ABC responds to Fairfax claims about its Specialist Reporting team

The ABC has responded to an article in Fairfax Media today that says that the ABC’s “…Specialist Reporting team is now being set targets for the number of readers each story gets.

The inside story is that this is a pilot for a rollout across the institution.

The key performance indicator is being set as an average of 80,000 page views across the team’s output.

 At least one reporter says that in the middle of a month, if page views are down, they are being discouraged from writing stories that might not get high impact.”

According to the ABC website, the Specialist Reporting Team was formed in October last year to do important stories of national interest and while reporters are not discouraged from doing stories on the basis of page views, there is no KPI that sets an average of 80,000 page views.

The ABC says that their team is a multiplatform unit that uses online as well as radio and TV with an “aim is to do meaningful, editorially important stories in the most interesting and relevant way.”