Pageviews do not equal talent.

paranoia by katiew on Flickr

The brilliant Seth Godin posted a short entry on his blog this morning regarding the hyper-measurement of today's society. Specifically, he refers to the fact that a Washington Post columnist just got laid off due to a lack of page views on his blog posts:

"...in a digital world where everything can be measured, we all work on commission. And why not? If you do great work and it works, you should get rewarded. And if you don't, it's hard to see why a rational organization would keep you on." (emphasis mine)

While I understand Seth's (and the paper's) position, I shudder to think how much this would affect discourse regarding important matters. The problem is, "great work" is not necessarily a magnet for page views, but controversy is; if columnists write material solely to get page views, the most ostentatious and outrageous writers will thrive - is this a standard that we want? Do we really think that this will impact journalism for the better, or will it just create more noise?