Becoming a reader-focused organization is not about technology or data. This report provides a framework for building those tools, but they are just tools. Growing engagement and shifting to reader revenue requires actions across the organization that authentically support an audience-focused mission. Truly pivoting to readers is a cultural transformation, not a development project.
A few mile-markers on that journey:
- Corporate goals and incentives are aligned across departments and all work is prioritized appropriately.
- Structural changes have been made to encourage collaboration and increase the visibility of mission-critical data.
- Meetings include questions such as “What does the data show?” and “Have we talked to readers about this?”
- Investments have been made in data systems, business intelligence tools, user research, and design and development teams.
- UX and design improvements are treated as strategic assets. And, those teams work to make digital products easier to use by prioritizing positive interactions (browsing, reading, watching) over negative interactions (dismissing pop-ups, closing windows, muting auto-play widgets).
- Personalization informed by deep insights is used to drive engagement and encourage account creation and log-in.
- Third-party vendors and partners are reduced and promoted clicks off-site are reduced. Internal promotion and recirculation is highlighted.
- Data privacy is valued and protected by the limitation of third-party widgets and trackers on-site.
- Revenue is diversified and data insights and user research are used to generate new business opportunities. Those choices are balanced against reader perceptions of quality and trust in our journalism.
- Content is more local, but also more in-depth. Newsroom goals will prioritize engagement, not clicks.
- Metrics are focused on loyalty and engagement. The number of visits, time spent, and breadth of sections read are tracked.
- Social platforms are utilized for marketing and outreach, and judged on revenue or loyal users generated.
Share with your network
- What it takes to shift a news organization to reader revenue
- What it really means to shift to reader revenue
- How to collect and use the right data about your news audience
- To shift to reader revenue you must improve your marketing skills
- Break silos and avoid turf wars: How to get all departments aligned on your reader revenue goals
- How to apply data-driven insights that will grow reader revenue
- How to tell if your culture has truly adapted to a reader revenue focus
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As digital platforms and their users continue to grow and change, the ways news outlets build strategies around them will, too. These are themes we believe are key for digital transformation and sustaining and growing local news.
The next API Local News Summit will be on how local and community-based media might engender a local identity and embrace their geography and history. We’ll help news leaders consider how they contribute to a community’s well-being by fostering a sense of place — and how, when done with care, this might offer new ways to sustain local news.
This guide features strategies tested and proven by local news organizations that participated in the Table Stakes Local News Transformation Program along the themes of product thinking, revenue, engaged journalism, collaboration and managing change.
