Special Edition

In a year when the stakes are high for local and national elections, when 80 anti-DEI bills have been proposed in 28 states and when local news is in crisis, well-intentioned source tracking initiatives can come under fire. If that happens or is something your newsroom is anticipating, you can prepare for it and respond in a way that’s transparent about your work and consistent with your values.

Source tracking has inspired newsrooms to change their reporting practices and set new internal policies, improve efforts in community listening and trust building, tell untold stories and inform longer-term sustainability strategies.

As news organizations work to grow and nurture relationships in their communities, many are focusing on ways to not only track their outreach but also build in the accountability necessary to improve.

You need to convince your audience that your local coverage is not only important because of this grand, often intangible idea of the role of journalism in this country, but because it’s valuable and useful to their lives and communities.

Keeping yourself organized when it comes to marketing efforts can ensure that you and your team don’t miss some critical opportunities to reach out and engage with your audiences.

Mapping your audience journey can help you find gaps, drive loyalty and provide opportunities to build a more thoughtful and frictionless experience.

When was the last time you really took stock of all the ways you can reach your audience?

Successfully and efficiently marketing your work can be hard, especially for local news teams with limited resources, but marketing yourself to your audience is an essential skill for news organizations to drive revenue and promote sustainability.

You might also wonder whether something should replace the thing you or someone on your team has decided to stop doing. There are a few angles to consider before making any decisions.

We share a framework you can use to prioritize your list. It looks at how easy something is to do — how much time it takes, how many resources it draws on, how much mindshare it takes up, as well as its impact.