- A Quick Hello from the Internet
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Hello.
a quick hello from the internet
Hi, team. Just writing with a quick hello, and also some educational resources and a shout into the void — this time from a reporter!
— Dave Burdick
p.s. I’ll be in Chicago for the LION Publishers Summit in September and I’ll be checking out the virtual/remote News Product Alliance Summit in October. Will you be? Let me know!
IT’S BACK-TO-SCHOOL SEASON
If you sign up for even one webinar or class in August, September or October, you’re allowed to buy yourself new school supplies, and if that’s not a law in your state, you should start a petition for it (with some new school supplies).
I’ve seen this Poynter training on leading with influence advertised before. I haven’t taken it but I asked around and got some positive reviews. The listed learning outcomes are good ones, and would help you navigate the weird, low-gravity world of decision-making in news right now. Next one’s in October and it’s $600.
For $95, some nice people who have spent a lot of time literally researching this stuff offer “Newsletters 2.0: Strategies to delight audiences and grow revenue.” That’s a pretty low-cost way to refresh your thinking about newsletters. (Hey news leaders, CEOs, etc.! This would be a good, quick thing for you, too!)
Trusting News is offering free coaching for newsrooms on “depolarizing your election coverage” — “Here are some ideas of what our team can help you with: Reaching people who are avoiding political news, widening your audience, addressing the perception of biased coverage, getting sources and politicians to talk to you, handling misinformation and disinformation, responding to comments and criticism, prioritizing coverage decisions, differentiating your coverage from overall frustration with political news and politics in general.”
A free panel from Hacks/Hackers caught my eye — “AI Real Talk Series: To Sue or Not to Sue - The Legal Battle Over AI and Journalism.” It’s next Wednesday, August 28. I’m interested to hear what experts say about whether they think these lawsuits are viable and/or productive.
This isn’t a class or workshop, but it’s on theme: “It is common for staff at The Economist to rotate between editor and reporter positions, departments and even countries.” Colleagues I’ve had who’ve rotated through different roles in the newsroom invariably understand the newsroom, its needs, its quirks and its people better than those who don’t. They’re better team players, more realistic and way lower-ego. Do you know of any other newsrooms that do this as a matter of course? I’d love to hear about them.
a pain point that might seem familiar
Here’s where I take a question from one of you — submit yours here — and put it to an expert or two (or this time three!).
Isn't enough to find, report and produce awesome stories?
The full question: “We're getting hit over the head with ‘ROI.’ Isn't enough to find, report and produce awesome stories? We all understand the importance of the business, but why foist this on the journalist when there are entire departments responsible for revenue?”
I’ve got three great people lined up to offer perspectives here. First up, Jennie Coughlin, senior audience editor, metro, at the New York Times — and also an occasional reporter on the running beat — speaking from the perspective of a national publication with an enormous existing and potential audience (with lots of competition for both):
Different newsrooms approach and talk about audience journalism differently, so I can’t speak to the ROI language. But the way I think about my role and the work I do with reporters and editors is to make sure the great journalism they’re producing is getting in front of as many people as possible, and especially the people who are the natural audience for those stories. The more often we succeed at doing that, the more likely we are to get people to decide to subscribe to the Times or to keep their existing subscription. The information we get from traffic and engagement data is useful to know if we’re succeeding at that goal. If we are, that helps us the next time out. If we’re not, it’s a chance to understand why not, and if we should rethink how we approach coverage in the future.
Did we make sure it was accessible where people who are interested in the topic would find it (and did they read it)? Did we answer the questions people had on the topic? Was it a story readers were interested in? Did we tell it in a way that kept them engaged until the end, or did they bail after just a few grafs? Did the story have a measurable impact on the community, such as an investigation that prompts reforms to a law? Based on the answers to those questions, I can make recommendations to editors with the goal of getting the great work the reporters do in front of people who care about it.
Wearing my reporter hat, the same is true. I write a lot of service stories for our New York City Marathon coverage each year, and last year I saw one of them hadn’t really engaged readers the way I would like. We know the interest is there, so we’re doing a story on the topic again this year, but I’m rethinking how I structure it to be more useful to the people who are the main audience for that particular information. Why? Because if I’m taking the time to report and write it, I want people to read it. They’re only going to read my story instead of a similar story from competitors if it does a better job of giving them what they need. That’s especially true because there are only so many marathon stories I have time to write, and if I spend time working on one nobody will read, I’ve given up the chance to write something different that might reach more people and have a bigger impact.
When I read Jennie’s thoughtful answer here, I see several critical elements: There’s a “main” or “intended” audience for a story; there’s intent around how to answer their questions, interest them and engage them; and there’s curiosity around whether and how those things happened, along with reflection to help do it better next time on the same subject. In my experience, most journalists are really interested in these clear parts of helping their work make a greater impact.
Next is a reply from Sitara Nieves, vice president at the Poynter Institute, who I met when she was coaching a whole cohort of organizations through the work of defining, then pursuing, digital success:
Finding, reporting and producing awesome stories is why we all get into this work. ROI can feel at odds with that, especially when it’s not well defined, but it may be useful to think about it as just being a way to understand how many people are consuming your work and find it meaningful enough to support. I’d recommend defining ROI for yourself first, as a journalist, by thinking through what’s important to you. For example, how many people do you want to read/watch/listen to feel good about the work you put into a piece? Do you want them to consume all of it, or is part ok? Do you care most about loyalty, and want people to follow you on socials and read everything you produce? Recommend your work to other people? Become loyal enough that they open their wallet and subscribe to something your organization creates?
This whole continuum (basically, a version of the audience funnel!) is all ROI is, and if you can start articulating which of those is most important to you, you can start talking with your bosses about how your goals line up with the organization’s goals.
That said, I don’t know how clear leadership has been in your workplace about what they mean by ROI — and how they are measuring it — but it’s worth getting clear if you’re hearing “ROI” without much detail behind those three letters. And if it’s not yet clear, the good news is that you might have the opportunity to help define it based on what you care most about.
Great advice from Sitara to start small — what job do you hope this story does? Or this collection of stories? And I love, too, how her answer is empowering for the reporter.
Finally let’s go local, with Margaux Maxwell, director of platform and product at Oregon Public Broadcasting:
Good journalism and good business don't have to be mutually exclusive, though they can be when done wrong. The art of crafting news that provides such an intimate reflection of a place that you affirm and uphold a sense of community predates analytics.
The original loyalty metric is journalism that makes people feel seen, recognized and part of something worthwhile. A great journalist has always understood that reporting is about relevance. It's not what the town council decided, it's how that decision affects people and what it means to them.
At a basic level, a great reporter gives a reader something to do, be it making a decision or talking about this story to a friend. That is the original call to action, long before the advent of the marketing term. And this is something worth supporting.
This isn't just about ROI; it's about fulfilling journalism's fundamental purpose of serving the public. The connection between great storytelling and business stability should be a natural one.
The tools we have today help you better understand how to serve your communities, address their information needs and the questions they have. Reporters are excellent at gathering qualitative data when they learn about their communities. "Instinct" is actually built on lots of pieces of qualitative data over time. But quantitative audience data can supplement that. Namely, it can help us remove some of the biases in our own thinking that come from "instinct." Data doesn't replace editorial judgment, but it should supplement it.
I love Margaux’s point about how thinking about audience long predates analytics as we now know them. Maybe we should start conversations with a simpler, but perhaps scarier question: Does the work we do have value to people who aren’t us? And how do we know if it does? Sometimes I wonder if implying this question, rather than asking it, is harder on journalists’ insecurities.
Thank you so much to all three experts here — I got something new from each.
One thing that occurred to me when reading the question that is worth addressing head-on: The news department is one of the departments responsible for revenue, and it always has been, whether it’s because the reader was expected to pay for the journalism via subscriptions or because the advertiser was expected to pay for the audience that was presumably attracted in part by the news department’s efforts.
That — and the mention of the term “ROI,” which I don’t really hear or see much in conversations around growing audience — means this question arrived in my inbox with a couple of little red flags.
But, good news: Today, by necessity, there are broad efforts to make the journalism clearly the main product we’re selling. That’s the best modern-day path to financial support for journalism that is valued for its direct service to real people and its service on behalf of real people.
As our experts above have said in various ways, journalists have to create value that someone, somewhere, cares about and is willing to pay for. But as they also said: Doing something valuable is why most of us signed up for this work in the first place.
A FINAL THOUGHT
On a webinar that I listened to this week, somebody said “You can’t teach drive.”
… can you?
1 Weekly phone calls asking me about audience stats, production, events and other outcomes made it clear that, in addition to employee happiness, results mattered. If everybody in your workplace knows that happiness and results matter, you’re already ahead of nearly every other workplace.