Views

How should a writer think about view counts?

My daughter is studying journalism in college. Not long ago, she posted the week’s highest-viewed story to the school’s news site. But keep reading; this is not a brag on my daughter.

She called to express her sadness over something she realized. Namely, views do not measure something meaningful about a piece of writing.

That is: A writer can write the story richly and well. She can interview and quote the right sources. She can address the matter thoroughly and accurately, concisely explaining the complex points that are key, conveying the sources’ perspectives and voices, subtracting unneeded excess while preserving an engaging style. But none of this value is considered within the principal measure of popularity used to score atomized digital content.

Because it is the title alone, or perhaps the title plus a thumbnail image, that determines the number of views.

This is obvious, and at the same time it is easy to forget when considering tallies of views. The reader can’t read until visiting the piece. Therefore, the reader is in no position to determine the worth of the piece until after the click, until after the view has already been scored. The choice to click is made entirely or almost entirely on the promise of the title. Indeed, since search returns and aggregation pages present the title as a link, the view was likely registered by the reader clicking on the title directly.

Clicks connote something, but they cannot connote quality.

What are writers to make of this?

The Content Score

To begin, I could tell my daughter this much: You have figured out something many people who lead content creation teams lose sight of routinely. View counts are headline contests, and not anything like the measures of worth by which we regard good writing.

Some might say: The piece could get views because it is good—so good that people pass it along and recommend it.

Fair. This is to be hoped for. But a high view count does not indicate this is what happened, and a low view count does not indicate the piece lacks the worth for this kind of sharing.

Alternately, some might point to different metrics than views that do evaluate quality. Time on page, for example—if the reader spent a longer time on the page, says the argument, then he must have valued the piece.

But even this measure is an inference rather than a determinant. Other factors could keep a page open. The point I am offering here extends more broadly than view counts: There is no digital, numerical score that can give us anything like a sense of the extent to which real human beings are really affected by another human’s real work of writing.

My theory is the day we started calling it “content” is the day we began trying to commoditize the work of writers into something other than writing.

Yet the trouble with that theory is the implication of a better time, the implication that writing had greater respect in the past. Did it? Back when print publications were thick, they found the most economical ways they could to fill the pages they needed to fill. This was commoditization of “content” in the pre-Internet time. There were writers then who developed their voice and craft filling these pages, doing the hard work of being honest and being a writer even as they also did the work of providing the commodity.

The sense of sadness over the paltry meaning of view counts is unique to the writer of the digital age. And at the same time, it is also just a new version of something inherent to the weight of being a writer.

Write the Headline

So I told my journalist daughter something like this: You can move people, and you should exercise this power even as you also use it with restraint and care. You can inform people, and you should aim to do this, aim to be of service and value in this way. You can get it right, which is more difficult than anyone unconcerned about writing understands.

You can persuade people and get them to understand or just get them to pause and see. Therefore, write the article.

Write it like it’s important, because it is important. Write it with a respect for accuracy that cares about untidy facts, and with a respect for dignity that cares about even the timid voices.

Write it and write it that way.

And then, because this is the twenty-first century, write the clicky headline.

That is, make the title a subject-verb statement that summarizes the story in a brash way, with an edgy or clever element if you can find it, to a limit of about 60 characters including spaces.

Do this because there is no successful writer ever who was not a person of her time, going where the eyes of the readers are looking.

There is nothing wrong with views. We need views. The piece will not be read unless it is viewed. While viewership does not measure something meaningful about the piece, viewership itself is a meaningful prerequisite to the piece conveying its meaning.

So, aim for views. Hope for views. And at the same time, do not make the view count itself the goal, because the work that aims for this goal is not the craft at its best.

Be a writer and carry this tension, this weight. Write something worth reading to every eye that views it.

Photo: “The Reading Room” by Susan Jane Golding

That this post does not have a clicky headline is a fact not lost on me. Here are other posts with one-word titles.