Traffic Is a Good Thing for Media Companies to Pay Sttention To — Except When It Isn’t

By: Mathew Ingram | GigaOM

One of the biggest differences between online media and traditional media is that the former is so much easier to measure — every eyeball, every pageview and every click can be quantified and tracked and analyzed in real time. But is that a good thing or a bad thing? And should journalists, or writers of any kind, be compensated based on how much traffic or engagement they bring in? Those kinds of questions trigger everything from excitement to horror in media circles.