1
Read the paper
Open a story, scroll, or click a homepage slot.
The Phillipian · Digital
How the Monday note actually works
All week, readers open stories, scroll, and click. Monday morning, one person on digital turns those signals into five lines per section and sends them. Section editors read the note and decide what to cover next. Nobody on digital tells a section what to write.
The division that matters.
The site only records. It counts three things and never a name: a story opened, a reader who reached the middle, and which spot on the front page got the click. Digital only compiles. It pulls the numbers, writes five lines, and sends the note. It does not assign stories. Editors decide. A number in the note is a fact about last week, not an instruction for this week. None of this is on phillipian.net yet. The site stays unchanged until the webmaster adds the two files in put-on-the-website.
Main path
Loop back
Human checkpoint
Reader
On the site, all week
The site
WordPress + analytics
Digital
One owner, Monday morning
Section editors
News, sports, arts, commentary
2
Log three events
Open, halfway, and slot click.
3 events3
Pull last week
Open the dashboard. All of last week.
4
Record the Sheet
One row per story. Copy opens and halfway.
5
Write five lines
One note per section. Opened, finished, left.
6
Send the note
A person sends it. Nothing sends itself.
Checkpoint7
Plan next week
Editors choose coverage. Digital stops.
Rules the process never breaks
- Only three events, and none of them identify a reader. No names, no accounts, no “who clicked.”
- The note is five lines, not a dashboard. If it needs a meeting to explain, it is too long.
- One owner, one send, every Monday. If that person is out, a named backup sends it. It does not slip to Tuesday.
- Numbers come from the dashboard. A blank cell stays blank. Nobody rounds a feeling into a figure.
- Digital does not recommend a follow-up. The note reports last week. The section decides this week.
The three tracked events
Article open
A story page loaded. Tells a section which pieces people started, and which never got a click at all.
Reached halfway
The reader passed the middle of the article. Separates a story people finished from a headline they only tapped.
Homepage slot click
Which placement got the click: lead, top stories, or a section block. The note does not get a third count for this. Its front line adds up opens for the stories in each slot.
How it lands on the current site
No new website. The Phillipian stays on WordPress. Digital does the Monday job; the webmaster does the one-time setup.
Setup 1
One tag in the theme header
The webmaster adds the Plausible snippet for phillipian.net to the existing WordPress theme. It loads on every page. A pageview is the open. Digital does not edit the theme after that.
Setup 2
A halfway listener
put-on-the-website/halfway.js fires one Plausible event when a reader scrolls past the middle of the article column. That is the “reached halfway” count. The event carries the page path and nothing else.
Setup 3
Read the homepage slots
put-on-the-website/slot-clicks.js reads the live front. The lead story, the top stories block, and the news, sports, commentary, and arts sections each have a slot. A click records which slot it was, not who clicked. The webmaster steps are on how to put this on the site.
Every Monday
The Sheet, then the note
A shared Google Sheet holds one tab per week, one row per story. The counts are opens and halfway. The slot column names where the story sat. Digital pastes last week’s numbers, writes five lines per section, and sends the note. That send is the only step that cannot run unattended.
What a section editor actually receives
Five lines. The note below is the practice note for News, from made-up SAMPLE counts. It is not a real week on the site.
To News · Monday
What got read last week
- Most opened: SAMPLE Campus Reacts to the Lawsuit, from the lead slot.
- Most finished: SAMPLE History of Activism. Highest share who reached halfway.
- Opened and left: SAMPLE 10 Questions with a Teacher. Clicks, then almost no one reached halfway.
- The front: the lead slot drew more clicks than the top block.
- The number to remember: readers stayed with SAMPLE History of Activism. The rest is yours to assign.
Line 5 names the same story as line 2. The front line adds opens by the slot on each row. A story opened from outside the homepage still counts toward that slot. Sports, commentary, arts, and The Eighth Page each get their own five lines the same morning. Digital sends the note and stops.
Where a person is required
Steps 1 through 5 can be done from a dashboard and a Sheet. Step 6 cannot. Sending the note is the one unconditional gate: a person checks that the five lines match the Sheet, then sends. Step 7 belongs to the section editors. The loop back is what they do with it. Their assignments change next week’s stories, which changes what gets read, which is what the next Monday note measures.