But that's not what the WaPo's slideshows are all about. Instead, they are seen as a cheap and fast way to produce "traffic." The problem is that they are not producing "traffic" -- which in any other context would mean the number of people in a space -- they are producing page views. This is not a simply academic distinction. The company's president is calling on his workers to juke the stats, effectively. These companies want you to think that more pageviews equal a larger, more engaged audience, but that's a quantitatively and qualitatively shaky proposition.

Quantitatively, sites vary widely in their page views to visitor ratios, and I can tell you from experience that it is much, much easier to drive up the former than the latter. So, when companies are in trouble, what do you think they try to do?

If you're trying to juice page views, your staff will ineluctably be forced to make galleries. Where else can they get a 10x or 20x multiplier on their work? I can guarantee you that will not help you break the kinds of stories or do the kinds of analysis that will keep people coming back. Not only that, but it's demoralizing to your best people, the ones who want to be out there producing their best work.

Worse, readers may click through your slideshow, but they'll hate you a liiitttle bit more than they did when they got to the site. And I bet they'll feel the same way about whatever advertiser was unlucky enough to get stuck on the page with some stupid thing that a reporter did with a little bit of hate in his heart and fingertips.

That won't be visible to you in your analytics, but what reader of the Internet has not felt that pang: "This site doesn't really value me or my time." You can get a page view spike that's actually a negative for your brand. And the more the slideshow spreads because of a clever headline or just because the topic is hot, the farther that brand damage spreads. Congratulations! You juiced the stats with an invisible poison!

I'm sympathetic to the business concerns of the media industry. I really am. But this myth that slideshows are the path to salvation has got to be put into a rocket and sent hurtling into the sun. People know when your product is cheap; there is no "trick" of the web. The sad truth is that to win on the Internet you have to do good reporting and analysis, write great headlines, empower individual staffers to embed themselves in communities that can serve up scoops and distribute finished stories, and understand the social ecosystems that bring visitors to your site.





P.S. I've had some good friends point out that publications need ad inventory and that page views are the ad inventory. I get that. But I don't think this is a sustainable long-term strategy. It's just clear that a slideshow page view is a different thing from other page views. And besides: there are other ways to drive real traffic! Focus on that and the page views will come.

