Search results for: Reader Revenue

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: As an independent nonprofit newsroom, move beyond philanthropy as a core strategy and begin reader revenue and community membership experiments in order to move toward sustainability.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: What does your target audience like…to drink? When the Vermont brewery Lawson’s Finest Liquids approached Vermont Public Radio about a craft beer in honor of the station’s award-winning narrative podcast, VPR saw an opportunity to reach new listeners.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Shifting from a print-first publishing workflow to a digital-first process helps create and encourage an audience-first philosophy in newsrooms.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Gannett’s Knoxville News Sentinel in Tennessee is telling more diverse, authentic stories that are making an impact, thanks to a new audience engagement initiative called the Digital Advisory Group, or “the DAG.” As part of a 2021 pilot, Knox News paired a Facebook group with one-year digital subscription trials to listen to Black voices and earn their trust. The DAG united community members and journalists to engage one another for more authentic content.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Online abuse is one of the largest threats journalists face. For the safety and wellness of our staff at The Seattle Times, it was important to create a clear online abuse policy to report incidents and a plan to respond. We think it could help you, too.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Develop a program that bundles locally produced goods from local businesses with subscription offers. For example, you can work with a local coffee roaster, purchasing 1-pound bags of coffee, at half-price, to combine with an online-only subscription or weekend print delivery and full online access.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Grow your audience — including younger, more diverse readers — by using non-traditional social media platforms to promote stories and establish lines of communication where readers feel like they can interact with a person, not a company.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: By telling and sharing stories in the Latinx community (beginning with the pandemic’s impact on people, families, businesses), you can do what good newsrooms do — reflect the communities they serve.

Build a program of philanthropy to fund journalism. Digital subscriptions can pay for our daily journalism, but the deep investigative work is expensive and needs another funding source to be sustainable under our changing business model.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Don’t just settle for being a publication that covers the African American community. Transform your newsroom into one that tells stories for and with Black residents. Grow relationships and trust, increase the number of African American voices on your platforms and continuously work to reflect the community demographics in your workforce.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: When a person visits your homepage, they are looking to you to tell them what they should be interested in. Bring it back to life by updating it more frequently and paying close attention to what they’re interested in.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Use Instagram to listen to your audience, especially during a major breaking news event. Provide your readers with explainers and relevant service journalism. Let their concerns and questions guide important parts of your coverage.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Use your reporting, digital, photography and video resources, and take advantage of the growing popularity of streaming platforms and mobile-friendly video. Present existing coverage in an audience-focused newscast that’s attractive to new sponsors.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Use your newsroom talent and expertise to put on live events that show off your depth as an organization and offer new ways for audiences to engage with your work.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Reduce your subscriber churn by focusing on three key areas: grace period, credit card management and targeted customer communication.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Deepen your relationship with readers and expand your news coverage of communities with a team of freelancers, creating digital hubs and newsletters to organize and promote coverage.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: WFAE and La Noticia both knew that immigration issues affecting Latinos in Charlotte needed more coverage. They decided the best way to address it was together.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Choose an issue you’re already covering that’s of deep importance to your community. Go beyond the story and rally your newsroom and your viewers to make a concrete positive impact.

Move beyond automated newsletters by writing a newsletter for a targeted audience that actually fits their needs.

To hold onto loyal readers, particularly those who read the print edition, encourage them to activate their digital access to your content including the eEdition, which often has more content than your print edition.

When subscribers don’t read content, they’re far more likely to cancel their subscriptions. Hunting “zombies” to reduce churn should be part of any healthy subscription revenue strategy.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: If you want to maximize your digital subscription growth, you must have a focused plan on not only how to grow your subscriber base, but also how to retain and improve the engagement and loyalty of your current subscribers.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Refocus your community coverage to build trust and cultivate new, diverse audiences — growing subscriptions along the way.

Retaining members requires trust. It feels basic, but The Correspondent’s missteps in communicating with members appears to have accelerated the sustainability crisis that led to the site’s closure in 2020. The post-mortem has lessons for communicating with members and avoiding the broken promises that spike churn.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Prioritize digital subscribers over page views, and provide subscriber-only stories on topics that are vital and unique to your community.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Create a daily focus on watchdog reporting — renewing your newsroom’s sense of purpose and growing your digital audience.

Use your archives and partnerships with cultural institutions to retell your community’s most fascinating stories through audio — engaging new audiences and opening doors to new sponsorship opportunities.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Focusing on newsletter subscriber acquisition will increase your digital subscriptions and donations to help fund your newsroom and editorial projects.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: When you have strong ongoing coverage of an important news story or issue, present the updates in such a way that even the most casual reader can follow along.

Surveyed publishers feel they are making significant progress on gender diversity, but acknowledge there is more work to be done in ethnic diversity issues.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Facing a hit to advertising, The Day in New London, Conn., partnered with the Local Media Foundation to launch a crowdfunding campaign to support its COVID-19 coverage.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: As the COVID-19 pandemic hit advertising, The Keene Sentinel of New Hampshire used its email database to generate additional revenue through a “grocery giveaway” sweepstakes and several other initiatives that served the public.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Rethink how you’re delivering content. Scalawag is discovering new audiences and building new relationships through its virtual events.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Through partnerships with groups outside of mainstream media, The Sacramento Bee attracted new readers, gained access to a diverse talent pool of journalists and elevated the voice of under-resourced communities in the area.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Newsday is driving digital subscriptions and engagement with targeted newsletters.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: As a local news organization, you can solicit drawings from children and publish a special section thanking essential employees who have kept your community going throughout the pandemic. It’s a great way to provide some positive news — and generate ad revenue along the way.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: The Indianapolis Star created a playbook that helps journalists build a business plan for multimedia projects, including how to engage target audiences, acquire subscribers and increase advertising and sponsorships.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, the KPCC-LAist newsroom has invited questions from its audience. Nearly 4,000 people have written in. More than half of them have opted into newsletters, and nearly all have received a personal answer. 

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Create a town hall-style event for local candidates running for office to engage with constituents often excluded from the election cycle. The town hall hosted by EdNC, a nonprofit news outlet covering education in North Carolina, allowed high school students in a rural county to meet with candidates for state superintendent.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Inspired by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the Detroit Free Press published its first community impact report to show its readers — and funders — how its journalism drives social change and makes Detroit a better place to live.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Identify and serve an audience segment that has left your print edition, but is still invested in your community and active in city life. Help them find value in a digital subscription.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: The Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester, N.Y., is attracting new readers in the area’s nine most diverse ZIP codes by transforming its storytelling and moving its engagement into long-overlooked neighborhoods.

News organizations are finding ways to pivot their consumer revenue strategies in response to COVID-19, from taking events online to making timely appeals and building connections among audiences and experts. These adaptations of audience engagement and memberful modes of working are ready for application to our new normal.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: You have great reporting and writing skills. Use them to get grants and other funding for your newsroom.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Ask the journalists in your newsroom to tell readers about the value of their work and be ambassadors for digital subscriptions on social media.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Use this guide to convince those in charge that you need to turn your homepage into a donation destination during your fundraising campaign.

This guide captures the dynamics and practicalities of pursuing a chunk of the growing pool of grant funding for news. One part how-to, one part roadmap, one part reference, the sum of the parts is an efficient and application-ready toolkit for news organizations who are beginning to explore grants.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: As a statewide public media TV network, University of North Carolina TV, or UNC-TV, is building a new and larger audience by producing digital content while staying committed to its traditional broadcast audience.