PerfectMarket

Forbes Throws Down the Gawker Gauntlet to Its Bloggers

Performance-based journalism is increasingly coming into focus.

Gawker Media is well known for compensating its bloggers based on pageviews. Bloomberg News employs a similar yardstick for their editorial pay scale.

Since its purchase and shuttering of the new media site True/Slant, Forbes Magazine has not only integrated former True/Slant writers into their staff, but also announced a new performance-based editorial model, helmed by a new chief product officer, Lewis D’Vorkin.

D’Vorkin is utilizing a phrase close to Perfect Market’s heart: “entrepreneurial journalism.”

What does this mean for Forbes?

Business Insider reports that Forbes has not only begun to require every editorial staffer to maintain and publish a blog, but it has also come to light that it will pay “based on...web traffic and online user engagement stats.”

It will be interesting to see how effectively Forbes integrates these decidedly “new media” measures into both their editorial and business model. I’ve advocated in the past, as have others, that traditional publishers would do well to follow Huffington Post’s lead, in terms of SEO and performance-based content creation. Is it surprising that Forbes has chosen to employ “hundreds and hundreds” of unpaid contributors “a la the Huffington Post?”

In discussing his push for “entrepreneurial journalism” at Forbes, D’Vorkin told Business Insider’s Jeff Bercovici, “what you need is high quality, efficient. You need to be a scalable content-creation force.”

Like so many others, D’Vorkin is focused on the front end of “scalable content creation.” What he seems to be overlooking is the fact that publishers are already sitting on a mountain of content that is scalable, if only it is analyzed and filtered for its traffic, advertising and revenue potential.

In moving Forbes forward, D’Vorkin would do well to consider the value of the quality work the magazine has already created. It’s one of the most efficient ways to scale high quality content because it capitalizes on preexisting work. The Vault might come in very handy.

— Lee Glandorf

Follow Lee on Twitter: @LeeGlandorf

Tags: gawker, forbes, trueslant, lee glandorf, lewis d'vorkin,