Journalists at the Mirror in the United Kingdom have been given individual targets for online page views, raising concerns about content quality and job security.
Page views typically a metric that encourages journalists to produce quickly-written stories with sensational headlines in order to draw in more visits to the page, helping to sell advertising blocks on the page and deliver revenue.
Monthly targets for Mirror reporters start at around 250,000 page views per month and some are as high as one million page views per month.
The figure varies across journalists depending on previous performance and the subjects they cover, with three long-time reporters for the Mirror let go at the end of last year, partly it was believed for not driving sufficient online traffic.
However, speaking to Press Gazette, the Mirror editor-in-chief Caroline Waterson said her journalists have nothing to fear from these page-view targets.
“The Mirror is a proud tabloid brand, and it will always be in its ethos to reach lots of people. With that in mind, why shouldn’t we be ambitious for every single story we produce?" she said.
“We should want people returning for more of those stories time and time again and we should want them to be staying with us longer.”
At the time of writing, the stock price for Trinity Mirror plc (LON: TNI), which publishes The Mirror, is currently £0.88 per share. The market cap is approximately £236 million (A$465.7 million).