Tim Cigelske
MediaShift
Milwaukee, WI, United States
Contact Tim
Discover and connect with journalists and influencers around the world, save time on email research, monitor the news, and more.
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Past articles by Tim:
How Do We Measure Long-Term Impact in an Era of Sensationalism and Fake News?
When we launched MediaShift's new MetricShift section in December 2015, I wrote a post with 10 metrics predictions for the year ahead. I focused on things like follower counts, click-bait and attention-based metrics. It was a simpler time. → Read More
Sex, Lies and Metrics: The Truth Behind The Clicks
As print publications go, The Atlantic and The National Enquirer are roughly equally popular. They have a similar circulation. You could even argue that way more people are exposed to Enquirer headlines in check-out lines. → Read More
The Problem with Short-Sighted Metrics
Young Howard Cigelske managed chickens and hogs, landscaped on the farm and planted hybrid popcorn. He was also my grandpa and at his funeral I found a newspaper clipping that talked about him at age 17. The reporter who wrote the story noted he wasn't a boy with a lot of free time. → Read More
#MetricShift Chat: How to Get Better Video Metrics
Are you putting more resources into video? As publishers increase the time they spend producing content for Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and other video platforms, they need better insights into what works and what doesn't. In our #MetricShift chat on Friday, July 21, starting at 1 p.m. → Read More
#MetricShift Chat: The Metrics of Subscriptions
Digital subscriptions for some of the largest national newspapers are rising dramatically, as more traditional metrics like ad revenue and circulation continue to decline. → Read More
Media Metrics Roundup for June 7, 2017
Audioboom Podcast Listener Study AudioBoom Home beats out commuting in survey of 6,602 listeners that also found 64% responded to a podcast ad. How to Improve Your Google Ranking Quickly Andrew Romans / Can I Rank? A step-by-step process to quickly optimize on-page SEO. → Read More
#MetricShift Chat: The Metrics of Hyper-Partisan News
Preaching to the choir is good for metrics, even if it's not great for democracy. In a new report called The Rise of Hyper-Political Publishers, NewsWhip provides data on how hyper-political publishers rose on social media and which mainstream news outlets compare to the partisan sites, as well as... → Read More
Snapchat for Old People: Social Media Isn’t Always About You
I’ve spent a good chunk of my career explaining social media to people who find it mysterious and foreign. I’m used to negative reactions. I commonly hear phrases like “waste of time,” “it’s only for narcissists” and the catch-all “I just don’t get it.” People fear what they don’t know. We often assume the worst about out-groups. → Read More
Netflix and Vaudeville: The Metrics of News Entertainment
I revel in your hatred because if I weren't effective, you wouldn't hate me. That's Roger Stone, the anti-hero of the new Netflix documentary Get Me Roger Stone. Roger Stone relishes playing the villain because he understands that provoking anger gets ratings. → Read More
#MetricShift Chat: Social Metrics
How publishers use social media is in a state of flux. At some level, that has always been true, but with the Facebook algorithm once again causing anguish, messaging and chatbots well-established as core platforms and a flight to quality for business reasons, the shifts are especially seism... → Read More
#MetricShift Chat: Defining Audience Engagement
Know your audience has long been a mantra of journalism and communication. But today, many media professionals don’t have a common definition of audience engagement within their organization. → Read More
How Publishers Can Navigate the Metrics of Outrage
I changed my screensaver recently, so it displays the current top searches via Google Trends. Now after I step away from my computer for a few minutes, I come back and feel like I've walked into a coffee shop where I can eavesdrop on the rapid-fire gossip of the internet. → Read More
MetricShift Chat: The Metrics of Fundraising, on April 28, 2017
The metrics of the journalism funding model are changing. Publishers are continuing to experiment with digital revenue as a replacement for print ads, resulting in more — and more effective — subscription campaigns and membership drives. → Read More
#MetricShift Chat: The Metrics of Special Projects, on April 14
The new podcast S-Town is a special project of Serial and This American Life that broke metrics records. The new 7-episode series achieved 10 million downloads in four days, which broke the fastest-download record of its predecessor, Serial. → Read More
The Continuing Impact of ‘All the President’s Men’ in the Age of Trump
Richard Nixon resigned nearly a decade before I was born. But the impact of investigative journalism that helped take down a president still reverberated when I was in high school. → Read More
#MetricShift Chat: How to Teach Metrics
The next generation of journalists have more to learn than reporting, writing and editing. They're also beginning to get trained on how to measure audience awareness and engagement with their stories, the impact of their reporting and other emerging journalism metrics. For journalism instructors and professors doing the training, this often means learning about new metrics and measurement tools… → Read More
#MetricShift Chat: The Metrics of Comments
Can the ugly, old comment section be turned into a positive new engagement metric for digital media? A few smart people think so. Opinary, for instance, thinks that by replacing comments they can invent a new type of engagement metric. → Read More
By Measuring Millions of Opinions, Opinary Wants to Reinvent Comments, Engagement
Don't read the comments. That warning has become a familiar refrain for news sites, leading some publishers to bury the section or eliminate commenting entirely. But ignoring public reader feedback misses a key opportunity for engagement. → Read More
WordPress vs. Medium: A Case Study
Last month, I ran an A/B test to see how an article performs on WordPress vs Medium. On Medium, the article was titled What are you doing, Medium? Here on MediaShift.org, which runs on WordPress, the article was titled What are you doing, Medium, with your Sex 2. → Read More
#MetricShift Chat: The Most Engaging Stories
For this chat, we're partnering with Chartbeat to do a deep dive into the most popular stories of 2016 in terms of Total Engaged Time. In 2016, Chartbeat tracked 2.5 trillion minutes of engaged time from more than 5,000 media sites worldwide. → Read More