"I worry about analytics driving editorial decisions. Most media outlets (including The Walrus) pay close attention to what generates traffic—any journal that doesn’t is likely to fail. But trusting that data to curate content is another matter: algorithms that tell us which topics are trending don’t merely reflect trends; they can also help create them. In winnowing out the slightly obscure or difficult, algorithms ensure it can never be popular. (...) The newspaper’s role as arbiter is diminished. Simply put, if your metrics tell you the provincial is the most important thing, your journal will likely become provincial. In trying to be “bigger,” you can get smaller too."
https://thewalrus.ca/how-algorithms-are-changing-what-we-read-online/