The arrival of audience metrics went off like a "bomb" inside newsrooms like The New York Times, Caitlin Petre says. Petre researched how The Times and Gawker reckoned with analytics in very different ways. The result is her new book "All the News That's Fit to Click." Chartbeat metrics became "addictive" for some journalists as the "habit forming" offerings "mimicked digital games," encouraging users to "boost" their scores and "work harder and harder," Petre says. And for the average consumer? "Keep in mind," she says, that with every click, "you are actually sending a message or signal back to a newsroom."

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