Startups track business metrics. Newsrooms should learn from them.

Link: Your SaaS Metrics Are A Result, Not A Strategy, by Itay Sagie in Crunchbase NewsI still subscribe to sites like Crunchbase News from my time in startup-land; although it’s been a while since I’ve run the financial side of a business, I’m interested, and I know that I’ll run one again. I see stories like this and wonder: what would it look like for a newsroom to think this way? In startups, these metrics are known top to bottom, but I’ve rarely heard business teams talk about LTV (customer Life Time Value), CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost), or even ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue). This may be happening in finance and fundraising teams, but the culture of talking about customers / donors in teams more widely often isn’t there. While the firewall between business and editorial is important to maintain, the business side should be more customer / donor focused.Beyond that, this piece points out, rightly, that metrics are not strategy: they’re the measurable outcome of your strategy.…