One of the biggest challenges we’ve heard from the newsrooms we work with is that there’s not enough time. Journalism has always been a high-stress job, but it’s become increasingly so as budgets have tightened across the industry and newsrooms have tried to keep up the pace and volume of work with fewer resources.
But this is not a sustainable model for anyone. Journalists have become overstretched, exhausted and burnt out, particularly in the wake of the monumental news events of the past year. So rather than doing more with less, we think a better approach is to “do less with less,” which can actually help you to have more impact, writes API Editorial Manager Stephanie Castellano in a recent report.
To try this approach, our Metrics for News team at API gathered a cohort of 10 newsrooms around the country who use Metrics for News, the American Press Institute’s news analytics tool, to figure out how they could better maximize impact with their limited time. We designed an 8-week program, running March to April 2021, which included group calls with internal and external experts and one-on-one office hours. The goal was to help each newsroom use their audience analytics data to identify something to stop, and use that newfound time more effectively on something else aimed at growing audiences, deepening engagement or driving more subscriptions.
Four newsrooms generously shared their perspectives of participating in the cohort, their experiments and what they got out of the experience to help others who might be thinking about trying this in their own newsrooms. You can read their responses in the Q&As below. (Responses are lightly edited for clarity.)
Centralmaine.com (Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel)
Chattanooga Times Free Press
Allison Collins, Digital and Engagement Editor
Why were you interested in this cohort?
Metrics for News is a useful tool, and I love how it provides our reporters and editors with a score that takes into account multiple metrics and not just pageviews. That being said, I wanted to learn how other newsrooms were using the data in Metrics for News to dictate what they covered and didn’t cover since our newsroom was relatively new to the platform when the cohort started. I have found it is always more helpful when we can learn from other newsrooms.
What was your newsroom experiment?
We specifically wanted to take a look at our editorial coverage. The Chattanooga Times Free Press is unique in that we have two editorial pages, a conservative and a liberal page, with editors for each. Traditionally, they have written opinions based on whatever was most interesting to them in the news, which could be either national or local news. We thought we might see a boost in readership and subscriptions if we focused on just local editorials because that is something we can offer that really no one else can.
Since we have two pages, a conservative and a liberal side, it made a great A/B test, as well. We kept the liberal page editor (Pam Sohn) doing what she was doing — writing both local and national pieces — and we asked the conservative page editor (Clint Cooper) to just mix it up for two months and only write local editorials.
How did you come up with what to stop doing or do less of? How is your staff using that new time differently?
We just paid attention to what the metrics told us. At the start of the experiment, we saw local editorials on a contentious mayoral race were doing really well with subscribers and new subscribers (those who have subscribed in the last 90 days). For example, this one. So our conservative page editor focused a lot on the mayoral runoff in the first month of his experiment.
One thing he also started doing that we traditionally did not want our editorial page editors to do is break news before our news desk could. But, as resources have dwindled, we felt like there was no reason they couldn’t. For example, he broke the news that vehicle emissions testing may be ending soon in our county after years of waiting.
He also did more engagement pieces, like asking readers to send him where the trashiest places in Chattanooga were after several Letters to the Editors about litter since the pandemic started.
Clint also started a new weekly series called “Connecting Yesterday To Today” where he takes current issues and writes about how they are similar/different to what we were writing and talking about decades ago. We have found that historical columns and old photos of Chattanooga do well with our subscriber base, so that was a metrics-informed decision to start that series.
What are the results of your experiment?
After one month, the results were promising in Metrics for News among all our “newsroom priorities,” which are custom engagement scores that reflect a newsroom’s editorial mission and business goals. The subscribers score, local score, new subscribers score and overall online audiences score increased. (Scores in Metrics for News are calculated by blending a combination of metrics that are important to the newsroom. In Chattanooga, the newsroom measures engagement by specific audience segments they are trying to grow or deepen loyalty with.) Loyal and returning users increased 6% in Chartbeat and [Clint] had two subscription-influenced conversions (zero in the previous month). Average engaged time was the only thing that decreased, but we found that had more to do with a recent change to our paywall.
After two months, local’s score, all online audience’s score and loyal and returning users continued to increase and he had six subscription-influenced conversions — up from zero in months leading up to the experiment. His subscriber’s score decreased slightly but was still above his 6-month average, the new subscriber’s score went down 25% and the average engaged time decreased. We believe the new subscriber’s score went down based on the election being over in the second month. The election brought in several new readers.
What have you learned through this process?
Make sure you give adequate time for your experiment! If we had just done it the first month then it would have appeared to be an overwhelming success, but we don’t usually have contentious mayoral elections happening. The second month gave us a much better picture of the experiment’s impact on our metrics.
I think we also learned a few valuable lessons when it comes to the type of content and creativity we want to show with our opinion pages. We challenged our thinking of what an opinion writer should be during this experiment. First, we learned that breaking news on the opinion pages can be a good thing and we should strive for that more. Second, we learned that engaging our readers/asking them to submit responses and provide their input can also lead to great editorials and not just great news stories.
What’s next? How will you keep this process going?
Even just looking at the jump in subscriptions, we decided this was definitely worthwhile and worth trying with the other editorial page editor. It also helps to have this editorial experiment behind us in order to encourage more editorial experimentation in other news departments. I can see opportunities in every department and every beat for experimentation. I also think the failures are just as important to share as the successes. Not all hypotheses will turn out to be true and we can learn from that, too.
Centralmaine.com (Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel)
Scott Monroe, Managing Editor
Why were you interested in this cohort?
To learn more about how to apply audience data to our newsroom decisions and guide our coverage.
What was your newsroom experiment?
To stop doing on-deadline night meeting coverage of municipal government boards and instead wait at least a day (or more) to flesh the stories out into enterprising pieces that focused on the issue and included context and sourcing not available at the meeting. Here’s one such example.
How did you come up with what to stop doing or do less of?
It was an idea we’ve batted around for years — and an ideal we’ve aspired to — but this cohort seemed to provide a good opportunity to test whether the approach resonated with our digital audience.
How is your staff using that new time differently?
Less scrambling on deadline at night (which helps our night copydesk be more efficient with their tasks) and enables staff to spend more time dayside fleshing out chosen stories.
What are the results of your experiment?
They were positive. Every selected story registered an “excellent” average score for its category, and a small handful well exceeded those average scores. Reporters also said they liked the approach. It’s journalistically a smart and satisfying way of reporting on key local issues. (For context, an “excellent” score in Metrics for News is specific to each newsroom. To learn more about how we measure engagement, see here.)
What have you learned through this process?
How to think about coverage changes in the MFN framework and run our own in the future. This involves thinking of our audiences in terms of topical and story type, and how deeper enterprise reporting acts as conduit for these audiences.
What’s next? How will you keep this process going?
We’ll keep using this approach for night municipal meetings and think about other ways we can apply what we’ve learned.
Tampa Bay Times
Carolyn Fox, Senior Deputy Editor
Why were you interested in this cohort?
We were lucky to be a part of other cohorts and found the experience to be fruitful. They are a great way to connect with other local newsrooms fighting some of the same battles as we are. The collaboration and inspiration are hugely helpful as we navigate the fast-paced world of digital journalism.
What was your newsroom experiment?
We started adding a premium (subscriber-only) tag to coverage we know our print readers enjoy that had not resonated as well with our digital audience. Our normal gateway allows readers a certain number of stories free per month based on their Mather [analytics tool] profile, while our premium content is only viewable by subscribers. We provide a pop-up overlay for readers to explain they have arrived on a subscriber-only story on the front end.
Our premium content is a small percentage of our overall site content right now — anywhere from one to five stories a week. We plan to increase this during the fall.
How did you come up with what to stop doing or do less of?
We used Metrics for News to look across all subjects and see what topics were performing with local and loyal visitors and what were not.
How is your staff using that new time differently?
The staff time was used the same, but we got a bigger reward, in more digital subscriptions.
What are the results of your experiment?
We saw an uptick in digital subscriptions to our University of South Florida sports stories and book reviews. Previously those two categories were not driving digital subscribers.
What have you learned through this process?
It’s important to consistently check the data for more ideas around what we can do with our subscriber-only option.
What’s next? How will you keep this process going?
We will continue experimenting with the subscriber-only model on some types of stories.
Winnipeg Free Press
Erin Lebar, Audience Engagement Manager
Why were you interested in this cohort?
I was having some trouble figuring out what to do next after [introducing Metrics for News to the newsroom], so I wanted to get some guidance from the MFN team, as well as learn about how other newsrooms were practically implementing the tool on a day-to-day basis and what the response from their teams has been.
What was your newsroom experiment?
One of our experiments was to take a look at our Books coverage, which is a weekly special section that runs on Saturdays and is populated with reviews/stories that are largely produced by a pool of freelancers. These stories (reviews especially) were consistently in the red-zone across all of our newsroom priorities, so I met with the Books editor to chat about some potential changes. We noticed that sometimes the headlines, outside the context of a printed Books section, made no sense/didn’t clearly say what the story is about, so the editor started utilizing the “web hed” function in our CMS to write clearer headlines for web. He also revived our WFP Books dedicated Twitter account and made an effort to tag publishers/authors/outlets in the tweets, we created a separate books topic in MFN to more easily track progress, and we began leveraging the success of our book club to share more links for reviews and other books content on the site in an attempt to get people clicking back to those pages and also to connect the club and the books section a bit more strongly in their minds.
How did you come up with what to stop doing or do less of?
For books, it was more about what we could do to improve the engagement on content we were not willing to sacrifice. So I guess what we “stopped” doing is we stopped being passive about that content and its possibilities for engagement.
How is your staff using that new time differently?
Unfortunately this experiment did not result in our books editor having more time since he is actually probably more hands-on now than he was previously, but I think our senior managers have been impressed with the results so far and I think that’s encouraging for other experiments that will result in reporters/editors reallocating their time.
What are the results of your experiment?
In the initial 30-day period following the start of these changes, we saw a 30% increase in overall engagement for books content.
Looking now several months into it, we’ve seen an overall increase of 17% compared to the previous time period.
What have you learned through this process?
I think I’ve learned that sometimes these things take more time than you want them to, but you have to be patient while also still nudging things forward as best you can. And also to start with a project that doesn’t involve a million different people in a million different departments. The books one worked for me because it was just dealing with one person — the section editor. The other changes/experiments are much harder and slower because they would impact a lot of people. Not everything has to be done all at once; one or two at a time is best!
What’s next? How will you keep this process going?
I’ve started sending out a MFN report every Monday, taking a page from one of the other cohort participants which has been great not only to keep MFN top of mind every week, but it’s also given me a chance to do some morale-boosting shout-outs to folks who maybe don’t necessarily get the most attention otherwise, so that’s a happy side effect. I also attend an editorial meeting once a week with all of our senior news editors and go over the Monday report with them and point out a few other things I didn’t include (stories that did unexpectedly well, for example, or other trends I’m noticing) and have had positive feedback from that.
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