Dear Editors,

As a business guy, I have a great deal of respect for the work you do. The idea of pulling together--on a daily, weekly or monthly basis--the array of sophisticated must-have and nice-to-have content that we need for our newspapers, magazines and newsletters is daunting to one who has never had to do it. To be the keeper of our most valuable brands--whether 100+ year old newspapers or 30 year old magazines--is an awesome responsiblity. And as we move rapidly into the age of the web, when websites need to be updated hourly (if not more often) and where you are also asked to create email alerts, blog, twitter, host webinars and moderate live events, the volume of work that needs to be done seems staggering.

Let me make a suggestion. You need to have firmly planted in your mind what the objective is for doing all this work. How will you know if you have succeeded and, in fact, what is the measure of success for an editor in the new media world we find ourselves in? I know that there are lots of qualitative measures of success--the awards you and your editorial team win, the respect and congratulations you get from your readers and peers, the knowledge that you were first or best with a story and made a difference in someone's life. All very important and not to be ignored.

But what about quantitative measures of success? In the print world, that was also pretty easy. We looked at circulation figures and, particularly, renewal rates. If circulation was going up and renewal rates were strong, we could infer that readers liked what our editorial team was delivering to them and felt good about the value received for time and money spent on the publication. New sales might be a function of a great marketing department--but renewals are all about the value readers find in the publication itself. So strong renewal rates were a good quantitative way to judge an editor. Not surprisingly, the renewal rates for our publications have generally been very high--a sign that our editors have done a good job meeting the needs of their audiences.

In the web world, we're looking now at three other measures. Yes, for those sites where we charge a subscription fee, renewal rates still matter. But here are three other measures that also speak to editorial quality:

1. Visits per Unique Visitor. It's not enough to create content which draws in readers...we need those readers to come back to our sites again and again. Advertisers want to know not just the size of our audience but also its loyalty and the depth of our relationship with them. People who come back multiple times to visit a site are demonstrating that they like what they find, and are looking for more.

2. Pages Viewed per Visit. We're also looking for reader engagement. We want readers to come to our sites and read multiple pages. Hit-and-run readers are of less value to us than those who click on the links we provide, traveling throughout the site to see more of what we have to offer. We count on editors to provide those links, delivering to readers increased value for time spent with us.

3. Time on Site. A reader who spends 10 minutes on our site has more value to us than a reader who spends one minute. That reader is more attractive to advertisers, and more likely to be looking at other news content we're providing within our network.

Jill Windwer and Grace Yanez, our metrics guru, are putting together a webinar to help editors better understand those measures and, more importantly, know how their actions can influence them. Which gets me to all that other activity that editors are now engaged in--blogging, twittering, hosting and the like. Those activities serve many purposes, but one of them is to draw people into our websites and give them reasons to keep coming back for more. It's about brand-building--for you personally, but also for us. And keeping track of how we're doing is very important.

I'm happy to discuss with you how your efforts as editors can be enhanced through new tools that go beyond the traditional print role. I think we can turn what may seem like additional chores into both fun and productive work.

Bill