A new impact metric: change in conversation

This is a series on Better News highlighting takeaways from an American Press Institute and News Revenue Hub collaboration aimed at supporting the development of revenue at both commercial and nonprofit local and community-based media.

These insights come from Jake Wasserman, engagement editor of the Forward, who spoke at a live Q&A session in June 2025.

Jake Wasserman can geek out over audience data and persona strategies with the best of them. But what he thinks about more often is how The Forward can provide people across generations with clarifying information that helps them learn the news, think about it critically and talk about it with their friends, family and communities, he said during an AMA hosted by the American Press Institute and News Revenue Hub.

“It’s not about their relationship with us but how we can help them in their relationships with other people,” he said, referencing an adage from the Institute for Nonprofit News’ Sam Cholke. “I think about that a lot.”

When news organizations talk about measuring impact, change in conversation is not a metric that often comes up. How can you measure the way your content influences discussions in communities?

For Wasserman, it’s a combination of quantitative audience engagement data that informs their persona design and qualitative data from audience input via comments, testimonials and reasons for providing financial support. That often means designing a news experience to meet people where they are and to provide the content and community they are seeking.

Wasserman shared these three strategies for newsrooms working to grow engagement and support across generations:

1. Create audience personas to understand and respond to user needs

Morning newsletter readers may have different habits than audiences the Forward engages on social media. Wasserman said their morning newsletter writer, Benyamin Cohen, is writing specifically for an audience persona called “Federation Fred,” one of several personas the Forward created from audience research. He’s defined as an employee of the Jewish federation who’s in tune with what’s going on at synagogues, on campus and in Israel. He likes to get his news from the newsletter and is very different from another audience archetype the Forward wants to reach, described as “Margot the Millennial.”

Margot is 28 and lives in Chicago. She has one white Jewish parent and is close to a Jewish grandparent whom she grew up with. She cares about housing costs, student loans, grocery prices, growing anti-Semitism and reproductive rights.

Wasserman said that with each persona, the Forward considers what they already offer and what that audience might want more of, such as help understanding certain issues or ways to connect with their larger Jewish communities and families.

The millennial audience, for example, is a core part of their Instagram strategy and so content posted there is intended to best serve what that generation needs and is interested in learning more about. But it doesn’t mean millennials are the only people engaging with them there.  Federation Fred, for example, is also on Instagram and might see content from the Forward there but he may not like all of it. That’s okay because the Forward’s Instagram strategies are intended to meet and engage younger generations.

Wasserman answers a participant’s question about how The Forward measures engagement success across different platforms and how to refine personas based on audience data.

2. Focus time and resources where you see growth

On a small team, capacity is an issue. Wasserman said it’s important to experiment to learn the best use of your time.

“Reddit has been really amazing for us. And we’ve been able to grow and expand to, again, a younger audience that wouldn’t be finding us, because we are participating regularly in communities,” he said, specifically citing an Ask Me Anything session the Forward hosted with its enterprise reporter Arno Rosenfeld who just relaunched the Antisemitism Decoded newsletter. On the politics page of Reddit, which has about 8 million readers, Rosenfeld answered questions about antisemitism, the Trump administration and the war in Gaza. The metrics to gauge success were not focused on how many newsletter sign-ups resulted from that AMA but rather how the Forward’s reporting could inform the conversation.

“It was a way that we were showing that we were there, to be able to offer something without necessarily asking for too much in return,” Wasserman said. “And I think that the transactional nature of audience engagement can turn off a lot of younger people, and strategies need to reflect more of a community focus.”

He acknowledges that data can be hard to decipher and that a viral post won’t help you learn if someone had a more productive conversation with their mom because of it.

“But over time, people come back to us and say that this helped them have that hard conversation, or this made them think differently about that thing that their friend said to them,” Wasserman said. “We get a better sense of the way that this is kind of growing as an ecosystem of change in conversation as opposed to just data that’s purely supposed to be out about our own internal impact.”

In 2023, the Forward dropped its paywall and became free for the first time in its 126-year history, but making information accessible has always been important. Even before the Forward dropped its paywall, Wasserman was a regular on Reddit, often providing paywall-free links to content that was engaging Reddit audiences, which drove loyalty. When the Forward switched from a subscriber model to a membership model in 2023, new members cited that they felt compelled to donate because they saw providing content for free as a big step forward in fighting antisemitism.

In a case study published about their new business model, the Forward reported receiving nearly $583,000 in donations under $5,000 from December 2023 to March 2024 — a 37% boost in revenue compared to the previous year. And among their 17,000 existing subscribers, only three asked for their money back. Not having the pressure of driving conversions has given Wasserman more freedom to focus engagement strategies around building relationships and trust.

3. Include many perspectives to continuously refine your audience strategies

Part of that work is continuously evolving the audience personas to ensure they continue to meet audience needs and don’t flatten into stereotypes. That often means bringing in a cross-departmental team from editorial and non-editorial roles to evaluate and build on the work. Wasserman said adding in perspectives and considering who’s missing has helped them refine their content and distribution strategies.

“What I think is really great about that expansion is that it starts to feel like the audience is everyone’s responsibility when people get engaged in this process,” he said. “And honestly, it’s fun. It’s fun to make up little characters. It’s like playing some sort of imagination childhood game, but then it actually has very serious implications and potential successes for the work that we do.”