Conclusion: the opportunity

There is an opportunity for Columbia’s Tow Center to lead by, first, asking challenging and relevant questions; second, initiating and participating in collaborative, multi‐method studies that respond to those questions; and third, disseminating this knowledge within the community. Yochai Benkler emphasizes the importance of applying multiple research methods, in combinations appropriate for particular questions, and in dialogue with similar research organizations and efforts around the world. The possibility of collecting rich datasets from publishers and other industry sources should be considered in the context of building this research capability. A danger is that sitting on a stockpile of data would, over time, bias the questions asked to fit the data available. But there is an enormous opportunity to use a high value archive of otherwise unavailable data as the centerpiece of a strategy to attract collaborators and research funding. Early work that successfully mines insights from novel data would attract follow‐on work and spark new research ideas in the broader academic and commercial communities. The Center could thus participate in studies conceived externally as well as internally. Additionally, rich data could be a useful resource for the joint journalism/computer science degree program. Computer science students could contribute a lot to the mining of Internet data, as well as provide a good deal of the expertise that would be required to store, access and analyze it. It is feasible to build a strong research component into the Tow Center’s activities, and empirical work on Internet data can certainly build knowledge that will help journalists understand how their work finds traction in the networked public sphere. Rosen suggests that the culture of journalism suffers from an anti‐technology, anti‐data, anti‐business bias that has “infantilized” the profession in face of the Internet’s challenge. A valuable mission for the Tow Center is to overcome this bias with empirical research which arms journalists and editors with the knowledge to do their own jobs better, letting them take responsibility for using new media tools and Internet data to further the profession’s objectives. This review of the chaotic landscape of online measurement suggests one good, informal mission statement: To ensure that the responsibility for understanding and using Internet metrics in journalism does not rest solely with people selling ads.

Funding for this research was provided by Mary Graham, a member of the Board of Visitors of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.