In most businesses, not knowing how well a particular product is performing would be almost unthinkable. But newspapers have always been a peculiar business, one that has stubbornly, proudly clung to a sense that focusing too much on the bottom line can lead nowhere good.

Now, because of technology that can pinpoint what people online are viewing and commenting on, how much time they spend with an article and even how much money an article makes in advertising revenue, newspapers can make more scientific decisions about allocating their ever scarcer resources.

Such data has never been available with such specificity and timeliness. The reader surveys that newspapers relied on for decades took months to produce, often leaving editors with stale data.

Looking to the public for insight on how to cover a topic is never comfortable for newsrooms, which have the deeply held belief that readers come to a newspaper not only for its information but also for its editorial judgment. But many newsrooms now seem to be re-examining that idea and embracing, albeit cautiously, a more democratic approach to serving up the news, particularly online.