This monthly newsletter is focused on sharing cutting edge stories, trends, topics, and social media posts with unique perspectives and new ideas that have the potential to translate to opportunities for news and magazine publishers. Stories and posts we share might cover topics as wide-ranging as Web3, podcasts, startups and technology, online advertising, and more. Click the links below to access current and past editions. I hope you enjoy and please let me know what you’re seeing out there that you see as up and coming for the news industry. Drop me a line at rebecca@newsmediaalliance.org.

Rebecca Frank, VP, Research & Insights, News/Media Alliance

To receive ‘Expanding the View’ in your email inbox each month, click here to subscribe.

Current Issue:

June 2023 – This month, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about one particular essay about the “creator economy.” To those of us working in “old media,” the idea of a single person, armed with a brain, a laptop, and the ability to distribute to the whole internet has long been positioned as “the future.” But in this insightful piece, Renée DiResta examines how the conditions of our current era – technological and reader attention-based – have led so many individual creators to become what DiResta calls “propagandists.” The piece is worth reading for anyone who believes in the value of fact-based news, and also the business model that supports it. Keep reading.

Past Issues:

May 2023 

April 2023

March 2023

February 2023

January 2023

November 2022

October 2022

September 2022

August 2022

July 2022

June 2022

May 2022

April 2022

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Guest: Eric Barnes, The Daily Memphian

What are some of the things to consider when starting a local newspaper? How can you be nonprofit and still operate like a for-profit newspaper? How did you attract subscribers in a competitive market? What went better than you expected and what didn’t go as well? What have you learned about finding the best revenue mix? What should someone thinking about starting a local newspaper know before they get started?

In this episode of News Take, News/Media Alliance President & CEO David Chavern talks with Eric Barnes, CEO of The Daily Memphian (Tennessee), about his experience over the last four years launching a nonprofit local newspaper. Eric takes us from the very initial discussions and fundraising steps, to deciding whether to publish a print edition or be a purely a digital news publication, to how they decided what to charge for subscriptions and how they structure their organization to allow them to employ 40 newsroom staff (Hint: It’s not on pure philanthropy!) He shares everything, from how they took cues from the community to chart a practical course for advertising, fundraising, and reporting; to why they don’t do sponsored content and scaled back on podcasts; to how they found a balance that is working for them. This must-listen primer on launching a nonprofit digital news publication is full of practical tips and takeaways for anyone wanting to run a news publishing business!

Listen or download the audio file to listen offline:

Don’t forget to subscribe to the News Take podcast by clicking “Follow” and selecting your preferred podcasting platform, or click on your preferred platform: Spotify, Apple, Google.

Watch with video:

Speaker bios

Eric Barnes

Eric is CEO of The Daily Memphian, an online daily news source in Memphis that launched in September 2018. For ten years, Eric has hosted “Behind the Headlines” on Memphis’ PBS station, a weekly news show focused on local government, business and the community. Since 2019, he has also hosted “The Sidebar,” a podcast on The Daily Memphian and radio show on local radio station WYXR, that focuses on arts, culture and everything in between. Eric is also publisher of a group of community newspapers in Tennessee, and a former president and current board member of the Tennessee Press Association. He is currently president of the American Court & Commercial Newspapers and is on the board of the Local Media Association. He is a novelist and a published short story writer, and has a Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s from Connecticut College.

Watch the previous episode of News Take

View all episodes of News Take

Send us your suggestions

Send your suggestions for future News Take guests to Alliance VP, Research & Insights Rebecca Frank at rebecca@newsmediaalliance.org.

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Guest: Rand Fishkin, SparkToro

“My position is, How do we help marketers find the sources of influence that their audience pays attention to outside of these big ecosystems? Because we think that’s not only good for the advertiser, it’s good for the publisher, too. If you’ve built a great audience, you should have people coming to you who want to reach that audience, you shouldn’t have to participate in Google’s extremely low payout advertising network or FB’s or put all your content on TikTok for free. Those mechanisms for driving revenue, we think are fundamentally biased and unfair.”

– Rand Fishkin, SparkToro

What can publishers do to get out from under the dominant tech platforms that control the digital advertising space? How have other industries pushed back on Google’s scraping of their data and coming between them and their audience? How can publishers take back control of our audience data so that we’re not having to go through Google, Facebook and the other tech platforms to reach our own audience?

In this episode of News Take, News/Media Alliance President & CEO David Chavern is joined by Rand Fishkin, cofounder and CEO of audience research software firm SparkToro, for a fascinating conversation about the big tech platforms, their algorithms, and how the Internet has evolved from a once equitable environment that was mutually beneficial, to now favoring only a handful of giant tech platforms today. Rand paints a picture of the digital marketing landscape businesses must navigate today, highlighting concerns with tech platforms’ walled gardens in which they intentionally try to keep you from leaving. He shares SparkToro’s research on “zero click searches” that has gained attention from marketers worldwide on how few web searches now result in a click through to the original content. And he explains how his company helps marketers understand their audience’s behaviors and preferences without having to rely on Google and Facebook, and the importance of taking back ownership of your audience relationships and data.

Listen or download the audio file to listen offline:

Don’t forget to subscribe to the News Take podcast by clicking “Follow” and selecting your preferred podcasting platform, or click on your preferred platform: Spotify, Apple, Google.

Watch with video:

Speaker bios

Rand Fishkin is cofounder and CEO of SparkToro, a software company that provides unique audience research and insights, aggregated from tens of millions of verifiable public social and web profiles, to make channels outside Facebook and Google accessible to everyone. Rand started SparkToro in 2018 with Casey Henry. Prior to that, he was CEO of Moz, where he raised two rounds of funding, led three acquisitions, and a rebrand. From 2007 to 2014, he grew the company to over 130 employees, more than $30 million in revenue, and web traffic to over 30 million visitors a year. He’s dedicated his professional life to helping people do better marketing through his writing, videos, speaking, and his book, Lost and Founder. Rand previously co-contributed to two other books: Art of SEO, and Inbound Marketing & SEO. He’s been profiled in the Seattle Times, featured in Puget Sound Business Journal’s 40 Under 40, named to BusinessWeek’s 30 Under 30, written about in Newsweek, The Next Web, the Inc 500, and hundreds of other publications.

Additional Resources

In 2020, Two Thirds of Google Searches Ended Without a Click (Sparktoro)

White Paper: How Google Abuses Its Position as a Market Dominant Platform to Strong-Arm News Publishers and Hurt Journalism (News/Media Alliance – features SparkToro’s zero click research)

Watch the next episode: Lessons in Practicality from The Daily Memphian: “A Lot of People Don’t Know We’re a Nonprofit” 

Watch the previous episode: Update on News Deserts and Local News Trends

View all episodes

Send us your suggestions

Send your suggestions for future News Take guests to Alliance VP, Research & Insights Rebecca Frank at rebecca@newsmediaalliance.org.

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Guests: Penny Muse Abernathy and Tim Franklin, the Medill Journalism School Local News Initiative at Northwestern University

“In this vast country, newspapers have historically been the prime, if not the sole source, for most small and mid-size independent communities. So, if you lose a newspaper, you’re losing the person who shows up to cover the school board meeting, the person who shows up to cover the county commissioner or even the zoning policy changes that can be quite controversial and affect the long-term quality of life of a community. The good news is I think there are a lot of things that are going on that can stem that, that range from policy solutions to new funding opportunities to new business development.“

– Penny Muse Abernathy, Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University

“What comes behind a news desert? We know that Facebook Groups emerge in these communities. … But as we know even as well-intentioned as those good people can be, that’s not the same as vetted, reported local news and local journalism. As so what happens is you have the, in some cases, unintentional spread of misinformation in those communities, and especially at a time when our democracy is already facing challenges, and at a time when we’re coming out of a pandemic, we know the need for accurate, credible, reliable news and information.”

– Tim Franklin, Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University

What is the state of local news today? What’s changed, where are there still concerns? What makes a community vulnerable to becoming a news desert? What does the future hold for the print newspaper? What are the most powerful opportunities for policy to help local news grow and thrive? What are some examples of positive outcomes and how can other news publishers emulate their success?

News/Media Alliance President & CEO David Chavern talks with the authors of now well-known research throughout the industry on the phenomenon known as news deserts, Penny Muse Abernathy and Tim Franklin of the Medill School of Journalism’s Local News Initiative at Northwestern University. In this thought-provoking conversation, Abernathy and Franklin share the findings from their latest update to The State of Local News report, released this summer. The previous edition of the report by Abernathy, released by the University of North Carolina Hussman School of Journalism and Media in 2020, revealed startling trends on the prevalence of news deserts, finding one-quarter of U.S. newspapers have closed since 2005. But there are reasons to be optimistic, and Abernathy and Franklin provide their thoughts on how the trend could yet be reversed. The two journalists-turned-academicians discuss innovations in digital publishing, as well as the introduction of non-advertising focused revenue models, including subscriptions and membership models, nonprofit organization structures, and other revenue models, that they say could offer a path for publishers who are living in areas that are vulnerable to becoming a news desert, as well as those who want to start a newspaper in a news desert.

Listen or download the audio file to listen offline:

Don’t forget to subscribe to the News Take podcast by clicking “Follow” and selecting your preferred podcasting platform, or click on your preferred platform: Spotify, Apple, Google.

Watch with video:

Speaker bios

Penny Muse Abernathy is a visiting professor at the Medill School. While at Medill, Abernathy is collaborating with the school’s Local News Initiative and Spiegel Research Center on local news-related projects, research and teaching. Abernathy is a former senior business executive with The New York Times, Harvard Business Review and Wall Street Journal, and was the Knight Chair in Journalism and Digital Media Economics at the University of North Carolina from 2008 to 2020. Her research focuses on the implications of the digital revolution for news organizations, the information needs of communities and the emergence of news deserts in the United States.

Tim Franklin is Senior Associate Dean, Professor and John M. Mutz Chair in Local News at the Medill School , where he is leading the Local News Initiative, a research-and-development project designed to bolster the sustainability of local news in America, and the Medill Metro Media Lab, a project funded by the Robert R. McCormick Foundation to strengthen the local news ecosystem and journalism education in the Chicago area. Franklin was appointed earlier this year by Governor J.B. Pritzker to serve on the Illinois Local Journalism Task Force, a bipartisan group studying the local news crisis in the state and recommending potential policy solutions. Before joining Medill in 2017, Franklin was President of The Poynter Institute, a leading international school for journalists and a media think tank.

Additional Resources

The State of Local News 2022 (Medill School of Journalism’s Local News Initiative, Northwestern University)

Watch the previous episode: The State of Advertising and Local News

Watch the next episode: Outsmarting Google and Facebook: Helping Publishers Grow Their Audience Outside the Dominant Platforms 

View all episodes

Send us your suggestions

Send your suggestions for future News Take guests to Alliance VP, Research & Insights Rebecca Frank at rebecca@newsmediaalliance.org.

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The post News Take Episode 110: Update on News Deserts and Local News Trends with Penny Muse Abernathy and Tim Franklin appeared first on News/Media Alliance.

News publishers and magazines have become highly experimental and deeply innovative businesses. We have larger audiences than ever — but also need to create new products and distribution systems to drive a better future. This newsletter is designed to highlight interesting ideas and provoke some thinking. Send suggestions to david@newsmediaalliance.org.

To receive ‘Expanding the View’ in your email inbox each month, click here to subscribe.

What I’ve been reading this month:

For Creators, Community is the New Follower Count (The Washington Post)
Community apps for audiences of influencers and other creators may be the future of engagement with content.

Lewis Black Sues Pandora for $10 Million Over Copyright Infringement (The Verge)
As Spotify continues to grow, comedians continue to sue for copyright infringement.

Why Republicans Stopped Talking to the Press (New York Magazine)
“Sitting down with the mainstream press has come to be seen by Republican primary voters as consorting with the enemy, and approval by the enemy is the political kiss of death.” – As we move deeper into 2022 election season, a shift in Republican strategy.

Opinion: I Stopped Reading the News. Is the Problem Me — or the Product? (The Washington Post) – A take on news avoidance, from deep within the news industry.

10 Key Takeaways for News Subscription Managers from the 2022 Digital News Report (What’s New in Publishing) – An overview of some innovative findings from the 2022 Reuters Institute report.

Meet the Lobbyist Next Door (WIRED)
Is your favorite influencer actually a lobbyist?

How Software Is Stifling Competition and Slowing Innovation (The New York Times)
“There is an advantage to software that economists haven’t really reckoned with yet. Software isn’t accelerating creative destruction today. Software is suppressing it.”

Leaked Videos Show Disney Is the Biggest Ad Tech Giant You’ve Never Heard Of (VICE)
Might the future of ads and media look a lot like the past?

Web3/Blockchain:

As more and more groundbreaking discussions about Web3 and blockchain are taking place every day, I’m dedicating a section of this newsletter to the topic and will highlight the most interesting ones each month.

Hype is a Weaponized Form of Optimism (Nieman Lab)
A contrarian take on emerging technologies.

Developer Turns ‘Future of Gaming’ Talk into a Surprise Attack on Convention’s NFT and Blockchain Sponsors (PC Gamer)
How one developer fought back against the domination of the gaming industry by crypto.

Podcasts:

The Mid-Century Media Theorists Who Saw What Was Coming  (The Ezra Klein Show)

Notable in the Twitter-verse:

Check out these accounts for more on these and other emerging topics:

Gregg Fernandes: @GreggFernandes
Steve Lohr: @SteveLohr
Amanda Ripley: @amandaripley
Ben Wofford: @BenWoffordDC
Taylor Lorenz: @TaylorLorenz

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The post Expanding the View – July 2022 appeared first on News/Media Alliance.

News publishers and magazines have become highly experimental and deeply innovative businesses. We have larger audiences than ever — but also need to create new products and distribution systems to drive a better future. This newsletter is designed to highlight interesting ideas and provoke some thinking. Send suggestions to david@newsmediaalliance.org.

To receive ‘Expanding the View’ in your email inbox each month, click here to subscribe.

What I’ve been reading this month:

The Biggest Change in Media Since Cable Is Happening Right Now (Politico)
Following the demise of CNN+, many predicted an end to streaming digital news platforms. But Politico’s Jack Shafer sees another story. 

An Inflection Point Year for TV Viewing as Cord-Cutters Dominate (CivicScience)
Research firm CivicScience breaks down the trends related to cable “cord cutting” and digital streaming, and makes some predictions for the future.

Google Agrees to Pay for Beefed-Up Wikipedia Service (Courthouse News Service)
While Google is involved in international negotiations regarding paying for news, it has recently agreed to pay the Wikimedia Foundation for access to Wikipedia articles.

Journalism Has Suddenly Taken Off on TikTok: What Publishers Need to Know (Press Gazette)
With the rise of TikTok as a social media platform and cultural juggernaut, some news brands are breaking through to global audiences of the app’s younger users.

Popular Science Owner Recurrent Ventures Raises $300 Million in Blackstone-Led Round (The Wall Street Journal)
A bet on media.

Facebook’s Current State of Decomposition (Garbage Day)
Deep diving into the most recent Facebook Widely Viewed Content report and what it can tell us about the current state of the company and its prospects.

Web3/Blockchain:

I’ve been thinking a lot about crypto and Web3 – and there have been a lot of diverse opinions this month:

The Pivot to Web3 Is Going to Get People Hurt (VICE)
Looking into who stands to benefit from the Web3 “revolution.”

Cautionary Tales from Cryptoland (Harvard Business Review)
Part of HBR’s extensive series on Web3, blockchain and crypto, looking at some of the riskier elements.

Paradise at the Crypto Arcade: Inside the Web3 Revolution (WIRED )
A journalist went to a crypto conference to understand the mindset and found himself starting his own DAO.

In Defense of Crypto(currency) (A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering)
A cryptographer’s deep dive into the fundamentals that underlie cryptocurrency, while acknowledging many of the field’s flaws.

Notable in the Twitter-verse:

Check out these accounts for more on these and other emerging topics:

Cecilia Kang: @ceciliakang
Catherine Perloff: @catherineperlo1
Feli Carrique: @felicarrique
News Product Alliance: @newsproduct
Today in News Tech: @TodayinNewsTech

From @acfou:

1 in 5 CTV ads shown when TV is off

"Some 17% of ads shown on televisions connected through a streaming device—including streaming boxes, dongles, sticks and gaming consoles—are playing while the TV is off." https://t.co/Kq6xOX9N3S

— Dr. Augustine Fou (@acfou) June 13, 2022

From @ScottBrodbeck:

I’ve been doing this local news thing for 12+ years at this point and for the first time I think I know how it’s going to shake out

— Scott Brodbeck (@scottbrodbeck) June 1, 2022

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The post Expanding the View – June 2022 appeared first on News/Media Alliance.

This is my monthly reading list of stories about emerging business trends that I thought were interesting and are designed to make you think. I hope you enjoy – and if you see any up-and-coming trends for the news industry that you’d like to share, drop me a line at david@newsmediaalliance.org.

To receive ‘Expanding the View’ in your email inbox each month, click here to subscribe.

What I’ve been reading this month:

How the Pandemic Made Algorithms Go Haywire (Slate)
Algorithms have entered every market, industry and sector. This story looks at what happened when healthcare got involved.

Forget Personalisation, It’s Impossible and It Doesn’t Work (MarketingWeek)
For years, personalized marketing has been seen as the holy grail of the field. Should it be?

What Problem Blockchains Actually Solve (The Solution Space)
If recent news about cryptocurrency has you scrambling to find more about the fundamentals, this is a great place to start.

Publishers’ Secondary Market Strategy: What Happens When the Monetary Appeal of NFTs Isn’t Enough?  (Digiday)
For anyone considering using NFTs to raise money, the key question is “then what?”

The 4 Hurdles Micropayment Platforms Can’t Overcome (Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter)
Micropayments have been promised as a solution to the news industry’s woes for years. Why haven’t the promises panned out?

Notable in the Twitter-verse:

Check out these accounts for more on these and other emerging topics:

Alex Kantrowitz: @Kantrowitz
Keach Hagey: @keachhagey
Will Oremus: @WillOremus
Tech Policy Press: @techpolicypress
Julien Genestoux: @julien51

From @AKGrenier:

@netflix DON'T MESS THIS UP!

You have one of the most unique opportunities to execute monetization on a global content platform ever.

DON'T TAKE A GENERIC ADS APPROACH!!!

My brain on how to think about ads from a customer and product first approach on Netflix. …

— Adam Grenier (@AKGrenier) April 21, 2022

From @JorgeStolfi:

Every computer scientist should be able to see that cryptocurrencies are totally disfunctional payment systems, and that "blockchain technology" (including "smart constracts") is a technological fraud. Would they please say that out loud?

— Jorge Stolfi (@JorgeStolfi) May 5, 2022

From @michaelbeach:

Local video advertising will be a $55B market in 2022.

Three big questions.

— Michael Beach (@michaelbeach) May 2, 2022

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The post Expanding the View – May 2022 appeared first on News/Media Alliance.

I’m here with a new monthly reading list of stories about emerging business trends that I thought were interesting and are designed to make you think. I hope you enjoy and please let me know what you’re seeing out there that you see as up and coming for the news industry. Drop me a line at david@newsmediaalliance.org.

To receive ‘Expanding the View’ in your email inbox each month, click here to subscribe.

What I’ve been reading this month:

Six Months In, El Salvador’s Bitcoin Gamble is Crumbling (Rest of World)
A deep dive on how the country’s bold crypto experiment is faring.

Web3 and the Trap of ‘For Good’(Stanford Social Innovation Review)
Confused by the big claims around Web3? Here’s a deep dive into how proponents may be wrong that Web3 will change the world.

What Google Search Isn’t Showing You (The New Yorker)
After years as the dominant search engine, is Google still the best tool out there?

Fake News about our Fake News Study Spread Faster than its Truth… Just as We Predicted. (Sinan Aral)
A study about Fake News got the Fake News treatment. You won’t believe what happened next!

Into the Military Metaverse: An Empty Buzzword or a Virtual Resource for the Pentagon? (Breaking Defense)
As industries everywhere consider their dive into the metaverse, a look at how the Department of Defense is thinking about this transition.

President Obama Delivers Speech on Disinformation’s Threat to Democracy (Barack Obama)
President Barack Obama’s Stanford speech on disinformation dives deep into how evolving social and traditional media have led us to this moment.

Chris Dixon Thinks Web3 is the Future of the Internet – Is it? (The Verge)
A long interview with famed tech investor Chris Dixon on the future of web3, crypto, and the state of VC.

Notable in the Twitter-verse:

Check out these accounts for more on these and other emerging topics:

Alan Graham: @agraham999
Aram Zucker-Scharff: @Chronotope
web3 is going just great: @web3isgreat
Big Technology: @BigTechnology
Robin Berjon: @robinberjon

From @jasonkilar:

An observation about digital media, especially video: if a company has to pay for the production of content presented on its service, ad revenue alone is very rarely – if ever – enough to result in a sustainable business long term.

— Jason Kilar (@jasonkilar) April 21, 2022

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The post Expanding the View – April 2022 appeared first on News/Media Alliance.

skynesher / E+ via Getty Images

Ken Doctor did a recent piece on “epiphanies” that caused me to think of a few of my own.

First, Ken is very right that the ultimate answer lies in the consistent production of great news content. If you want people to pay more for your product, then you need to deliver a great product. But as we all know, quality local journalism can only continue if there is a business model to support it.

Our entire objective behind the Journalism Competition & Preservation Act (JCPA) is to create terms and conditions that will return value back to the publishers and reporters who create original, high-quality journalism. We need to move away from the Google- and Facebook-driven incentives that reward clickbait – and create a vibrant digital marketplace that values more and better local reporting. If the financial incentives favor great content, then that is where the investment capital will flow. And despite the cynicism, there is every reason to think we can get there.

I find it strange when commentators – particularly from within the industry – imply that news publishers don’t even have the right to ask for more value from Google and Facebook. This is part of a whole line of thinking where folks would prefer to fight about decisions made in the industry 20 years ago instead of addressing the hard problems right in front of us. I absolutely couldn’t care less about business decisions made decades ago, and I don’t think our answers will be found there.

The question is, do we want quality local journalism in the future or not? And there is nothing inherently wrong with asking those who distribute our content and disproportionately benefit from the user attention around news to return more of that value back to the publishers and hard-working reporters who produce it. Google and Facebook pay music publishers (among many other content creators) every day – so why are local news publishers and journalists singled out for special ill-treatment? (And can we finally drop the argument that referral traffic is its own reward? That is a truly backward-looking view.)

The ones who need collective action the most are local publishers who have no individual standing or capacity to demand better compensation for their valuable content. (By the way, some have expressed the concern that our bill could create a “media cartel.” That concern is both laughable in the face of the market power of Google and Facebook – and completely contrary to the other counter-argument that the platforms don’t care about news and will feel no need to negotiate at all!)

Some still also express a very 1980’s concern about consolidation in the news industry. We should all start by understanding that this is still a pretty unconsolidated business compared to many others. There are literally thousands of independent news publishers. No single player – including Gannett – could even begin to claim dominance over our collective news attention. And, frankly, consolidation is a rational response to the business economics driven by the platforms. Anyone who wants less consolidation should support efforts to allow local publishers to get more value back for their journalism.

There have been tremendously brutal cutbacks in the industry, but we still have a highly dispersed local news ecosystem that is producing quality journalism in many communities. Do we want to set digital terms that will allow it to rebuild and grow – or, alternatively, are we going to allow professional local journalism to disappear altogether?

Finally, there will always be critics who like to complain about the JCPA. But, to date, none have been able to offer a viable alternative solution for the future of the news business. Just to be very clear: rich people and the government aren’t going to save us – and they shouldn’t have to. Producing great content and getting full value from the supply chain is a rational and eminently practical approach for building a strong digital future for quality journalism.

The post A Few Epiphanies of My Own appeared first on News/Media Alliance.

What brought you to the news media industry and API?

I knew I wanted to be a journalist since I was in high school. I went to the University of Missouri to get my bachelor’s degree, and after I graduated, I started working for small local newsrooms in Virginia and South Carolina covering crime, government, health and environment. In 2008, when my newsroom and others were facing layoffs, I decided to expand my knowledge of digital journalism. I found Patch.com and started working there as a reporter/editor with various roles in management and training. I learned a lot about digital journalism, analytics and training, which were the skills that API needed when it was starting Metrics for News. There was something really appealing to me about building something from scratch.

What is Metrics for News and how is it different from other analytics platforms?

Metrics for News is software we created in 2014 when publishers started asking us how their editors could make more empirical decisions about what to cover and how. At first, we looked to their Google Analytics, but that wasn’t enough. It didn’t answer the key questions publishers ask themselves all the time, such as which beats drive engagement, how a given author can improve or how to attract more subscribers. So, we decided to create Metrics for News to help publishers better understand their audience and deepen their engagement, grow their subscribers, write better stories, etc.

Our platform is different from any other metrics app; it is a content strategy tool where publishers can analyze hundreds and thousands of stories over time to learn the qualities that drive engagement, as well as identify new trends that could benefit audience and subscriber growth.

In 2018, we went through a massive redesign. We talked to newsrooms to get their feedback and decided to change our original platform to something more user friendly that would help anyone in a newsroom, and not only the people who were already familiar with analytics. We wanted Metrics for News to better assist newsrooms as a whole, including reporters working to grow their skills in audience development and analytics.

What are you working on to help Metrics for News’ members?

I think the biggest project that I keep working on is helping publishers better understand their audiences and their needs through analytics. I’m working with API to make sure publishers are getting answers to the key questions and information they need. Day-to-day, our team is talking to newsrooms, training them on how to use this strategic data, and continuing to evolve our product to better support our partner newsrooms and the communities they serve.

What do you consider to be the biggest challenge facing the news media industry in 2019?

There are lots of challenges: the audience’s perspective about misinformation and disinformation is one of the biggest issues. We have folks at API who work on that challenge specifically. Another issue is the path to sustainability for local newsrooms. Our efforts in Metrics for News are one way to support newsrooms trying to better identify what drives people to subscribe as they move away from advertising models alone and toward ones heavily supported by reader revenue.

What is the most promising opportunity for news publishers in 2019?

I think it’s still an exciting time to be a journalist. I think one of the biggest opportunities for publishers this year is to keep getting better at understanding and listening to their audiences to learn how what they are producing is helping their audiences live their lives, connect them to their communities and satisfy their needs.

What are you most excited about in your role at API for the rest of this year?

I’m excited to keep working here. The people at API are all very smart and passionate about journalism, which makes it fun. I am also excited to keep improving the future of Metrics for News and spreading it across more newsrooms to help them improve their business.

The post 6 Answers with Liz Worthington, Director of Content Strategy at American Press Institute appeared first on News/Media Alliance.