Engagement Score by The Wall Street Journal
Measure the true value of each story.
The Wall Street Journal newsroom wanted a way to measure the true value of each story. Not just how many clicks it received, so the team created a 1-to-5 engagement score that is applied to every piece of journalism.
The score captures both the depth of reader interaction and its business impact at a glance. By combining subscriber interest, subscriber engagement, purposeful reach, and conversions, the score gives reporters, coverage chiefs and audience editors a common language. It surfaces the stories that build loyal readership and helps the audience development team in the newsroom identify opportunities to surface journalism most likely to turn casual visitors into long-term subscribers.
Sometimes you can see interesting patterns emerge. A story might not attract many readers, but the ones who clicked read the heck out of it. Conversely, other stories may generate a lot of initial interest, yet readers don’t spend much time once they get there. This could indicate a misleading headline or suggest we didn’t deliver the payoff readers expected after they invested their attention. These engagement scores reveal valuable insights into how audiences interact with our journalism.
Jennifer Hicks, The Wall Street Journal
WSJ’s system also flags mismatches between the metrics. One example is called a missed opportunity. It happens when an article attracts high subscriber interest but low engagement time. This suggests the headline or topic was enticing, yet the content did not fully meet readers’ expectations.
At a high level, the model balances serving loyal subscribers with reaching new readers directly aligning with WSJ’s business goals. Senior executives call this an “audience-first” strategy, with engagement as the newsroom’s new North Star.
Primary use cases of Engagement score at The Wall Street Journal
Prioritizing quality traffic
The engagement model guides WSJ toward attracting the right audiences. Instead of simply celebrating page views, WSJ emphasizes subscriber engagement and conversion rates as signs of high-quality traffic. A large influx of casual visitors is less valuable if few convert or engage. However, even a modest increase in new visitors that generates meaningful conversions is considered successful.
Reducing churn & increasing retention
Subscriber-focused metrics like interest and engagement, are central to WSJ’s retention strategy. The more subscribers consistently read and value the content, the less likely they are to cancel their subscriptions.
Guiding investment in coverage and products
The model helps editors balance content aimed at acquiring new readers with content designed to retain current subscribers. Stories that consistently score high in new audience reach and conversions highlight growth opportunities, while content that drives strong subscriber engagement ensures the needs of the core paying audience are satisfied.
Data-driven goals and KPI’s
The engagement model has clarified what success looks like for WSJ, helping transform the newsroom technologically and culturally into a data-informed organization. Editors and reporters routinely use these metrics as feedback to refine and enhance their journalism.
Who is this for and do we serve the needs?
The engagement model is widely utilized at WSJ. As their editor-in-chief Emma Tucker explained in an interview with Vanity Fair, the dashboards are “not there to tell us what to do. If there’s a Wall Street Journal angle on anything, we’ll write about it. But what the dashboards help us with is understanding how we write about stories.”
Conceptually, the model encourages editors and reporters to consistently ask themselves: “Who is this story for, and did we truly deliver for them?” If the story targets subscribers, did it genuinely engage them? If it's meant for a broader audience, did it successfully attract new readers and lead to conversions? In this way, data is enhancing editorial judgment rather than replacing it.
The more time people spend with us, and the more of our products they adopt, like newsletters or podcasts, the less likely they are to churn. So when they do come, we have to make sure it’s a rewarding experience that keeps them coming back.
Jennifer Hicks, The Wall Street Journal