What you need to know:
For much of the digital era, success in media was measured by one simple metric: clicks.
The more clicks a story generated, the more successful it was considered. Page views became the benchmark of performance, headlines became sharper, and breaking news became a race to capture attention before anyone else.
Newsrooms celebrated viral stories, advertisers chased traffic, and algorithms rewarded engagement above almost everything else.
For a time, it worked. But somewhere along the way, the pursuit of clicks began to overshadow the very purpose of journalism.
