ICOBALT BUZZY? Would you read a carefully written, compact but punchy essay on Canada's growing strategic value in a resource-starved world? No? Well, many of you did. A few months ago, Christopher Pollon “The United States is in dire need of rare minerals and fresh water. Guess who has them?attracted 150,000 readers in two days.
What made us think that anyone would be interested in this? The answer is rarely simple. We are constantly reviewing news, connecting trends, reviewing reports, collecting Yes, No, May be. That's how we ended up emailing Pollon, a Vancouver-based journalist with deep knowledge of the mining sector. Could Trump's obsession with critical minerals shed light on his talk of annexing Canada? (Spoiler: yes.) But differentiation, synthesis, and connection explain only part of how we make decisions. Every decision is also a negotiation: between resources and ambitions, urgency and priorities. Budgets are blunt instruments. Paying for one story means giving up another.
These trade-offs, in turn, relate to the key, though even more difficult to define, idea of taste. Our selection embodies our editorial team. They express our beliefs, our frustrations, the lazy assumptions we want to confront. Editorial opinion is identity. It states what we stand for.
What do we stand for? The real question is: would we be proud of Pollon's article if it attracted a third of the views? Or almost none? Readers don't always show up in force. But if we let these moments determine our actions, we may miss stories about climate change, or avoid literary criticism, or shy away from certain kinds of urban policies. These entities are unlikely to be click drivers. We cover them because we think it's necessary. Sometimes they connect. Sometimes not. Edge According to editor-in-chief Nilay Patel, it's unusual for publishers to keep traffic data “under lock and key” – a choice designed to focus attention on stories that seem worth telling. I admire this.
This tension—between chasing what works and supporting what matters—has been on my mind ever since I read Sensational feature film by Taji Aizenwhich appears in this issue, is about how an unhealthy obsession with an author's sales history or “footprint” leaves little oxygen for anything eccentric or truly new. Publishing, Eisen argues, was once an industry that offered room for experimentation and long bets; now he is haunted by the tyranny of short-term judgment.
This lesson applies to us too. Our analytics dashboard, which, among other benefits, offers real-time statistics on how long readers spend on a story, the area they live in, and how they came to the page, is a powerful tool. This has made us better editors, guiding our decisions toward topics that appeal to readers. But if followed slavishly, it can limit creative possibilities. Being too quick to stigmatize “underperforming” stories reduces tolerance for risk and failure—whether it's conducting a complex investigation, betting on an aspiring writer, or testing out a new form. Our task is not just to meet expectations, but to create them. It's like a good conversation where we can surprise you, and that's the whole point.
