"Traffic," they spit. And I get it. The word has been used to bludgeon you into dumb shit. To put great stories on the shelf to build slideshows. To give up on quality and focus on quantity. I do get all that. But that’s precisely why we journalists must understand the numbers! The business side of any publication knows them inside and out. If we don’t understand how to tell good stories with our own data, who do you think wins any argument that involves data, which they all do?