Today’s action: Examine how you use evidence to influence decisions.
The groundwork of resilient news organizations is usually laid by unremarkable, seemingly small, daily decisions: what not to do, how clearly a staff grasps what its audience values and how to get teams from across the organization working toward shared goals.
It’s a hard story to tell, because it doesn’t map easily onto launch announcements, traffic highs or other milestones. But these everyday decisions can help determine whether a publication is still serving its community five years from now.
Through our work with news organizations, we’ve learned that having better data doesn’t automatically lead to better decisions. What matters is how organizations use that information: bringing people together to understand what it means, challenging assumptions and making changes based on what they learn.
- Measure what the journalism actually does: Web traffic shouldn’t be treated as the whole scorecard. Measuring the value of journalism to communities is key. The AP Fund for Journalism brought API’s Metrics for News and Source Matters to newsrooms that often lack the budget for a dedicated product hire or the tools that come with one. They’re using a shared dashboard to track the performance of AP reporting in their markets alongside their own original coverage. Conecta Arizona joined a cohort of newsrooms using Source Matters to track the diversity of sources quoted in its stories, a way of finding gaps in coverage before those gaps become a pattern the community notices first.
- Build a shared understanding: When teams across the organization are reading the same numbers the same way, an outlet can move on a bet with more confidence, because there’s already agreement across departments about what success looks like. By building Metrics for News into daily editorial meetings, Newsday gave every editor that shared view of engagement and reader behavior. Editors are now finding real demand in under-covered community topics and building a more systematic approach to localizing national news for readers across Long Island.
- Act on what the data reveals: Every newsroom produces some coverage that data shows isn’t hitting the mark. Saying no to what isn’t working is only half the discipline. The other half is recognizing an opportunity early enough to actually act on it, before a hunch has time to harden into an assumption nobody bothers to test. Crain Communications’ Detroit newsroom had a single reporter covering West Michigan when Metrics for News data showed her coverage was resonating with readers on both sides of the state, not just locally. Rather than treating that as a curiosity, Crain leaned into it: it grew the coverage, kept watching the data confirm the demand, and in 2023 launched an entirely new newsroom, Crain’s Grand Rapids Business.
Throughout this month, we’ve shared what API has learned over our long history of working with news organizations and helping news leaders navigate change. Understanding what communities value, building teams capable of adapting and making decisions grounded in evidence are all crucial for building trusted, resilient, people-first organizations capable of navigating change and strengthening civic life in their communities.
Try this
Start here: Identify a recurring decision your newsroom makes. For example, it could be allocating resources, evaluating a coverage area or deciding whether to continue an initiative.
Take action: Use these questions to examine how evidence is affecting your decisions and whether it leads to action:
- What data or research informs this decision now? What might be missing that would help you understand the value this work brings to your business and community?
- Who is involved in making this decision, and do they share an understanding of what success looks like?
- What would we need to see in the evidence to change course, invest more or stop doing something?
Reflect: What gaps in your decision-making process did the questions reveal? What’s one change you could test next time this decision comes up?
Dig deeper
- Organizational resilience is built through everyday practice
- Learn more about Metrics for News and Source Matters, and schedule a demo
- Adopt a product mindset for news
Join us in celebrating API’s 80th anniversary
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