In the age of AI-driven zero-click searches, success is no longer measured by clicks but by visibility, brand recognition, and the ability to influence without a visit.
Two weeks ago, I was invited to give a keynote at the Sciences Po journalism school in Paris. The topic was “Metrics, Audiences, Engagement: What’s Next for Journalism?” and it's a question that prompted some much-needed soul-searching across our industry.
For the past two decades, many newsrooms have obsessed over the wrong measures of success. We chased clicks, pageviews, and follower counts, even as trust in news eroded. Globally, only around 40% of people say they trust most news. In my talk, I argued that many of our most celebrated vanity metrics don’t equate to real journalistic value or sustainable business outcomes.
Some of the indicators we rely on most are deeply misleading:
“Going viral” ≠ building an audience — A spike in attention doesn’t equal a committed community.
This fixation on scale has led us into what I called “the Scale Trap.” Audiences didn’t lose interest in journalism but they migrated to spaces that felt more relational than transactional. In prioritizing scale over depth, media organizations optimized for algorithms instead of humans, accumulating reach while sacrificing connection.
Meanwhile, people gravitated toward group chats, newsletters, podcasts, and creators where they could feel part of an ongoing relationship, not just a one-way broadcast.
The future of journalism won’t be defined by how many eyeballs we attract, but by how deeply we connect with the audiences who choose to stay. That requires a shift from reach to relationship, and from vanity metrics to measures that reflect real engagement and trust.
To get there, I highlighted four relationship-driven metrics that matter far more than surface-level scale:
Engagement depth: Are people actually reading or watching? Time spent, completion rates, and return visits signal real attention.
Trust signals: Do audiences share your work with context, defend your reporting, or seek it out repeatedly? These are harder to quantify, but essential.
Retention over acquisition: Keeping an audience is more meaningful than constantly chasing new eyeballs. Repeat readership and subscriber renewal matter more than spikes.
Direct relationships: Channels you own, like newsletters, memberships, events, enable two-way interaction and resilience beyond platform algorithms.
When we measure relationships instead of raw reach, success starts to look like a smaller but more devoted audience, rather than a massive but disengaged one. That shift pushes newsrooms to create journalism people genuinely care about and are willing to support.
The Bottom Line
Chasing superficial numbers was a dead end. Journalism’s future depends on cultivating trust, loyalty, and meaningful engagement, not just clicks and views. The real question moving forward is simple: what are we measuring and why?
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Adriana Lacy
Adriana Lacy
Adriana Lacy
