When the homepage module steals the story

Print had a front page with a finite number of skyline inches. An app homepage can fidget. Modules that rotate every few seconds will throw the lead at a thumb that was aiming for the football. The event log records an open. Conference records a triumph.

A module is a placement, not a reader

Treat the slot as you would a poor page lead in print: it can still be right, but it is not evidence the article was wanted. In one sample week the politics longread’s module-opens outnumbered its push-opens by four to one, while completions travelled almost entirely with the push. The module was a noisy room. The alert was the door.

What to do by Thursday

You do not have to kill the module on Friday. You do have to stop quoting it. Ask for opens that exclude auto-advance, or sit the module’s number in a column that is never read aloud. Put the lead in a still slot for a fortnight and see whether completions move. If they do not, the piece had other problems, and the module was only hiding them.

This is unglamorous work. It is also the work that keeps a news editor from commissioning the next longread to feed a slot that was never hungry.