Having worked for both a content farm and a news organization, I'm not sure what is so revolutionary about this. The content farm I used to work for was making semi-automated publishing decisions based on future popularity of the content over a year ago...it was only a matter of time before news organizations got into that game.
If they're going to try to put actual numbers on the pageviews, that might be new and interesting, but it doesn't seem like it would be more useful than relative rankings. It matters that Story B is going to get more pageviews than Story A or Story C, but it doesn't really matter by how much if the goal is simply to draw traffic in the most efficient way.
If the goal is to change the future, than actual numbers become more useful. If Story B is only ahead of Story A by a small margin, and News Org has an interest in pushing Story A but not Story B, giving Story A top billing could swing the balance...
If they're going to try to put actual numbers on the pageviews, that might be new and interesting, but it doesn't seem like it would be more useful than relative rankings. It matters that Story B is going to get more pageviews than Story A or Story C, but it doesn't really matter by how much if the goal is simply to draw traffic in the most efficient way.
If the goal is to change the future, than actual numbers become more useful. If Story B is only ahead of Story A by a small margin, and News Org has an interest in pushing Story A but not Story B, giving Story A top billing could swing the balance...