World News Day: Why Stuff measures success by trust not clicks

Wednesday, 23 September 2020

It is World News Day, and we want you to know that Stuff is making adjustments to the way we approach our journalism.

OPINION: There is no more valuable currency for journalism than public trust.

And yet, trust in the media has never before been under such direct, targeted and sustained attack.

Today, as we here at Stuff celebrate World News Day, our attention is directed at building public trust and recognition of the important role journalism plays in a democratic society.

Journalists have always held the powerful to account. Today, though, the powerful’s playbook is slick. They are lightning-quick to toss the ‘fake news’ accusation at anything that counters their narrative. The spread of misinformation is so pervasive, amplified by global platforms and algorithms where moral compasses go unchecked.

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Mark Stevens is Stuff’s editorial director.

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Not that long ago, a measurement of success for a Stuff journalist was page impressions, or what’s more commonly called ‘clicks’. A good story got a lot, a poor performing story got fewer. Stuff has moved on from this as our guiding metric; we no longer subscribe to the antiquated global measurement which pitches us against other New Zealand sites.

Instead, we look to public trust as our north star. Such a change brings its own challenges, not least how to actually measure it.

Challenges aside, the change has been liberating. It has come at a similar time to our pivot away from Facebook as a tool for extending the reach of our journalism. That trial - for which we have paused our Facebook and Instagram accounts - was prompted by an increasing gulf between how we viewed their purpose, and how we viewed our own.

Inside our newsrooms, trust has always been vital and important. Now, it has to become the paramount lens through which we consider the commissioning and creation of our content. If we don’t have public trust in what we produce, we have nothing.

We’re making deliberate efforts to ensure the voices in our products and stories better reflect a diverse audience; a multicultural New Zealand. We’re building signposts to introduce the reader to who’s writing what, and why. Today, we’re publishing our own editorial code of practice and ethics. It’s a crucial guardrail document we adhere to, alongside the principles of our regulator, the Media Council. When we stray from those principles, we’ll put our hand up; if we get things wrong, we’ll correct them quickly.

Diversity, transparency, clear labelling, corrections - all are accepted drivers of public trust. Hopefully, these subtle adjustments to the way we’re approaching our journalism are reflected in what you’re now seeing in our newspapers and websites.

Public trust is not something to set and forget; it is something we will build, nurture and sustain.

World News Day has two aims: To highlight the critical importance of reliable, fact-based journalism in a healthy democracy and to raise public awareness of the vital role that newsrooms and journalists play in helping people make sense of – and improve – the rapidly changing world around them.

Stuff’s newsroom shares these lofty goals, and accepts the challenge. We once had a reputation for clickbait - perception rather than reality, perhaps - but the ongoing attention to unique trusted journalism, diversity and transparency is being recognised and valued.

Colin Peacock’s opening question in a recent RNZ Mediawatch interview gives cause for optimism: “Stuff, where has all the clickbait gone?”

Mark Stevens has been a journalist for 26 years and is Stuff’s editorial director. He is a former member of the industry regulatory body, the New Zealand Media Council, and is chairman of the New Zealand Media Association.