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How surveys can help journalists understand their communities

Surveys can help news organizations build stronger relationships, and regulate engagement, with their readers.

Editor’s Note: This article summary was produced by ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence text chatbot made by the company OpenAI. The summaries were edited for style and clarity and checked for accuracy by Caitlin Dewey and Emily Ristow, of API’s Better News.

News organizations can use surveys to better understand and serve their readers by building strong relationships and regularly engaging with their audience. Surveys help in collecting valuable feedback that guides content creation and strategic decisions. Best practices for such surveys include developing a pre-existing relationship with the audience to increase response rates, focusing on both general and specific questions, keeping surveys concise and using the gathered data to make informed changes. By implementing these strategies, news organizations can ensure their content remains relevant and impactful to their readers. For more details, check out the full articles at Metrics for News and the Local Media Association.