The largest Swiss media
Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2025 8:14 am
The more clicks a journalist generates with his articles, the more money he will have in his account at the end of the month. Tamedia is testing a bonus system at Newsexpress, the company's own news agency. company wants to use it to motivate its employees to produce snappier titles - or to improve the "refinement process," as Peter Wälty, responsible for the project at Tamedia, put it in an interview. The outrage among communication scientists and media professionals was great and predictable. Media professor Mark Eisenegger said that such incentive systems could encourage tendencies toward exaggeration and sensationalism (persoenlich.com reported).
While the idea is a novelty in Switzerland, the europe rcs data industry in the USA has been conducting the pay-per-visit debate for years. The topic gained momentum when the media company Gawker, which had to close down the portal Gawker.com last August, introduced the "Recruits" program in February 2014. Participants received 5 US dollars per 1000 monthly unique visitors. The maximum amount to be earned was 6000 US dollars per month.
Gawker was particularly proud of the so-called "Big Board", on which the number of clicks achieved was listed next to each editor. The business portal "Forbes", the platform for young people "Complex" and the online newspaper "The Daily Caller" also pay their journalists at least partly according to performance and have thus been a frequent topic in newspapers, blogs and columns. The now deceased "New York Times" journalist David Carr devoted an article to the discussion about performance relevant to wages in his column "The Media Equation". In it he gives an example and shows how he would have formulated his text introduction if he were paid per click.
While the idea is a novelty in Switzerland, the europe rcs data industry in the USA has been conducting the pay-per-visit debate for years. The topic gained momentum when the media company Gawker, which had to close down the portal Gawker.com last August, introduced the "Recruits" program in February 2014. Participants received 5 US dollars per 1000 monthly unique visitors. The maximum amount to be earned was 6000 US dollars per month.
Gawker was particularly proud of the so-called "Big Board", on which the number of clicks achieved was listed next to each editor. The business portal "Forbes", the platform for young people "Complex" and the online newspaper "The Daily Caller" also pay their journalists at least partly according to performance and have thus been a frequent topic in newspapers, blogs and columns. The now deceased "New York Times" journalist David Carr devoted an article to the discussion about performance relevant to wages in his column "The Media Equation". In it he gives an example and shows how he would have formulated his text introduction if he were paid per click.