Confronting Measurable Journalism

Abstract

This introductory essay introduces “measureable journalism” as a term that encapsulates the cultural and material shift to digital platforms capable of providing real-time, individualizable, quantitative data about audience consumption practices. Measurable journalism is not a break from the past as much as it is an enactment of industrialized journalism’s desire to monitor its audience. As a conceptual framework, measurable journalism adopts a broad, anti-reductionist perspective to avoid privileging technology, economics, or professionalism as having ultimate explanatory or agentic dominion over the other facets. What is proposed is a mutually constitutive approach that considers how elements of materiality, practice, culture, and economics converge and diverge under the banner of measurable journalism. This approach both informs future research and helps identify the social implications of measurable journalism.