Diversify revenue: What success looks and feels like
Douglas K. Smith, Quentin Hope, Tim Griggs, Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative,This is an excerpt from “Table Stakes: A Manual for Getting in the Game of News,” published Nov. 14, 2017. Read more excerpts here.
Each Table Stake requires a fundamental internal organizational shift in orientation. Success manifests itself both internally in skills, attitudes, behaviors and ways of working with one another and externally in how audiences, advertisers, partners, etc., perceive and, then, put a value on your efforts.
This shift can be expressed in a series of “From-To” statements that contrast the current “as is” state with the desired “Table Stakes” state. (These From > To’s depict typical metro newsrooms circa 2016 and convey the dimensions of change required. You and your colleagues can develop your own “from/to’s” to more accurately describe your situation – which, by the way, is a good way to engage folks in identifying paths through transformation.)
FROM > TO view of success in maximizing revenue from the audiences you build
| From | To |
| A small number of ‘whole P&L” products, services and businesses | A large number of ‘whole P&L” products, services and businesses |
| 10% or less of revenues from non-print based subscriptions and advertising | Both overall revenues growing and at least 20% come from revenues from non-print based subscriptions and advertising |
| The table on page 11 has mostly ‘no’s and, for the yesses, too little associated revenues | The table on page 11 is filled with yesses as well as revenues associated with those yesses |
| Saying no to any experiments/innovations that cannot demonstrably replace print economics soon | Saying yes to experiments/innovations as long as they meet criteria aimed at solving uncertainties about customer need, market readiness, enterprise and/or partner capability and technology feasibility/workability |
| The news enterprise dedicates less than 5% of its human and financial resources to fundamental innovation | The news enterprise dedicates at least 15% of human and financial resources to fundamental innovation |
| There are neither established nor widely shared and understood criteria by which innovation efforts are selected and advanced or stopped | There are established and widely shared and understood criteria by which innovation efforts are selected and advanced or stopped
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| Our news enterprise’s mission and purpose does not embrace revitalizing the local community and economy as a primary focus | Revitalizing the local community and economy are at the heart of our enterprise’s purpose |
| The newsroom is not involved in – and the organization doesn’t generate – new types of revenue, particularly those outside advertising and subscriptions | The newsroom is a key player in setting the strategies and executing on the tactics the organization employs to generate revenue; the company makes money from a wide variety of sources, including those outside advertising and subscriptions. |