Search results for: Reader Revenue

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: The Chattanooga Times Free Press launched a newsletter that delivers useful news to local food lovers.

Audience engagement and growth responsibilities have traditionally fallen to teams outside the newsroom or siloed at its margins. But modern news organizations recognize their dual role in both reporting the news and ensuring it reaches its intended audiences. 

The digitization of media has fundamentally altered the economic underpinnings that once sustained print and broadcast journalism.

In this rapidly evolving digital media landscape, publishing content where your target audience already spends their time is no longer just a strategic advantage. It’s an absolute necessity.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: The Times Union partnered with a nearby university to build a data-rich, low-cost weather and climate product.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: The BDN Store complements the Bangor Daily News’ journalism service: fundraising, helping readers show their connection, and promoting shopping sustainably and locally.

Learn how the Colorado Community Media’s new website allowed them to leave behind “antiquated infrastructure.”

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: To build truly meaningful engagement with underserved communities, identify and target specific audiences within those groups — as The Fayetteville Observer did with Black professional women.

As news organizations rethink their business models and diversity efforts, many are looping in more coverage for the Latinx community, which is often underserved by media outlets at a national and local level.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: To build truly meaningful engagement with underserved communities, identify and target specific audiences within those groups — as The Fayetteville Observer did with Black professional women.

As news organizations rethink their business models and diversity efforts, many are looping in more coverage for the Latinx community, which is often underserved by media outlets at a national and local level.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Instead of simply extending the opportunity to be part of the opinion section, why not meet with folks and give them the tools to join the conversation?

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Instead of simply extending the opportunity to be part of the opinion section, why not meet with folks and give them the tools to join the conversation?

While it’s normal to feel uncomfortable asking for funding to support your work, journalists are well-suited to be grant-seekers – ready to research and write for clarity.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Find people who want to be engaged in your newsletter by using an approach that will encourage your audience to interact with you.

These two newsrooms used innovative approaches to food and nostalgia to drive paid subscribers and secure newsroom funding.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Your local news organization can build stronger communities and publish more diverse reporting through mutually beneficial local partnerships.

Through systematic changes backed by data, Southern California Public Radio improved hiring and retention processes, added employee resources and more.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: A first impression is important, and these strategies for city guides from Knox News can help turn newcomers into lifelong subscribers.

Disengagement isn’t easy to recover from, but carefully reconsidering content for target audiences might help.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: A first impression is important, and these strategies for city guides from Knox News can help turn newcomers into lifelong subscribers.

Disengagement isn’t easy to recover from, but carefully reconsidering content for target audiences might help.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: The Henrico (Va.) Citizen added 9,000+ email subscribers and generated $34,000 in reader revenue in one year.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: How to create a regional keepsake that drives revenue toward your newsroom.

Community feedback led the Arizona Daily Star to reevaluate how it covers community concerns, innovating toward a more positive, solutions-oriented lens.

Launch a pop-up newsletter when you anticipate a swell in a brand-new audience to capitalize on unique news moments.

Here are 10 ideas to steal and adapt: From developing audience personas to building trust, these original case studies are the most-viewed in 2023 on BetterNews.org.

These simple newsletter tips can make a huge difference in a campaign’s success – no matter if the goal is to raise funds or develop a wider audience.

Don’t assume you know what a generation wants from their local news if you’re not in that generation. And don’t generalize. Active listening sessions will help you hone in on specific coverage gaps.

Mistakes lead to progress when it comes to engagement — just ask your peers at the Montgomery Advertiser, Dallas Morning News and Substantial Media.

From favorite diners to long-shuttered dance clubs, readers of all ages love waxing about the way things used to be. Nostalgia is a beat that can work for any newsroom.

By taking this approach for local elections, the news organization created a significant, authentic public service experience around local politics.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: A mobile newsroom offers authentic and organic opportunities to connect with historically underrepresented communities and report on them in ways we never have before.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Learn how The Fresno Bee improved engagement with Latino audiences through regional collaboration, experimentation with new story topics, newsletters and virtual events.

Coaches from American Press Institute and News Product Alliance’s product development sprint share best practices.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Learn how these Table Stakes coaches are advising their teams and what tools they are using to move them toward progress.

Managing change is hard, especially in depleted news organizations serving communities often suspicious of their work. But it’s not impossible, as these Detroit business leaders explained to a room of local news publishers.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: If you want to easily gauge your audience and facilitate immediate responses and manage your relationship with your audience, use a two-way text messaging program.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Learn how these Table Stakes coaches are advising their teams and what tools they are using to move them toward progress.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Learn how to build trust in the Black community by conducting extensive research, creating products and content that serve this audience, and showing up for the community.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Understand your opportunities for audience growth through research, experimentation and listening. Change your reporting process to focus more on making news for and with local Black communities instead of just about them. At the same time, grow awareness through marketing and outreach, and leverage partnerships to expand your reach and understanding as well as to build trust.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Use several approaches, including audience roundtables, mobile newsrooms and source audits, to rebuild trust and engage with the Black community, whose achievements have often been ignored or downplayed by local news organizations.

Recognize your role as a member of “the media,” lean into complexity and nuance, and get to know the people you aim to serve.

In the digital subscription cohort for alumni of the Table Stakes Local News Transformation Program, five teams were challenged to think creatively about growing and retaining digital audiences through experimentation. In this Better News piece, each team shares the challenge it took on over the four months and highlights its biggest lessons.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: You have a large list of engaged subscribers for your flagship newsletter. Reader revenue is the next challenge. Here’s an example of how a focused, personalized case for support can drive results.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Build trusted relationships with people who have lived without local news sources for years, by showing up for these communities, listening to them and delivering the content they most want. Make sure the coverage is for these communities, not simply about them.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Create an online subscription-based platform that produces editorial content focused on amplifying positive stories within the Black community, raising awareness regarding relevant issues that affect the community at the local, state and national level.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: As a digital news start-up, the Border Belt Independent partners with local newspapers to provide them with long-form stories at no cost. It helps grow our audience and provides them with in-depth reporting their readers expect.