Local Journalism for Local Readers

The Pivot to Community

Damon Kiesow Knight Chair in Digital Editing and Producing Missouri School of Journalism @dkiesow

New York Press Association April 5, 2019

Albany, NY

Scale is Dead

• Collect and use the right data

• Improve your marketing skills

• Align departments around one revenue goal

• Apply data-driven insights

• Build a culture focused on readers

https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/reader-revenue/what-it-really-means-to-shift-to-reader-revenue/

Local Media are the Keystone Species in the Journalism Ecosystem

NPS Photo / Ken Conger

Trophic Cascade

Adapted from Wikipedia user Ccarroll17

Fewer Local Journalists

Less Coverage of Municipal and State Government

Increased Costs & Corruption

Degradation of Local and National Discourse

Loss of Trust in Media and Institutions

Fewer Local Newspapers

https://www.usnewsdeserts.com/reports/expanding-news-desert/download-a-pdf-of-the-report/

Fewer Local Journalists

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/07/30/newsroom-employment-dropped-nearly-a-quarter-in-less-than-10-years-with-greatest-decline-at-newspapers/

Fewer Community Connections

“During the height of family newspaper ownership, in the early 20th century, newspaper owners ….were likely to

bump into readers at the grocery store or serve alongside them on the boards of local civic organizations.”

Madison and DeJarnette (2017) via Nikki Usher

https://medium.com/@nikkiusher/audiences-relationships-to-the-places-of-news-and-power-have-changed-3a90948f9646

Less Visibility of Local Journalists

https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/reports/survey-research/personal-experience-with-news/

Less Government Coverage

*2014 Data

https://www.journalism.org/2014/07/10/americas-shifting-statehouse-press/

Increased Municipal Costs

“Following a newspaper closure, municipal borrowing costs increase by 5 to 11 basis points, costing the municipality an

additional $650 thousand per issue. This effect is causal and not driven by underlying economic conditions.”

Financing Dies in Darkness? The Impact of Newspaper Closures on Public Finance Gao, Lee & Murphy (2018)

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/WP44.pdf

Polarized National Discourse

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/02/21/republicans-would-least-like-their-kids-marry-transgender-person-democrats-republican/

Polarized Voting Patterns

“We discern a significant effect—a decline of split-ticket voting across votes for the presidency and the Senate—

from the loss of any local newspaper.”

Newspaper Closures Polarize Voting Behavior (Darr, Hitt & Dunaway 2018)

https://joshuadarr.weebly.com/uploads/5/1/8/1/51819147/darr_et_al._-_newspaper_closures_jcomm__as_accepted_.pdf

Loss of Trust

https://www.knightfoundation.org/reports/indicators-of-news-media-trust

How Did We Get Here?

• Chasing audience scale - Facebook, Google, Apple

• Chasing digital advertising scale

• Chasing ‘pivots’

• Chasing efficiencies & centralization

• Not engaging our communities

“To what degree does that sense of community connection relate to (media) job approval? Quite a bit, it turns out.”

For Local News, Americans Embrace Digital but Still Want Strong Community Connection - Pew

Your Community is an Asset

https://www.journalism.org/2019/03/26/for-local-news-americans-embrace-digital-but-still-want-strong-community-connection/

Community Drives Trust

https://www.journalism.org/2019/03/26/characteristics-of-communities-show-some-effect-on-local-news-habits/

Inclusion Builds Community

“Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.”

-Melvin Conway

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law

Voices not present in a discussion will be disadvantaged in the outcome.

Shorter Conway’s Law

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law

“When corporate-wide decisions are made at a distance from local readers, those decisions are by definition distorting local needs — either by omission or commission.”

- Me

Local Control, Local Voices

https://medium.com/media-stack/local-ownership-or-local-control-83ae9d992984

“National and local journalism are not the same business. The New York Times can chase scale for profit, The Centre Daily Times can’t. Because what the New York Times has is an audience. In State College, they have a community.”

-Me

Local Readers at Local Scale

https://medium.com/media-stack/journalisms-dunbar-number-934f60027927

Community Doesn’t Scale

• Programmatic advertising needs scale

• Local journalism has specific geographic constraints

• Chasing a scaled business model but a local editorial mission is a fundamental conflict

• Local journalism requires a local community engaged at all levels

• Average page-load times are far too high

• Ad takeovers and abusive redirects drive daily complaints

• Click-bait, attention-gap headlines, promoted links…

• Opportunity cost spent on platform plays

• Pushing out-of-state stories over social to go viral

• A focus on page views as the key metric

The Consequences of Scale

Do What?

• If we believe these things to be true

• What actions do we take

• How do we structure our organizations

• How do we make a difference

Banish These Metrics

• Page views

• Unique Visitors

• Visits

Use Better Metrics

• Local Page Views

• New Visitors

• Visits with Conversions

• Churn & Retention Rates

• Lifetime Value

Align Your Goals

A challenge for many local media companies:

• The tension between Advertising and Audience revenue teams

• Conflicting goals and incentives across departments

• Siloed skills, data, tools and insights

Nothing Worth Doing Can Be Done in a Silo

• A marketing campaign targeting a specific audience onsite and offsite

• A proposal to launch a new paid sports vertical

• Design of a personalization feature to drive onsite engagement

• A research study to create an ad-free experience for your subscribers

Nothing Worth Doing Can Be Done in a Silo

• A marketing campaign targeting a specific audience onsite and offsite

• A proposal to launch a new paid sports vertical

• Design of a personalization feature to drive onsite engagement

• A research study to create an ad-free experience for your subscribers

Marketing & Analytics & Social & Audience

Editorial & Advertising & Audience & Product

UX & Product & Development & Audience & Editorial

Audience & Advertising & Analytics & Product

• What is your annual revenue per user?

• What is your annual revenue per subscriber?

• Does that calculation include advertising as well as print or digital subscriptions revenues?

• How many people must be consulted to gather these answers?

• How long does it take to collect that data?

Make Data-Informed Decisions

• Fix page performance

• Understand what drives engagement

• Customize entry points into the funnel

• Target readers based on propensity to pay

Improve Your (on-site) Marketing

Study Propensity to Pay

6 Points Very Likely

4 Points Possibly

1 Point Unlikely

Develop Profiles of Likely Subscribers

Matt Skibinski, Lenfest https://centerforcooperativemedia.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2018/04/Skibinski-Lenfest-MSU-Presentation.pdf

Work the Funnel

Implicit recognition of brand, or explicit visit.

Interest

Engagement

Choice

$

Awareness

Return visit with intent not just a blind referral

Critical point of intervention for publishers

Decision to buy or other longer-term relationship

Subscription or other commitment.

Critical point of intervention for publishers

Find out What is Engaging

Implicit recognition of brand, or explicit visit.

Interest

Engagement

Choice

$

Awareness

Decision to buy or other longer-term relationship

Subscription or other commitment.

• Related stories

• Specific topics

• Newsletters

• Mobile Apps

• Coupons

• Video

Return visit with intent not just a blind referral

What Winning Looks Like

• Local voices are heard and valued

• Organizational changes encourage collaboration

• UX and design improvements are strategic assets

• Teams prioritize positive not negative digital interactions

• Newsroom goals prioritize reader loyalty

• The business model aligns with the editorial mission