I wish every article contained the epic Oliver Stone-like phrase “This is the Chartbeat era”, as author Josh Sternberg utters in this Digiday piece that went live yesterday. But that shield-thumping sentence aside, this Digiday piece gets into interesting new territory in its dissection of  publishers embracing post-pageview mentalities when it comes to paying writers.

We talk a lot about the need for new, quality-focused metrics here at Chartbeat. Our CEO Tony talks about it. So does Josh, our data scientist. But it’s always great to get new voices into that conversation – voices that pose new questions or present distinct angles as Digiday does here.

Digiday’s examination of the new ways publishers are measuring editorial success and rewarding strong journalistic performance reveals the exciting direction in which many top sites are heading: “Publications like Complex and Forbes are trying to come up with performance criteria for writers that guard against abuses yet still reward writers for attracting audiences and moving the business forward.”

Of course, Complex and Forbes are by no means alone in their quest for better metrics. And while I think we’re asking the right questions, we’re still a ways away from having all the answers we need. We think our Engaged Time metric starts to push us in the right direction in measuring the un-gameable attention of a site’s audience, but we all know there’s no single silver-bullet metric that will solve all our problems — so we’ll keep working until we’ve found all the right ones.

In the meantime, it’s cool to see topics being explored more in depth. Hope you’ll check out the article and let us know what you think.