce news that moves markets.

I have picked out some points from the article and will share my brief thoughts on them, as they capture some broader themes we are seeing emerge across the online publishing world namely:

Profit - News needs to have a profit motive

AND

Measurement - Everything can be measured in the news creation process

Some other points from the article:

1. News should help people make money. Whether the creator of the news or the consumer of the news, there is a profit motive. If news makes money, then everyone is happy.

This flies right in the face of everything taught in Journalism school and the Businessweek staff that did not buy into this philosophy were shown the door or remain at Bloomberg and are adapting.

2. Bloomberg operates a “speed desk”, with the sole purpose of quantifying how much news they get out first and if that news makes people money.

I think this philosophy can be taken all the way down the chain from global news providers like Bloomberg to hyperlocal news providers. If you get more content out before your competitors (speed), you will build a loyal audience for that.

3. Every Bloomberg writer has a “dashboard” where the metrics determining his compensation — any scoops, hits an article attracts — are tracked.

This is precisely the type of feedback and support that content creators need and can use to their advantage. There is a real resistance to measurement in the newsroom, but it is going mainstream and it should be embraced as a positive not a negative. Staying employed, building an audience and improving the success of your content choices seems to be a reasonable plan, real time metrics can help you do this.

4. This is an angle I had not considered… the psychological impact over time on individuals of creating content that does not make money. As put by a former Businessweek employee about his colleagues… “They really feel like writing for Businessweek is a waste of time — it’s not making money, they get nothing out it,”

People are generally happier when they are making money and if metrics and data can help you to make your content more profitable then you should embrace it.

Slowly, the winds of change are blowing into newsrooms around the globe.

20minutos.es, a popular Spanish language news website has just hired a full time home page editor “Portadista” that is responsible for the performance of the home page and tracking the most popular stories in each column, using their own software to show real time performance stats.

It may seem like a mundane role, but one that will become the most coveted job in newsrooms around the world in the next few years. The one person that is making decisions in real time about which content gets high visibility and using click data to verify those decisions.

In our discussions with newsrooms of all sizes over the past 12 months, it is clear there is a large market demand for real time data that can direct editorial choices, optimal link placement and measure real time story performance metrics.

The only thing that has been slowing adoption down is the lack of software to do this at scale (this is where our real time web analytics service buzzflow™ comes in) and hiring the proper staff to manage real time editorial management on websites. Both of these things are changing quickly.

I managed to find a fuzzy screen cap of what seems to be a one hour view of link performance on the home page of 20minutos.es. You can see the head and long tail of links and images that were clicked on and in what amount over the course of 60 minutes.

Real time data driven newsrooms are here to stay and this is going to be a very exciting space to play in for content and analytics freaks such as ourselves. Plus, who wouldn’t want the job title of “Portadista” on their business card, way cooler than mine.