How Entertainment Writer Defines And Measures Success - Mark graham

In Chapter 14 of 19 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, editor and writer Mark Graham shares how he defines success personally...

Erik: How do you define success in what you do? Mark: Well, I think there are a couple of different things to look at. I think there is success in metric based solutions, like unique visitors over the course of a month, number of page views you generate, how people are sharing your stories using social media. I think there’s also success on a larger more personal level. Are you proud of the material that you’ve put out? Are people reacting to things in the way you want them to? Are people talking about the things that you do? Are more than just your readers on your particular sites engaging with that content? Are other people talking about how you do things? Are you trying something new? Are you not relying on old hats and things that I’ve done a couple of years in a row? I mean, that’s a big thing, particularly when you write about TV. New seasons come up more than once a year generally. And there are tried and true ways to attract readers and there are also things that you need to try and experiment with. So, success to me, I look at it in a couple of different ways. There are, like I said, hard metrics and there are how I feel about things, how my peers feel about things and those are the ways I tend to tackle it.