What is Media Buzz?

Buzz is what people are talking about, plain and simple.
This is not how you determine what's buzzing; what issues people are talking about or concerned with:

Since there’s no agreed-upon metric for “buzz,” the columnist can just toss it out there without firm refutation. And sure, the deeply reported Politico Magazine story on Hillary Clinton’s history with the media by Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman received plenty of pass-around.

A Google News search of “Hillary Clinton media Politico Magazine” turned up more than 140 articles.  A Google News search of “unemployment rate 6.3″ turned up nearly 900 articles.

~The Erik Wemple blog at The Washington Post.

Another problem with this type of journolistic reliance on statistics is you have to have similar comparables.  Note, he's not comparing the discussion of one article to another.  He's comparing discussion of one specific article to the discussion in nearly 900 other articles regarding a topic, the most recent official unemployment rate.   You don't want to officially measure media buzz, or weigh things using search engine results like that for good reason.

I'd say 140 stories about another writer's specific story tops 900 summary treatment stories of the most recent release of the "official" unemployment figures.  Who exactly read those 900 stories do you think, and does The Erik Wemple blog, wherever he's at, hear people discussing or being concerned with the 900?  How about half that?  Is he overhearing any discussion by real people regarding the supposed uptick in jobs?

No. Thrush and Haberman's piece, by contrast, captured media attention.  Just like Dowd's buzz-worthy piece is doing today.

It's not often, afterall, that The Erik Wemple Blog works Sundays.  He caught the buzz Maureen is generating, and hopes to bring some of those eyeballs to The Post, discussing what she wrote.  Worked for me!  But calling her work silly or shallow -- while he quickly gloms on -- and telling us what he thinks is buzzworthy in Washington misses the point:

Even if you accept the soundings of Dowd’s buzzmeter, recognize its shallowness. The importance of the unemployment report isn’t that employers added 288,000 jobs in April; or that the gains came across various sectors; or that a significant population gave up looking for work over the past month. The important thing is whether the coverage of all those considerations buzzed around the Beltway.

Dowd's much read, much discussed column goes deeper though, with the overriding theme:
 it doesn't matter how many articles the new unemployment figures generate if people have given up on the president, looking past him to take effective action, and pinning their hopes on  future candidates.  

Erik Wemple's piece might show up in search engine results too, but it shouldn't be weighted one to one, the same as a better read story in a competitor paper, with hundreds of comments, that people are reading and actively engaging with -- whether agreeing or disagreeing with the writer's premise.  That's buzz.

That's journalism too.  It really is a people business.*  You don't want to get 'em mixed up and confuse one for the other.  This false comparable, number-collecting spin Wemple employs... that journ-o-lism.

Vive La Différence!
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*  Wemple's blog bio tells us he's been "doing journalism" for 20 years.  Too cute!

"He has been doing journalism for and about Washington for more than two decades..."

But how exactly do you "do journalism for Washington", I wonder?   Twenty years in, perhaps he's like some of the comfortably ensconced Congressional critters.  Not too hard to run and report seach engine results, afterall, and call it a day...

Btw, Maureen Dowd won a Pulitzer for her coverage of the first Clinton White House.  I think she knows what buzz is at this point in her career, can attract it herself, as well as identify what people are talking about...  No search engine results needed.