News-Record.com

There are many different ways to measure the vitality of the Web site -- traffic, unique visitors, interaction, time spent, among others.

With the newspaper, measures are quirkier, more arbitrary and wildly inaccurate. As retailer John Wanamaker said, "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half."

So I use a variety of anecdotal measures: I watch what people read and don't read when I'm out and about; I note how long papers lay neglected on driveways; and I track e-mails, letters to the editor, phone calls, comments on Debatables.

I also watch my wife. In the world of categorizing the newspaper "consumer," there are readers, who approach the paper as if it were a book, and there are users, who go through the paper looking for information they can use to do something.

My wife is both. She reads the Sports section first, and I know it's a good section if I am finished with the front section before she's finished with Sports. If she moves to the features section too quickly, I know we've failed in her first course.

The other measure I use is the number of times a section comes to me transformed into a newsprint jigsaw puzzle. This morning, she clipped out three or four features in the Life section -- a couple recipes, an advice column and a household tips column. Information worth clipping, filing and using. Could she have gotten it online? Of course, but the point is that she didn't...and probably wouldn't have thought of looking for that specific recipe. It just came to her, sounded tasty and appeared simple to prepare.

Some days, in our household, disappointment is getting a complete, whole newspaper.