Towards journalism that adds real value to audienceS’ lives

Table Stakes Europe round 2 in review

By Doug Smith with input from the coaching team

This article is an extract from "Understanding your audience in a deeper way" – a report on the second round of Table Stakes Europe. You can download the full report here.

Every news enterprise begins the transformation jour­ney from different starting points. Some serve rural or suburban markets; others large, urban ones. Some have taken steps on the road to transformation before Table Stakes begins; others join the program still operating mostly to entirely in print­-centric ways. Some are single, often family owned, titles; others part of large, complex multi­-local, multi­-title, and multi-­business enterprises. Some have adequate-­to-­good technology; others must make significant tech choices to get into the game of 21st century news. And some are digital only startups found­ ed by entrepreneurial journalists who learned their trade in the print era.

TSE participants also take advantage of the time between the kickoff and second sessions to think hard about their starting point and crystallise the performance challenge at the heart of the TSE experience. For example, when Les Echos came to the Round 2 kickoff, their group included the newspaper General Manager, the Head and the Deputy­Head of the newsroom, and the publisher. At the kickoff, this team used the introduction of methods and tools to shape what we call a “version 1.0” of the challenge. Then, they went back home to use the tools over again and with other colleagues to revisit version 1.0 and make it better.

Their challenge shifted as the team realized real results and transformation would demand more than a set of decisions. So, with this clearer performance challenge in mind, they shifted their team to include the Head of UX, the Head of Product, the B2C Marketing Head, the Head of Data and the Editor in Chief of Digital content.

Regardless of starting point, all teams learn from the others. Why? Because while each group is unique, all of them must close shortfalls in the seven core table stakes – and all discover that the methodology and tools of perfor­mance-­driven change TM increases the odds of success.

This combination of difference and similarity is one I have witnessed over fifteen plus years in programs I designed to help journalism transition to 21st century realities, including Table Stakes Europe, the various Table Stakes US programs, and the Media Transforma­tion Challenge program (which, from 2007 to 2018, was called Sulzberger1). This pattern echoes the importance of Table Stake #6: Partner to expand your capacity and capabilities.

Participants in each TSE cohort as well as part of the growing TSE alumni community (plus connections to US-­based TS program alumni) partner in sharing what works and what doesn’t in their transformation journeys. Just one illustration: thousands of people-­to-­people Slack messages among participants seeking to learn and share. And, interestingly, partnering took on a novel form in the summer of 2021 when one participant, Schwäbischer Verlag, acquired another, Nordkurier Mediengruppe.

Reality Check: Winning folks’ time and attention, then converting that into habit

All news enterprises – especially local ones – battle for the scarce time and attention of the people they hope to serve. Success comes only when the news and informa­tion provided makes a difference to people’s lives where they live. Everyone in TSE knows from their own lives how much time they – like people everywhere – spend on screens and platforms. The question is: how best to get folks to spend time on the owned and operated screens of your news enterprise?

Then, once your news group is winning time and atten­tion, you must convert that into habit. The News Con­sumer Insight team at Google define ‘loyal’ users as those who visit at least 15 times a month, which is a useful starting point. From my perspective, real habit is daily habit – say, more than 25 times a month.

This two-­step effort – first time and attention, then habit – is what the Vocento team did when they decided to use a particular offering called Vivir as a crucible for finding a pathway to transformation. Read carefully the lan­guage Vocento used to describe their challenge (emphasis added):

FROM: Vivir as a section that addresses topics that matter in today’s society, with practical questions of general interest for everyday life.

TO: A meeting point about improving the day- to-day life of our readers through the issues that impact, excite, scare and thrill them.

Not the print­-legacy concept of “a section”. Rather, a “meeting point”.

Not the print­-legacy concept of “topics that matter in today’s society”. Rather, “issues that impact, excite, fear and thrill our readers”.

Not the print­-centric concept of “general interest”. Rather, “improving the day­-to­-day life” of real people.

Vocento’s cross-­functional team transformed Vivir’s con­ tent from topic to audience-­centered, used data to make and monitor the performance of choices, and shifted workflows from print-­first to audience/digital first. It paid off: by autumn 2021, users of Vivir were hitting the paywall more than twice as often than when TSE Round 2 began a year earlier. Even more crucially, Vocento had a proven playbook for shifting all of their newsrooms to audienceS/digital first, print later and better.

Selecting audienceS

To escape the losing trap of “general content for the general public”, TSE participants use criteria to identify audienceS to serve. Such criteria include: (1) is this target audience attractive enough to us in terms of journalistic and financial sustainability; (2) are we now or can we soon be good at serving this audience; and, (3) are we passionate about this audience. Some TSE groups add other criteria to this list. The key, though, is to articulate the criteria – and then actually use them.

The team from Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, for example, used these and other criteria to get started with three specific audienceS: teachers, home seekers, foodies. Others in­cluding General-Anzeiger Bonn (with their creative Bonn Appetit newsletter), Tiroler Tageszeitung, and 24 Heures also focused on people who love food and drink. Tiroler – with headquarters in the Inn Valley of the Austrian Alps – targeted mountain lovers, too. Meanwhile, other TSE Round 2 groups chose such audienceS as female executives (Les Echos), families (e.g., Nordwest-­Zeitung), people nostalgic for their rural, beautiful homeland (Nor­dkurier); local businesses, career seekers and entrepre­neurs (Diario de Navarro); and young women (NOZ).

Growing audienceS’ habit through adding real value to audienceS’ lives

The needs, interests and real­-life problems of, say, food­ies differ from those of young families or seniors in retirement or people seeking affordable housing. Or sports fans. Or voters during elections. Or folks navigating a pandemic or living on tight budgets.

Or, for example, Portuguese folks living in Switzerland – an audience selected by 24 Heures who, using TS #6

(partnering), they served in partnership with Mensagem de Lisboa, an all­-digital news startup founded by TSE Round 1 alumnae Catarina Carvalho.

In addition, there can be temporary audiences created by external events. News enterprises across the globe learned this during the pandemic (at least we all hope those are temporary). GA Bonn, for example, used all of their audience-­first and digital approaches to help thousands of folks in and around Bonn get through the terrible floods of the summer of 2021.

Once teams have identified the interests, needs and prob­lems to be solved for specific audienceS, they can answer a crucial question: What jobs do we need to do for this audience?

All journalists know the classic two jobs they do:

1. Help audiences be informed citizens in the place they live

2. Help audiences have the confidence that the news organization is holding the powerful accountable in the place those audiences live

Today, though, winning scarce time and attention and converting that into habit demands three possible addi­tional jobs:

1. Help audiences solve the necessities of their lives in the place that they live

2. Help audiences enhance the quality of their lives beyond the necessities in the place that they live

3. Help audiences work with one another to make the place they live together better

People seeking affordable housing pay attention to
news organizations who help them solve that problem. Schwäbisch Media saw this when they created a special tab and website for housing issues. Foodies seeking the best local options for enhancing the quality of their lives will do likewise – as 24 Heures, GA Bonn, Tiroler and others learned.

But note: not all audienceS demand all 5 jobs. You have to figure out which ones truly add value to people in ways that they will want to make a habit of your content on your owned and operated sites.

Please take note that ‘in the place’ is italicized. Every sin­gle TSE news enterprise have learned that local content outperforms non­local content. That’s important.

It is also strategically critical: neither large national nor global news enterprises nor the platforms themselves can compete with local news enterprises who focus on how local content – and trusted journalists with local knowledge – can serve real people’s needs.

Value promise, value delivery, value experience: the iterative cycle of performance and change

Once groups identify the needs, interests and problems of specific audienceS plus the jobs to be done in serving them, they know what value to promise those audienceS. As TSE groups learn, this is all the more likely to happen when they ask mini­-publisher teams (TS #7) to focus on specific audienceS.

Tiroler Tageszeitung, who launched their paywall in March of 2021, deployed mini­-publisher teams to win time, attention and habit from mountain lovers, soccer fans, early morning risers, foodies and football fans. Six months after the paywall launch, they achieved signifi­cant gains in registered users, time on site, habitual users and digital subs.

Tiroler’s mini-­publishing teams learned what value to promise to different audienceS – then, with colleagues, made crucial changes to how that value was delivered. Other TSE groups also learned­-by-­doing the key shifts in value delivery:

More than a third of digital subscriptions moved to Zeitungsverlag Waiblingen’s new app when it was launched.

Shifting the core editorial workflow to much earlier and throughout the day: Baylis, whose now weekly papers have served London suburbs since 1869, moved from 1 deadline per week to 21 (3 per day) which, with other changes, led to new engagement and revenue. By making a similar shift, L’Avenir’s pages views and visits across the day skyrocketed. The Irish Examiner did the same thing, describing it as a shift to a ‘broadcast schedule’ (which, with other steps, helped launch their careful­ly­ thought through adoption of a paywall). Zeitungsverlag Waiblingen (ZVW) moved editorial workflow to 7am to 11pm each day. Together with other steps, this paid off: ZVW more than doubled digital subscriptions over the course of the program (more than a third of whom moved to ZVW’s new app when it was launched – a major achievement in a world where apps outperform websites). And, Les Echos, among other steps, dramat­ically increased content available over the weekend as part of their focus on attracting women readers.

Skilling up the newsroom to learn audience and digital approaches: Using well­-honed story skills in new ways that deliver on promises to improve audienceS’ lives; mastering SEO; avoiding teaser texts that tell the whole story; intentionally helping users recirculate within the news site; shifting from text alone to multimedia; doing follow up stories grounded in story performance: these and other skills and approaches deliver value that is promised to different audienceS. The audienceS-­first approach, for example, took root at Grupo Serra though practicing these shifts. Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger created and shared bullet-­point tip cards across the newsroom in order to improve digital article and headline writing, along with SEO results. Saarbrücker Zeitung introduced structured quality feedback helping their reporters to assume the perspectives of audiences. Mediotejo.net became a valued partner to communities when hosting political debates in the run up to local elections, which helped their first­-ever launch of membership. And, a determined, inspiring and constantly expanding team at Le Quotidien Jurassien took effective advantage of both the first and second TSE Rounds to move from pilot to movement in skilling up their newsroom in concert with overcoming serious technology gaps.

Setting performance goals tied to the funnel discipline – then sharing data that journalists, editors and others understand, know how to use and, most important­ly, actually do use to meet and learn from those goals: Leaders at Diario de Navarra dramatically broke down siloes through establishing shared outcome­-goals from top to bottom of the funnel (simply put: get them to come; get them to stay; get them to pay; and, get them to stay paying instead of churning). One of the key principles of performance­-driven changeTM is: make performance results the primary objective of change, not change for the sake of change. The Diario team did just that. By setting shared performance goals – and then deploying the audienceS­-first approach, shifts in workflows and skills, deploying and using data – they made significant gains in users, page views, and time spent. Most im­portantly, they saw a nearly 60% gain in digital subs as well as a 60% drop in churn. Leaders grow as leaders by leading this kind of profound transformation: Diario’s Editor-­in-­Chief, for example, is now the Deputy Director of Transformation and Digital Development.

Meanwhile, the best teams also pay close attention to whether and how audienceS are experiencing the value promised and delivered. Saarbrücker Zeitung, SMK Petit Press, Tiroler, and other TSE teams, put in place new subscriber onboarding steps to help customers know and use the valuable content regularly.

And Les Echos used rapid experimentation (what we call “design/do”, which is identical to agile, sprints and so forth) to learn from user experiences how best to improve introductory subscription offers as well as add new and different value for those subs who renew.

The payoff: from quality journalism to quality journalism that makes people’s lives better

At the beginning of TSE Round 2, Nordwest-Zeitung (NWZ) set an inspiring goal: by the end of 2021, they wanted total subscribers (digital and print) to be greater than at any point since the end of 2017. In other words, they wanted to prove to themselves that NWZ could grow again after years of shrinking. Through taking the steps described in this report, they achieved that goal

– and celebrated their sweet victory with ice cream for everyone!

The team from Neue Pressegesellschaft (NPG) also suc­ceeded – and, in doing so, discovered quite specifically what makes for quality local journalism in the 21st cen­tury: moving from topic-centered to audience-centered journalism. Before Table Stakes, NPG’s outstanding journalists would take a topic like bullying and discrimi­nation in schools to write about how the Minister of Education reacted, what school principals had to say, and the implications for education in general. Now, roughly

a year into TSE, their journalists focus on audienceS such as parents, families and teachers, and do their best to answer questions that make a difference to folks’ real lives: What are the specific dangers that lurk in schools? What does everyday life in the schoolyard actually look like? What steps can and do parents take to protect their kids? What are the specific consequences for kids who suffer from verbal violence?

What the Minister of Education and principals have to say still matters. If, however, your news enterprise wants folks to read and think about that, the surest doorway is through making certain your stories and insights speak to the real needs of real audienceS.