Count On It: Quality Makes Money For Newspapers

By: Mark Fitzgerald When Esther Thorson finished up a presentation at last fall's Inter American Press Association (IAPA) General Assembly arguing that newspaper quality can be measured objectively, she was followed on the panel discussion by a Spanish editor who heaped scorn and sarcasm on her.

Miguel ?ngel Bastenier, international editor of El Pais in Madrid, began by comparing the idea of measuring quality to body counts reported by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. "There's one thing that takes us to results that are contrary to our business, and that is that word 'measurement,'" he said in Spanish. "Quality is an X-factor. Nobody can say, '77.3%' -- there, that's quality."

Recalling the moment weeks later, Thorson said that most newspaper people are not that hostile to the idea of measuring news quality. But there's "always a strain of negativity" when she presents her research to journalists, said the associate dean of graduate studies/research at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

She thinks she knows the reason for such negative reactions: "If you can measure quality -- which I absolutely think you can -- they are afraid that they may get a bad score."

But editors should embrace the idea that their newspaper's quality can be quantified, especially in these days of shrinking budgets and staffs. "Given the financial exigencies of the current environment, if you're going to say, 'Stop taking money out of my newsroom,' and you don't measure quality, then you don't have a leg to stand on," she says.

There's another reason executives in every department of a newspaper should measure quality, Thorson told the IAPA publishers. "One of the biggest predictors of financial performance is quality, and so we must measure it," she said. "There's a direct causal link between news quality and financial success."

Because the only widely used measurement at newspapers today is financial, Thorson told the mostly Latin American publishers, "What U.S. newspapers are doing is robbing the newsroom."

Newspaper quality is measured looking at three factors, Thorson says. First, researchers look the resources available to the newsroom, including the size of the staff, newshole, and reporting budget. Then they consider content, measuring its accuracy, the amount of local news and depth of coverage. Finally, the perception of readers and editors is considered: Is the newspaper reader-friendly, easily navigable, and diverse in its sources and topics?

There is growing international acceptance that newspapers can be managed according to objective standards, argues Alain Modoux of the Geneva, Switzerland-based Media and Society Foundation. The foundation has created ISASP 9001, an international standard for quality newspaper management based on the ISO 9001 quality standard.

To be certified in this voluntary standard, newspapers adopt written goals, policies, and procedures. Among the factors measured, Modoux told IAPA delegates, are the accuracy of reporting; mechanisms for catching and correcting errors; ethical guidelines; distinctions between fact and opinion; and a clear mission and editorial viewpoint.

Some South American newspapers are now measuring their quality according to a tool known as "VAP-UC," its initials in Spanish for Value-Added Journalism-Catholic University of Chile, university researcher Silvia Pellegrini said at IAPA.

VAP-UC measures content by examining the importance of the news event by itself and as it's perceived by the public; the impact of the news; and the "weight" of the news. "VAP is not biased towards elite culture," Pellegrini said. "It doesn't resist entertaining or 'alternative' news. It's a description, a measure of perception."

Though El Pais' Bastenier spent most of his remarks mocking the idea that newspaper quality leads to financial success, he also inadvertently offered his paper as proof. "El Pais is the European paper that makes the most money, and nobody knows why," he said. "Of course, it's a good paper -- for all the money we're spending on it, it had better be good."