Revolt of the Page-Slaves

The New York Observer has an interesting article about the high staff turnover at Forbes.com. The article says the site is now onto hiring young, straight-out-of school staff and pressuring them to produce stories that drive page views.

A number of senior reporters have left the publication recently. "Two sources estimated at least 50 previous editorial departures since early 2005," says the article.

I am surprised it took so long for this to be out in the open. I pretty much heard the same things, as this article says, from a Forbes.com reporter last year.

Forbes.com's chief executive blames the competition saying his employees are being poached away by rivals and, the site, as any online media should, is doing the right thing by keeping any an eye on its page views.

I always find it interesting that media organizations, who spend so much of their time, analyzing what businesses do wrong are quick to commit the very mistakes they would crucify their subjects for.

I think every manager will agree that you can't run a good business when your employees aren't happy. The goals of the organization need to be balanced with that of the employees. And in this case, if most reporters are complaining about the processes there and are leaving, the quality of site will at some point be affected.

The emphasis of page views to the exclusion of everything else is bound to backfire.

Sure, the online media has an easy way to track what its audience is reading compared to their print counterparts.

But does it make sense to run after eyeballs so hard that you have forgotten why you are running at all? If there's no quality content, no quality reporters what is the journalistic goal that the organization is serving?