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Featured Post | Innovation

Pandemic parenting: How Parents.com is pivoting its digital strategy to serve readers in a time of crisis

As schools close around the world and a growing number of people are having to juggle home working and childcare, parents face unique challenges in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result, the Meredith Corp. brand Parents.com has responded with a radical shift to serve their audience.

Julia Dennison is the Executive Editor at Parents.com. She and her now fully-remote team have pivoted their digital strategy to provide advice and resources to parents during the coronavirus crisis.

The crisis has come on so quickly that just four weeks ago, the team were debating whether to even cover coronavirus. “We try to stay in our beat. We have a sister site Health.com that we syndicate content from,” Dennison explained. But it quickly became apparent that this would need Parents.com’s own input.

“Our initial thinking was that this was going to affect a lot of people. So we looked at search trends to see what terms we could answer from a parenting-resource point of view.”

The content pivot

Looking at search trends and responding is something the Parents.com team are well-practiced in doing. It has helped form a more strategic response to the content they have now produced, which has three primary areas.

The first is a comprehensive guide to coronavirus for parents, covering everything from how the virus is affecting pregnant women, to basic tips around sterilizing thermometers. This was the initial content strategy the editorial team focused on, and have been updating ever since.

“We’ve been really trying to just watch the trends and respond to them with informative content,” Dennison explained. “More than ever, parents need a reliable, trustworthy, and relatable source. We’re really trying to lean into our specialty.”

The second area is creating content that is supportive to parents. “Parents are going through the hardest test of parenthood they’ve probably ever gone through,” said Dennison. “It’s testing everything about parenthood to its limits.” In response, Parents.com have been working to create resources to help parents feel less isolated. This ranges from tips to how to cope with childcare to how to discuss the crisis with younger children.

As part of this, Dennison has been documenting her own experiences as a daily video blog on YouTube. Like many parents today, Dennison is juggling childcare with working from home. “I wanted to document that and show the world that I might be the Executive Editor of Parents.com, but I’m finding this just as hard as everybody else is.”

As video rises in popularity during the pandemic, the Parents.com team are looking out for ways to produce more content remotely, including having Editor in Chief Julia Edelstein read stories over Instagram Live.

The final strategic area involves creating entertaining content for both parents and children. “We’re trying to focus on heartwarming stories to lift people’s mood, and to keep them positive,” Dennison said. From a neighborhood drive-by to celebrate a birthday, to more practical resources around the best educational apps for children, the aim is to both help parents keep their children entertained, and also uplift the parents themselves.

Driving online growth

The swift digital pivot is paying off. By the end of March, views of articles in Parents.com’s ‘Fun’ section were up 40% week on week. There was particular growth within the section of articles on activities and printables (up 89% and 88% respectively). And entertainment content has seen a massive 110% spike in views.

The video blog has also had a “tremendous response, according to Dennison. “People are just grateful to see that other people are going through what they’re going through. I’m a mom, and we have a few moms on our team. I know how hard it is.”

This relatability, coupled with keeping a close eye on search terms has helped the digital team avoid some obvious topic traps. “We could easily have leaned into creating elaborate schedules for parents to put their kids on, and that homeschool setup,” she said. But that wasn’t the right approach for their audience.

This has resulted in a surge in positive responses to the brand on social media. “People appreciate just being told that they’re doing the best job they ca. And we’re here to help them do that,” said Dennison. “Parents are having to step up and perform the impossible. And so how, as a brand, can we be there for them?”

A post-pandemic lens

Many of Parents.com’s plans for upcoming content have had to be adjusted. They are shifting perspectives on a planned spotlight digital issue for the International Day of Maternal Health and Rights in April, looking at how America can improve birthing.

“We’ve been planning that for months. All of a sudden we’re having to pivot and see everything through this post-pandemic lens,” Dennison explained. “We’re seeing hospitals banning partners from being in the delivery room due to Covid-19. It’s a really scary time to be giving birth, and in this context it’s only going to get worse, so we have a bigger duty than ever to produce this content.”

In the longer term, Dennison is particularly interested in the crossover between parenting and education. She’s also thinking about what the impact will be for parents who have to continue working full time while also looking after their children. “We’re looking at what we can do in terms of resources to lean into the educational side of things, and how parents can keep their kids going even if they can’t go to school,” she said.

But for now, the team is keeping a sharp eye on the search terms and listening out for what their audience want. “It’s a matter of seeing how this goes, and responding to it,” Dennison concluded. “On the digital side, it’s easy as we can be pretty responsive.”

“Life will be different after this. All these things we thought mattered at one point don’t. And then all of these new topics matter, so it’s recalibrating what we’re covering, and putting it through a post-pandemic lens.”

Featured Post | Innovation | Video

Complex Networks is making the most out of staying at home

These days, the new normal involves a whole lot of not going anywhere, and it’s a situation that’s wreaked havoc on businesses of all kinds. Yes, that includes streaming programming, too, particularly those of the scripted variety. While viewers abound, production shutdowns have placed the future of many programs on uncertain footing. Some shows have decided that they can –and will – go on, COVID-19 be damned. However, the inability to film within a standard studio environment has necessitated some serious outside-the-box thinking and a whole lot of making the most of what one has at hand.

For Complex Networks, this sort of thing is old hat. Some of their most successful series to date have emerged as a result of being scrappy in the face of budgetary and situational constraints.

Wings and chill

Take Hot Ones as one tasty example. It all started when Chris Schoenberger, GM of Complex Networks’ First We Feast, and host Sean Evans were setting up to interview a guest. After spying some hot sauce in the company kitchen, they came up with the idea of interviewing people while serving them hot wings.

“I think the wings have probably improved in quality since the first time around,” says Justin Killion, laughing. “And the sauce has certainly improved! But it came out of being as opportunistic as possible, given the limited resources that the company had at the time.”

If anyone would know, it’s Killion. He’s GM of Complex Networks and EVP of Operations and Content, and he knows everything there is to know about Complex programming. As such, when he suggests that a few semi-new series in Complex’s programming lineup have the potential to be an heir apparent to Hot Ones, you may want to add them to your “what to watch” list.

Fun and franchises

“If you’re talking about new franchises, Tacos Con Todo, which First We Feast just put out, that show is excellent, and we also did another one called Gochi Gang,” said Killion. “I think both of those are franchises that you’re going to see us double-down on and potentially do more of. But if you want to talk about a breakout show, Full Size Run is right on the cusp. It’s a little bit of an in-the-weeds sneaker show, for true sneakerheads. But it’s edited in a fashion not that dissimilar to what you see on Adult Swim. I’ve never really seen anything quite like it. I really don’t think there is anything quite like it!”

Killion knows all too well how much of a whirlwind the business of streaming entertainment has become in the face of the Coronavirus outbreak – and how much of a boost everyone’s numbers have gotten with people being stuck inside.

“Truth be told, we’re up 35 percent in engagement on our YouTube shows over the last two, two-and-a-half weeks,” said Killion. “That’s just incredible. Our dot.com is up over 20 percent. Our social is up significantly. We’ve seen a massive spike in Tik Tok. We’re doing about five times the daily views that we were doing prior to the quarantine.”

Thirst and lemonade

Looking at these numbers is one of the few ways to make lemonade out of the lemons everyone’s being handed lately. (And by “lemons,” of course, we mean “stay-at-home orders.”) But the public’s thirst for entertainment has also resulted in a certain degree of forgiveness from the viewership, which puts Complex in a position to try some things that they might never have risked doing before.

“The quality of the content still needs to be there. But we’re at a moment in time where no one’s getting dragged for putting out content that isn’t exactly up to their usual standards of polish,” said Killion. “That allows us to take chances that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to take. So, there’s been a lot of experimentation.”

Case and point: Life at Complex. In the pre-coronavirus world, the series involved host Tony Mui wandering around the Complex offices, interviewing staff members. Killion describes the show as “a look-how-cool-it-is-to-work-here kind of thing.” However, when everyone is suddenly working at home, you’re looking at some retooling.

Sole-ful solutions

“What Tony’s turned the show into is almost like an incubator each week for a different format that we’re gonna try,” explained Killion. “One episode is him checking in with all of [Complex’s] different deputy editors… Just kind of getting a sense of what their home life is like in general and getting to know them a little. Then, he did something called ‘Sneaker Battles,’ where he took Brendan Dunne, our host of Full Size Run, and paired him with someone from our editing team. They were comparing sneakers from their own personal closet, and had it judged by one of our directors of photography from Sneaker Shopping.”

Killion says that it’s a fun format that they were able to quickly pull together. However, he points out that, if they’d been producing the show prior to their current ad-hoc situation, “the level of polish on it would have to be significantly higher. We would’ve been shooting with a crew at four different locations to make that happen. Instead, it’s just turning on a computer monitor at four different locations!”

Advertising | Featured Post | Innovation | Revenue

Quick reflexes and hard news: The media industry’s new reality

The onset of the coronavirus pandemic has galvanized the media industry into action. Even as audience numbers have “skyrocketed,” the advertising revenue that sustains much of the media ecosystem has taken a sharp hit. And this, even as a new batch of advertisers seek to reach a newly minted niche of stay-at-homers, big spenders in retail and luxury markets are suspending buying activity. According to chief executive of G/O Media Jim Spanfeller, the situation feels similar to that following 9/11.

For some publications that are dependent on local advertising – those in local and regional media and freesheets/ alt weeklies – the situation is acute. There have already been some high-profile newspaper closures. Some publishers are already making cuts, and taking drastic measures to keep costs down, while continuing to pump out the news people need.  

Fiscal responsibility

Even some incredibly well-known media brands are being forced to reappraise models that have seemed sustainable in the past, with the Evening Standard freesheet in London cutting its circulation to manage costs as advertisers pull out. Its chief executive Mike Soutar noted that “in the context of currently lower advertising volumes, it makes good economic sense.”

Unfortunately, overzealous, often blunt, keyword blocking, and avoidance have long been an issue around news content, particularly as automation and advertising exchanges delivering “blind programmatic” have taken off. Of late, the situation has only grown more dire. In response, many have called for brands, agencies, ad verification firms, and other companies in the digital advertising supply chain not to block the news.

However, for every publication like Playboy – which is cancelling all print issues for 2020 – there are other media companies launching endeavors in the light of what seems likely to be “the new normal.” Given the uncertainty about whether the advertisers that have decamped will return, coronavirus has effectively pressed fast-forward on trends that have been ongoing for years, forcing publications to adapt quickly rather than relying on a slow tail of dwindling print advertising, news avoidance, and limited growth in subscription revenue.

Rapid digitalization

Jokes about Zoom being responsible for the outbreak aside, the pandemic has demonstrated the extent to which media businesses with events-based portfolios are exposed to mass shutdowns. Even with government support, some events-oriented media businesses are looking at furloughing employees, making redundancies, or shuttering entirely.

It’s been gratifying, then, to watch the speed which publishers large and small have transitioned to digital-only events. UK-based news start-up Tortoise, for instance, used its ‘ThinkIn’s (intimate events for members) as one of its key selling points in the first few months of its existence. Within a week of the (inadequate) UK government advice, it had transitioned to hosting Digital ThinkIns instead.

By doing so it is continuing to provide for its core audience, delivering on what its cofounder Katie Vanneck-Smith has described as a club-like mentality model of membership: “I think people will pay for what they value, and really brilliant businesses and brands have always built their businesses based on consumer insight, understanding what customers want, and then super-serving it.

“But I think, particularly in my industry, if you’re a newspaper – we’ve always had an arms-length relationship with the consumer, and that physical manifestation of the relationship we had actually became in many ways a cultural manifestation. And I think we lost that relationship. We forgot that ultimately we’re there at the service of our reader.”

Meanwhile, UK magazine The Big Issue is primarily there at the service of the seller. The magazine’s content is excellent. However, it is better known for the revenue-share model it operates with its street vendors, in order to lift them out of poverty. Noting that it – and therefore the vendors – will be hit hardest by a lack of footfall in cities, it has prioritized its digital subscriptions. While it is yet unclear about how the revenue share will work in the meantime, it has brought attention to the existence of the digital subscription offer at a time when readers are becoming habituated to paying in that way.

In the states, Gannett, which publishes about 100 local papers and 1,000 local weeklies, is trying its hand at supporting the local businesses that, in turn, are the lifeblood of its advertising. The media company launched a new website, Support Local, which encourages users to support local businesses in their community by buying gift cards for use at a later time.

Subscription trials

There is a separate debate to be had about whether news publishers should make their coronavirus coverage free to access. Many already have. What is undeniable, however, is that a raft of media companies have loosened or dropped their paywalls for the foreseeable future.

While many are motivated by a mandate to keep the public informed during this pandemic, some are doing so because event cancellations mean that they effectively have no product to sell. As sporting events are postponed or outright deleted from schedules, broadcasters with tentpole sports channels have transitioned to retention strategies. In the US, for instance, both the NFL and the NBA have offered free access to their sporting archives in lieu of new content. What this means for The Athletic, which has recently been on a hiring spree, is less clear.

Some brands have spotted the opportunity of opening the vaults to fitness apps and services. Popsugar bumped up the launch of its fitness service Active. While there are still plans to monetize it further down the line, for now the service will remain free in order to act as a lightning rod for audiences seeking at-home fitness classes. Digiday’s Kayleigh Barber reports that Active’s general manager Angelica Marden said: “We’re happy to introduce the people to this platform in this weird time and hope that they will come back to us.”

By doing so, the hope of many is that a newly captive audience will develop a habit. Whether that’s because of appreciation for a service when they needed it, or because they got a taste of the quality that exists behind the paywall, it doesn’t really matter. Once something approaching normality has resumed, the hope is that those habits linger.

Step up

For newspapers the ambition is greater still. Trust in a title is the measure by which audiences choose which outlets to subscribe to. In an age where perhaps only ten international English-language news brands can sustain themselves through subscriptions, this is a golden opportunity for papers to demonstrate their worth.

Even brands that haven’t historically been known for their hard-hitting coverage are stepping up. LadBible, the youth-oriented social publisher best known for its “lads lads lads” school of content curation, was praised by the World Health Organisation for its ‘Cutting Through’ COVID-19 campaign.

For subscription-focused publications, the coronavirus has acted as a Trump Bump or Brexit Bounce in fast-forward (COVID Crunch?), pushing audiences to well-known brands in order to find out the facts about the spread of the pandemic. Bloomberg and The Atlantic have seen spikes in subscriptions. Given that they are among the titles that have dropped the paywall for coronavirus coverage it suggests that audiences are either altruistically supporting titles they believe are fighting the good fight, or that vital news coverage has a halo effect on subscriptions.

The inevitable tide

That said, some of these moves were not entirely unforeseen. Playboy, for instance, was already several steps down the path to repositioning as a “luxury bookazine,” while membership-based journalism projects like Tortoise were already looking to build digital audiences through online events.

Membership schemes were already on the rise. However, coronavirus is providing publishers with a clarion call to which supporters can rally. Even the sports broadcasters were already looking at their stock of past broadcasts in an effort to set themselves apart from competitors.

While there have been a few entirely novel projects – like a mooted magazine about self-isolation – publishers are still playing catch-up with the pandemic, particularly as they scramble to set up remote working and reel from the health impact on their own staff. There will undoubtedly be new business and journalistic opportunities launched over the coming months as the new reality becomes apparent. For now, however the dreadful treadmill of survival is setting an unforgiving pace, and an industry that was already perilously close to the edge is now forced to sprint to keep up.

Advertising | Featured Post | Perspectives | Revenue

We need the news. And the news needs us.

“In a pandemic good info saves lives.”  

– Dr. Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology at Harvard University

Like much of America, I was introduced to Dr. Lipsitch in the early weeks of our education on COVID-19 when he became a fixture of news coverage. His credentials are certainly impressive. However, it was also significant that Dr. Lipsitch was being presented as an expert by some of the most trusted news brands – from CBS News to The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and CNN.

On a normal day, I probably wouldn’t have been quite so attuned to his CV. (Hey, a Yale->Oxford->Harvard resume isn’t what it used to be!) But this was different. It was late February 2020, a period in which rumors and false information were running rampant across social media and our President was well, being our President, while the actual experts were warning about the seriousness of the pending pandemic. I was growing more and more uncertain and feeling vulnerable. Like many people, I was trying to figure out who I could trust to provide the closest thing to the truth in a rapidly evolving situation. In this case, Dr. Lipsitch earned my trust.  

“It is universally recognized that trust can only arise under conditions of uncertainty and vulnerability, i.e., when the trustor encounters risk, and when there exists a state of dependence between the trustor and trustee.”  

(Kelton, Fleischmann and Wallace, 2008, Trust in Digital Information, p. 3)

Big picture 

Most people have a favorite news source, be it their local news brand, syndicated news outlet, or a national news organization. And really, regardless of our personal preferences, they each have different strengths.  

For national and international news brands like The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, BBC, and their ilk, consumer trust is anchored by their reliability, consistency, and reputation established over time. This includes taking accountability when they fall short. Even the finest media brands occasionally make mistakes and self-correct as they pursue the truth. (“The truth is hard to find” and “worth it” ad campaigns from The New York Times brilliantly remind us of this.)  

In local news, an area hit hard over the past decade, the journalists are part of the same community as their customers. They overwhelmingly share the same impact as their readers and viewers when they report the latest news and work to get to the truth.

For Seattle news reporters covering the ongoing tragedy in Kirkland, the risks are real in a way that is akin to working in a war zone. There is no doubt that the public appreciates the work they are doing, now more than ever. If it weren’t for the need for social distancing, it would definitely be “hug a local journalist day.” We’ll save these hugs for another time and deliver them when we can. 

A higher mission

But today, we need much more than hugs. We need this trust to turn into funding for the costly work being done across the news industry. While these reporters are dealing with the same issues as the rest of America – shelter-in-place, vulnerable family members, work-from-home mandates, job and financial insecurity, and personal health risk – they’re not missing a beat in making sure we all stay informed.  

At no time in the past century has the news industry been more vulnerable, for both the humans and the news organizations informing the body public. Trust has value. And we need to support the individuals and organizations in which we place our trust.  

There is hope, signaled by the impressive growth of trusted brands’ subscription numbers over the past few years. Even in a world ruled by the attention economy, in which low quality and false information proliferates according to algorithms, the public’s willingness to invest in reliable valuable information is growing steadily. 

We applaud the choice of so many media organizations to drop their subscription gates during times of crisis when getting trusted information out to as many people as possible takes precedence over the bottom line. The choice to make critical information freely available once again demonstrates how news providers feel compelled to inform the public, full stop.  

It is heartening to see signs that subscriptions are coming in, despite publishers lifting these gates. However, publishers have made this move knowing full well that the likelihood of a widespread international recession may force difficult choices for everyone needing to reduce their expenditures in the near future.

Missed opportunity

However, the subscription model is far from the primary revenue source for news organizations. Most digital publishers still heavily rely on advertising support. And right now, there is a great deal of uncertainty in the advertising business. That said, we know that people are turning their attention to news at record rates. And we know that people need to make decisions about how and where they are going to spend their scarce resources of both time and money. 

Normally, advertising follows audience attention. So, a surge in interest around a particular subject would lend itself to a nice uptick in advertising placements. News, unfortunately, does not always work this way. Overzealous, often blunt, keyword blocking, and avoidance have long been an issue around news content, particularly as automation and advertising exchanges delivering “blind programmatic” have taken off.

Advertisers are wise to be wary of the company their ads keep and should remain vigilant about the impact of context. However, now is not the time for advertisers to hide from so-called “hard news.” The fact is that news – now and always – is a critical component of consumers’ media diet. And right now, it is literally a lifeline. 

The trust “halo”

There is a significant body of research to support how association with high reputation and trusted news experiences creates a “halo effect” for the advertising brands funding it. There is also the inverse, which shows the damage to a brand that can come from association with low-trust environments, like social media newsfeeds. DCN’s subsidiary, TRUSTX, was built entirely on the concept that trust must be married to transparency, simplicity, scale, and automation for real success. 

On the local level, advertisers supporting their local news outlet is perfect karma. Local advertisers tap into the trust established by journalists who bring personal interest and community knowledge to important issues. (Contrast this with the “absentee ownership” of tech platforms with little direct experience or accountability to the local communities they serve.) Truly local advertising also helps keep these valuable publications alive and well to support communities and the businesses in them. It is a virtuous circle if ever there was one. 

On the national and international level, advertisers that garner the public’s attention in the context of valued, authoritative media will accrue trust in a way that is only possible at moments like these. These opportunities are uniquely offered by news outlets such as the Associated Press, USA Today, NBC News, Vox Media, and the many dozens of other DCN members.  

Step up, news matters 

I was struck by a statement earlier this week from an executive at one of the “big four” advertising agency holding companies on the planet, in response to advertising technology companies marketing their capabilities to block hard news and coronavirus reports.  

“I will say this again. Please, don’t block or harm news sites during this time under the pretext of brand safety. The Coronavirus topic is unavoidable, news impressions are increasing, and responsible brands should be there in respectful and meaningful ways.”  

– Joshua Lowcock, Chief Digital Officer at Universal-McCann 

I wasn’t being facetious earlier this week when I called on Google, the largest gatekeeper of advertising on the planet, to turn off the ability to block advertising against Coronavirus for the next six months in order to maximize funding of news organizations. Yes, by doing this Google could lose advertising business to their so-called competition. But a monopoly like Google could show the same sort of leadership for which Mr. Lowcock so beautifully advocated. We must support quality independent journalism because, as Dr. Lipsitch stated, “in a pandemic good information saves lives.”  

Featured Post | Innovation

How three media outlets are taking their own approach to TikTok

The TikTok app has now been downloaded nearly two billion times. And a recent surge in new users is being attributed, at least in part, to people escaping the boredom and worry of coronavirus self-isolation and lockdowns. At some point, the pandemic’s tempest will subside, so what long-term strategies can publishers and journalists put in place to get the most from the platform into the future?

In January I wrote a lengthy Medium Post linking to best practice examples and tutorials. In this piece, three very different media outlets share what’s worked, what hasn’t, and their advice to publishers joining TikTok for the first time.

The national paper

Dave Earley, Audience Editor, Guardian Australia
TikTok Account: https://tiktok.com/@guardianaustralia 

The extraordinary success of The Washington Post’s account piqued Early’s interest in TikTok early on. But he hung back for a while before signing Guardian Australia up. “I couldn’t make a commitment to a personality-driven approach like the Post,” he says. “After noticing a few other media outlets posting straight news videos, I decided to get started that way in August last year.”

Guardian Australia’s account has two aims. The first is to build brand awareness with young audiences. The second, says Earley, is to “reach young people who share a deep interest with some of our key coverage areas, like the environment.”

Successful early posts paired news clips with popular sounds. More recently, hits have focused on national challenges like the recent floods and bushfires. “Our bushfires explainer did quite well, taking inspiration from a NowThis Politics impeachment explainer on TikTok that went viral,” Earley says.

However, their strongest performing video has been a surprise. Nancy Pelosi’s reaction to an apparent handshake snub by Donald Trump has had 2.2 million views since it was uploaded in February. Earley attributes these numbers to the fact that TikTok showed the video to Indian users as well as Australians.

Guardian Australia’s news differs from the approach many publishers are taking to focus on timeless content, given that TikTok doesn’t display the date a piece of content was posted.

TikTok’s metrics are also quite limited. However, Earley says that’s fine while Guardian Australia continues to find its best voice on the platform. “Our use of the platform is still experimental and not a top priority for maintaining a regular posting schedule,” he says.

“I’m looking at topline followers and likes, not so much as a measure of success, but more to keep an eye on overall growth. I also look at the individual video play counts and number of comments to see what gained traction.”

The online regional

Chiara Rinaldi, Head of Audience, Wales Online
TikTok Account: https://www.tiktok.com/@walesonline

Wales Online’s account also launched in August last year, targeting people under 24 living in Wales.

“For us, the aim isn’t just to grow a large TikTok following. It’s also to learn more about how we serve Generation Z and get a better understanding of the way they express themselves and consume news and media,” Rinaldi says.

“When we started, we were the only UK regional publisher [on TikTok] so we didn’t have anyone to compare to or look up to for good practice.”

Every publisher I spoke to, including Rinaldi, has mentioned The Washington Post as an example of best practice. However, it’s not one they necessarily want or need to duplicate. “I didn’t think emulating [the Post] would achieve what we set out to do, so we’ve just experimented a lot to see what worked for us,” she says.

That has meant actively seeking the right tone and approach for content, and developing new production skills. “Our newsroom is quite confident in producing social videos but we quickly realized that we needed a completely new approach on TikTok, from our ideas process to how we shoot and edit,” Rinaldi says.

For Wales Online, top performing videos have combined “person-led Welsh identity content” with TikTok trends and popular sounds. These include an American pronounces Welsh places and reasons to marry a Welsh person. Videos of beautiful locations have done best of all, like this mid-winter sunrise at Snowdon.

Repurposing user-generated content has been “a mixed bag” in terms of response, Rinaldi says. “We’ve found food, comedy, and climate change content has performed well,” she says. “But we’ve also had videos that bombed, like people singing and a dog that can say hello. It’s [also] a lot harder to get traction for videos that don’t fit with a challenge, like our videos of the South Wales floods.”

Following seven months of trying different things, Wales Online has begun formulating a clear strategy to engage its TikTok followers with more serious news content. And this is a goal Rinaldi says will be challenging given that on-platform metrics consist primarily of video views, follower numbers, and likes on individual posts.

“So far, we’ve found TikTok to be a really receptive and encouraging platform to work with,” she says. “Our audience is very open, provides us with regular updates and they’re happy to answer our questions, which is refreshing!”

The specialist publication

Jake Banas, Social Media Manager, Futurism
TikTok Account: https://www.tiktok.com/@futurismmedia

New York-based publisher Futurism is using TikTok to connect with young science and tech enthusiasts all over the world. “We began by implementing a video strategy we’ve run with on most other platforms – posting our most popular short clips and well-known viral memes to attract attention,” Banas says.

Futurism’s best performing videos have combined educational clips with popular sounds, like this explainer on how astronauts take a bath in space.

Later on, The Washington Post’s runaway success inspired Futurism to expand its uploads to include videos featuring its staff and newsroom more candidly. However, doing this well has turned out to be harder than it looks. “While everyone wants to be Dave Jorgenson, it’s incredibly difficult to do,” he says.

“Most newsrooms don’t have a dedicated TikTok team. The biggest challenge is simply the amount of time it can take to produce quality content, but the good thing is that – unlike traditional video – TikTok has made it easy for many people to utilize powerful video editing tools to create posts for a mobile-first audience.”

Banas says Futurism is learning what it can from TikTok’s limited metrics and whimsical algorithm to achieve specific goals, such as engaging with young women interested in science and technology.

For now, Futurism has “pulled back” from regular posts to focus on other priorities. But Banas says timeless clips posted weeks or months ago still attract fresh audiences – another example of the evident irrelevance of time to the TikTok algorithm.

Thinking of joining TikTok in 2020? Here are some pro tips:

Earley, Rinaldi, and Banas have these tips for newcomers to the platform:

  • Spend time as a user and watch plenty of content before diving in head-first.
  • Think about what you want to achieve on the platform
  • Ask yourself how you’d explain a big story, or what it’s like to be a journalist, to a teenager.
  • Try some or all of these genres: explainers, vlogs, text on screen to music, lip syncing.
  • Decide whether you can commit to putting staff on camera and let them do “fun stuff.”
  • Use the ‘drafts’ function to learn the basics like adding and timing captions.
  • Read the comments to better understand who you are reaching on the platform.
  • Don’t feel under pressure to post often.
  • The ethos of TikTok is authenticity, so embrace it and get the whole newsroom involved.
  • Be prepared to relax your brand guidelines for an entirely different platform.
  • Interact with your audience. Creator comments and replies mean a lot to viewers.
  • Be original and have fun!
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion | Featured Post | Innovation

How Bloomberg is building a global database of expert women sources

It’s not a new problem. However, it is a widespread and persistent one for anyone working in media: the need to efficiently ensure diversity of sources. One specific issue is finding and retaining expert women sources to inform stories and provide deep analysis. VIDA has kept track of women’s voices in the media since 2010. Yet, it remains an ongoing challenge to consistently diversify the voices we consider authoritative.

Several media organizations have begun to focus their attention on the issue, including NPR, The Financial Times, the BBC, The Atlantic, and The New York Times. Bloomberg L.P. has decided to tackle the issue head on with its own unusual venture.

Identifying a gap

An internal review in 2017 across Bloomberg’s company’s print, radio, and television reports found that only 10% of sources were female. And, in January 2018, a newsroom survey found a database of only 500 female sources. Thus, the same ones turned up again and again in its coverage. Today, the company had 5,500 expert women’s names on file.

In an effort to fill the need for better gender representation in its coverage, the company launched the New Voices initiative, which aims to build the definitive global database of women newsmakers in business and finance. To do so, it identifies and provides media training for top women working in business and finance, and then adds them to its database to create a larger pool of sources for Bloomberg reporters.

No quick fix

Laura Zelenko, Bloomberg News Senior Executive Editor for Diversity, Talent, Standards and Training, has been with the company since 1993. She has focused on diversity efforts since 2017 and knows the company’s culture and history well. She also realizes that institutional change within Bloomberg – even as successful as this has been so far – is rarely quick or easy.

“We had to jostle expectations. It’s what they should be doing,” she said. “Once women speak up, they realize how important it is to amplify their voices, not only for their careers, but as a role model. We’re at a moment in history that’s a time for women to amplify their voices.”

“We were looking at gender and diversity in our workforce and in our content, but the initiatives hadn’t really stuck. So, we took a hard look at the numbers [of women sources],” she said. “They were much lower than we expected, even on our top stories. Over the years, like other media organizations, we’ve tried to improve our representation of women in fits and starts. So, we asked ‘What can we do to change this fundamentally – and keep it changed?’”

Developing resources

The solution? Hand-pick top women, relying on self-selection and their firms’ suggestions, and offer them media training, paid for by Bloomberg and conducted in major cities worldwide. The effort began in New York, Toronto and London in 2018, spreading to San Francisco, Sydney, Mumbai and Dubai – “all programming hubs for us,” Zelenko explained. The company plans to add D.C. and Singapore in 2020.

“We were hearing from a number of women in the finance industry and financial markets that they were uncomfortable being interviewed,” Zelenko said. They weren’t confident about going on TV because they hadn’t had enough media training” within their own firms. They also found that, the more senior a female executive, the more she has to lose if she makes a media misstep – both for herself and for her firm.

Bloomberg provides one-day workshops which are four hours long, offered to 12 women each time, and given by a local partner in each city, not by Bloomberg staff. “This has really helped drive the initiative forward, “ she said. “We now have women as 23% of our television sources, though that’s still very low. It’s not where we want to end up, but it’s a start.”

Facilitating balance

Bloomberg managers are now accountable for their staff using the database of women sources, which is easily searchable by name, title, areas of specialty and location. Reporters can also add to the database themselves. “We wanted to add tracking tools so whenever a woman is quoted in a story as an expert source, we can see this by reporter, team, and location,” Zelenko said.

The program may expand further, globally, she said. “I very much hope we can go into Johannesburg, Sao Paulo, and China but there’s not enough programming there yet. I know that there’s interest.”

Encouraging reporters to massively expand their go-to source list can be challenging, Zelenko said. “I sit down with senior managers regularly to discuss it. That messaging takes a lot of work and example and repetition. I would say it’s been an evolution. This is work. This is hard work! You just have to keep your foot on the gas. But we’re in a really good place right now.” 

Featured Post | Innovation

Comment sections aren’t dead (yet)

Comments for news organizations’ digital publications took a blow when NPR closed its online comments section in 2016. Even before NPR’s monumental decision, other organizations including The Verge, Reuters, and Recode had also bid adieu to online comments. The feature was increasingly viewed as an incubator for name-calling, insults, and sometimes harassment. And the trend continues. In just the past year, USA Today and OregonLive added their names to the growing list of news outlets that have had enough of supervising online trolls and bots.

Comments definitely don’t always bring out the best in people. Some commenters use the shield of anonymity to share derogatory and abusive messages, communicate hate toward certain racial groups, or turn a constructive discussion into a name-calling match. And negative comments can even influence readers to have a more unfavorable view of the story itself.

Some national and regional newsrooms have employed comment moderators, but monitoring thousands of comments requires considerable labor. The task of deleting uncivil comments oy leads to emotional exhaustion for the moderators. However it turns out that deleting the litany of racist, sexist, and hompophobic comments also decreases trust in the news organization, according to a 2019 Center for Media Engagement study. While comments sections once held the promise of democratizing news discussions, that optimism seems to have backfired.

The death of comments may be exaggerated 

Is this the beginning of a slow dive into obsolescence for comment sections?

Coral helps moderators identify disruptive comments and surface the best submissions.

Not necessarily. Despite the woeful forecast from some commentators about the death of comments sections, experts who study reader engagement warn critics against hasty obituaries. The number of news organizations that have done away with comments sections do not represent the industry as a whole, says Andrew Losowsky, head of Coral by Vox Media, a system that aims to bring publishers and journalists closer to their communities. 

In fact, comments sections can bring great value that often goes overlooked. Done right, comments sections can increase reader loyalty and engagement, and even boost subscriptions. Simply deleting comments sections, Losowsky says, makes sense when those sections turn into vitriolic spaces. But he says this move can also be  “incredibly short-sighted.”

The key for news organizations is to develop a strategy. News outlets should think of their comments sections more deliberately. The need to ask questions like: What does it mean to involve people in the conversation? And, what sort of conversations do news organizations want to foster? From there, news organizations can ask pointed questions for readers to answer in the comments sections.

Managing the unmanageable

One way to make handling the volume of comments more manageable is by implementing artificial intelligence to help with the task of comment moderation. The New York Times is one outlet that actually expanded its comments section in 2017, with a machine learning technology called Moderator, which helps to moderate up to 12,000 comments a day. The technology scores each comment based on whether a human staffer might reject it based on inflammatory or inappropriate behavior. It then decides whether to keep or delete the comment based on that score.

Local news organizations, however, often lack the resources of larger sites. With revenues falling for smaller outlets, securing funding to implement a comments moderation system — much less hiring an employee specifically to moderate comments — might land quite far down the priority list.

Innovating with engagement

The State newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina has found that its Coral commenters are more engaged.

That doesn’t mean some local news sites aren’t experimenting with their own initiatives, though. The State newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, which has a daily readership of around 270,000, implemented Coral about nine months ago. The platform uses AI to detect and remove toxic comments. Commenters at The State also need to sign into and register their email addresses to Coral separately from their subscriptions. This means that Coral users tend to be more engaged.

“We still see some of the bluster and posturing that can be negative in comments. But by and large, the comments that we do get are a lot more focused on the actual story,” said Cal Lundmark, southeast audience growth editor for McClatchy.

In addition to more constructive comments, general engagement on The State’s website flourished for Coral users. Active Coral commenters read twice as many stories on The State’s website per visit compared to other subscribers.These visitors spend almost 16 minutes longer on the site per visit as well.

Interaction breeds civility

When journalists interact with commenters, they can actually encourage civility in the comments sections, according to a report from the Democracy Fund and the Engaging News Project, now known as the Center for Media Engagement. The study found that journalists who answer reader questions and participate in discussions make the tone of comments sections more constructive.

It is effective even when local reporters only have enough time to dip into the comments sections rather than engage regularly. It “creates a sort of bond between the reader and the news organization, where people feel less okay to say nasty things,” says Gina M. Masullo, associate director of the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin.

Reporters at The State have been doing exactly this as part of the recent initiative to re-strategize the comments section. “The time in their day when they can really just stop and say ‘I can respond to some comments’ is pretty limited,” Lundmark said. “So it does take teamwork… between the audience team and the reporters themselves.”

In addition, news organizations can benefit from highly “person-centered” messages, according to Masullo’s research at the Center. These are comments from journalists that acknowledge a commenter’s anger, but also ask the commenter to keep their language civil.

“It worked across three different experiments that we did,” Masullo said. “I think it’s because even people who are angry like when somebody validates that they have a right to be angry.”

Social media, mediated

For the news organizations that have deleted comments sections over the past few years, engaging with their audiences is far from dead. In its one year update after doing away with its comments sections, NPR’s public editor Elizabeth Jensen declared the move a success.  She cited other ways of communicating with readers such as newsletters as garnering more attention. Journalists respond to readers and listeners through social media channels like Twitter and Facebook, Jensen wrote, and discussions also remain civil in closed Facebook groups.

Plus, it makes sense to take the conversation to social media if the community already regularly engages there, says Lynn Walsh, assistant director of Trusting News.

“We have to be realistic: Are people going to log into the website to comment when they may not already be engaging there actively?” Wash said. So, maybe “we should reach people by going to where they already are instead of asking them to come to us.”

But Losowsky warns against relying too much on social media to foster discussion.

“What you’re saying is that your engagement with your most loyal and engaged users belongs to a third party that you cannot control. And that data and that relationship belongs to them,” Losowsky said. “So if you say instead we will let Facebook manage this, then Facebook owns that relationship with your readers. You do not own it, they do. And they control it.”

Positive comments

So what does the future hold for comments and will news organizations abandon comments sections while reaching out to readers on other channels? Or will they attempt to take on the challenge of molding comments sections into places for constructive feedback?

Research continues to explore how to make comments sections into constructive spaces. Maite Taboada at Simon Fraser University, for instance, is working on a system to identify constructive comments that news organizations can highlight to create civil dialogue. And innovative organizations like Hearken develop different ways to tune into to readers and commenters, in addition to making listening to communities a fundamental directive in the reporting process.

“I’m cautiously optimistic that we will make the internet a better space,” Masullo said. “It’s not going to happen overnight, and it’s gonna be a combination of human and technological solutions. But I don’t think we should just say, ‘oh you know, this is a dismal mess and there’s no hope.’ Because I really think there is.”

Featured Post | Innovation

How Discovery’s Food Network Kitchen delivers across platforms

Cooking and watching TV: it’s a culinary combination that’s been a staple of the small screen since Philip Harben whipped up a batch of lobster vol-au-vents for BBC viewers way back in 1946 (look it up, kids). But try asking Harben to remind you how many tablespoons of olive oil he said to add to the saucepan and see how far it gets you.

Of course, Harben died in 1970, a situation which certainly doesn’t help the promptness of his reply. But to be fair, even when he was still with us, his program (Cookery) offered little in the way of interactivity.

Needless to say, digital offers a buffet of opportunities to enhance how-to experiences like cooking. And, with its multiplatform, entertaining, and interactive approach, Discovery Inc.’s Food Network Cooking app aims to take cooking shows to a whole new level.

“I remember watching Julia Child on WGBH in Boston when I was growing up. Back then, unless your living room TV was near the kitchen or you actually had a small TV in your kitchen, you couldn’t actually make it along with her,” said Tim McElreath, Discovery, Inc’s Senior Product Manager of Emerging Platforms. “Now you can just bring your iPad or Fire tablet or your Echo show over to your kitchen counter.”

Launched in October 2019, Food Network Kitchen provides on-demand cooking classes, which incorporate an option for online grocery shopping to secure all the right ingredients. However, the strategy doesn’t stop there. Food Network Kitchen also offers interactive cooking instruction with some of the biggest names in culinary television across a wide range of platforms.

Live and lively

“Right now, we’re doing up to 10 live broadcasts a day out of New York and Los Angeles. We’re also doing more and more on-location broadcasts,” said McElreath. “So, we’ll have, say, Bobby Flay up in Chelsea Market on a Sunday demonstrating how to make a chorizo omelet or something like that. He’ll walk you through and try to do it at a pace so that you can cook along. And if you’re watching on a mobile, you can type in a question. It’ll get relayed to the chef by a monitor and then they’ll answer you. Or if they can’t answer it, someone will answer it for you. So your question will get answered.”

“What we’ve seen is that our talent really starts to shine in a live context. They’re great at producing polished scripted programming. But if you get somebody like Michael Simon in front of the camera, talking extemporaneously… He’s just a great raconteur. He can just talk your ear off while he’s cooking. He’ll talk about his experiences, he’ll talk about his family, he likes to talk about how his dad taught him to cook.”

Sometimes the questions submitted during a live broadcast aren’t about the recipe being made, they’re about the chef and their experiences and how they learned to cook. These kinds of questions are also welcome. “It prompts them to start telling a little bit more about themselves.” 

Demanding on-demand

Beyond the live programs, Food Network Kitchen also boasts a library of more than 800 on-demand classes. Many of these are bundled into courses, such as Rick Bayless’s traditional Mexican cooking course.

“We also have courses by cooking types, so we have a baking course, a grilling course, and things like said,” said McElreath. “Each class within a course has a recipe associated with it. But if you watch the course, get the gist of the recipe, and then want to make it again later without necessarily watching the whole course over again, we have regular step-by-step text recipes that you can walk through as well.”

Listening to audio opportunities

For McElreath, the big focus with Food Network Kitchen has been to build the smoothest possible virtual smart-screen situation for at-home chefs, while also providing customers with a value proposition.

The approach McElreath and his team are using for the Food Network Kitchen app – interactivity, value, and entertainment – is an extension of the work they’d been doing on Alexa and Google Assistant.

“We’d been working on voice platforms since early 2016, and it’d been largely kind of a research and development type group for experimenting with the capabilities of the platform,” said McElreath. “The voice multi-mobile platforms were so new that, across the board, people were just kind of making things up as they went to try and figure out how it fit in with their digital strategy. But we’d done a lot of experimentation for things like searching for recipes and recommendations on both the voice and the smart-screen platforms.”

Ease and extensions

For Food Network Kitchen, part of this strategy is making the app available on Amazon Alexa and Echo Show, Fire Tablets, Fire TV streaming media devices, and Fire TV Edition smart TVs. This gives McElreath and his team an opportunity to integrate some of the work they’d already done while also extending the platform out to a very specific situational interaction.

“You know, if somebody’s looking to take a cooking class, and we have a set of ingredients, it should be very easy to get the exact ingredients delivered very quickly,” he explained. “And since we’re on TV, Mobile, and Smart Screen, you can watch something on TV and say, ‘Okay, I want to save the recipe I’m watching right now,’ which shows up in your saves on Mobile while you’re out shopping so that you’re able to use that as your shopping list, after which you’ll go home and be able to walk right over to your kitchen counter and be able to pull up that recipe on Smart Screen without having to search for it again.”

Mind you, with audiences expecting such interactivity between their devices, content companies are going to have to step up their game. Fortunately, McElreath has already considered the many possibilities that exist beyond the kitchen.

“We have a lot of short-form how-to videos like how to chop an onion, how to poach an egg, and things like that. And if we have a content template, then I think there’s a pretty big opportunity to start thinking about applying it to some of our other Discovery brands.”

Featured Post | Policy

Want to clean up Facebook? Don’t listen to Menlo Park

Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly “begging to be regulated.” He has made several statements to that effect, suggesting that he supports state-backed regulation in four areas: elections, political discourse, privacy, and data portability. This week, Facebook released a white paper that outlines the company’s suggested path forward for content regulation. It does little to drive forward meaningful discussion around these serious issues. Instead, it clearly illustrates that Facebook would like to eschew responsibility for some of its profoundly negative effects in these areas while protecting its ability to continue business as usual in others.

As Zuckerberg put it in a recent op-ed, “regulation could set baselines for what’s prohibited and require companies to build systems for keeping harmful content to a bare minimum.” That said, Facebook’s plan suggests that companies like his should be required to have procedures for taking down offensive or illegal posts and to prepare quarterly reports on their efforts. If this isn’t the absolute bare minimum, I don’t know what is.

Clicky content

It is interesting that Facebook’s paper cites the European Convention on Human Rights which supports the needs of governments to regulate speech for “[T]he interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals…”

Some have argued that Facebook’s algorithms and data targeting capabilities, the same tools which have been refined and optimized for immense profits, actually encourage these sorts of activities. The argument goes like this: The algorithms promote content that gets clicks. The content that gets the most clicks is often salacious (yes, even to the point of being false) or highly targeted based on consumer data.

In this way, drug dealers target members of addict recovery groups, for example. Or false stories that reinforce specific bias, racism, or extremist views are targeted at specific individuals. Of course, those Facebook functions would remain very lightly regulated under the company’s proposal.

Competitive advantages

In his op-ed, Zuckerberg said he believes that “good regulation may hurt Facebook’s business in the near term but it will be better for everyone, including us, over the long term.” However, Facebook’s proposal clearly brings with it the added benefit (for Facebook) that the suggested regulations would build barriers and add compliance costs that entrenched companies are best equipped to overcome. It’s already a daunting challenge for a start-up social media company to break through in the current marketplace. This proposal would only increase that burden.

In what is quite possibly the icing on Zuckerberg’s cake, the proposal would grant global immunity to big tech platforms to carry out content moderation policies, which could also be used to shut out competitive services on their platforms. The proposal would essentially reinforce Section 230 of the U.S. Communications Decency Act globally, so that Facebook could claim legal protection for removing offensive posts and adjusting algorithms to disadvantage repeat offenders.

The last thing the world needs exported from America is blanket liability protection for Facebook. But Zuckerberg’s proposed immunity is intentionally broad to allow for all kinds of activity under a content moderation policy, including favoring its own services or certain business partners over others.

Anti-competitive landscaping

Facebook’s proposal includes an entire section about how – even with the proposed content moderation – enforcement of any guidelines will not only be a challenge; it will be imperfect.

Imagine if Instagram were still a separate company. Do you think Zuckerberg would be talking about how it’s too hard to scrub racist and sexist content from the service? Do you think he would offer only muddled, hazy responses about whether foreign governments manipulated his service to impact elections? Do you think he would be complaining that it’s hard to prevent drug dealers from targeting recovering addicts? No. He would be taking aggressive action to clean it up.

In fact, there is documented evidence that Facebook cared a lot more about these issues when they had competition. Acquiring WhatsApp and Instagram were likely a cheaper alternative to changing Facebook’s underlying and unhealthy business. Zuckerberg’s calculation could have been that turning his back on the public’s welfare was more acceptable than turning his back on shareholders.

The compliance question

As Facebook’s own report puts it, “Designed poorly, these efforts may stifle expression, slow innovation, and create the wrong incentives for platforms.” And Zuckerberg should know.  

While Zuckerberg calls for “regulation,” it’s important to consider Facebook’s track record of complying with existing regulations. Their approach to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is disingenuous and sometimes misleading. In California, which recently rolled out the CCPA, Facebook is making case the that they don’t “sell” consumer data even under California’s very broad definition.

And that’s the point: Facebook is a for-profit company with responsibility only to its shareholders. Zuckerberg isn’t offering a real plan for regulation that will benefit society and democracy. He’s offering a plan to minimize the obligations and responsibility for Facebook. And this is why the best perspectives on how to clean up the mess that is Facebook are coming from outside of Menlo Park.

Featured Post | Perspectives | Revenue

The rise of tribal subscription marketing

“Democracy dies in darkness.” It’s an amazing rallying cry, a banner that supporters of The Washington Post flock to. As a tool for signing up potential subscribers, it has the benefit of setting out a core belief that many people share. It conditions the people who support (or profess to) democracy to consider The Washington Post an ally, by appealing to their emotions.

Creating that sense of belonging to a club is a key component of most subscription and membership marketing. You see it across most of the general news titles, from the offers made to “our readers” to the appeals to shared values. It’s even more obvious in the transition to membership rhetoric being offered by news titles, which have made that sense of belonging the central tenet of their marketing messages.

However, as digital subscriptions become the default primary revenue stream for many newspapers, the marketing messages they use to create that sense of kinship is changing. Driven by competition and an electric political climate, some publications are inverting that message. For many, the strongest sales pitch they can make to subscribers is not by setting out the values they stand for – it’s the values and people they stand against.

The changing nature of newspaper subscription

We’re entering the second stage of digital subscriptions. Many publications are altering their membership and subscription marketing messages as more people become habituated to paying for news online. The Guardian, for instance, made a considered decision to move from a message of survival to one of sustainability when it hit one million paying supporters.

Where once it was the sole preserve of the specialist B2B and information provider, now the viability of consumer-focused subscriptions is well established. As a hangover from those early days of B2B success, however, some newspapers still make the exclusivity of their articles and analysis the central focus of their subscription marketing.

John Barnes is the managing director of Sloop Media and a veteran of B2B publishing. He explains: “There’s been a swing back to quality journalism, which doesn’t happen by accident. It has to be funded everybody in the media is benefiting from that.”

Support quality

The Times & Sunday Times in the UK, for example, was an early entrant into the subscription space. The paper has always made the case that readers can only be assured of news quality by paying to support its journalists.

Even for publications without the prestigious history of The Times, the message that information must be directly funded through subscriptions is widespread. The Information, a tech-focused publisher that charges $399 annually for access, justifies its high price that way. Founder Jessica Lessin told the New York Times: “I’ve said this from the beginning, and I continue to say this, but you can’t give away what you expect the reader to find valuable.”

However, due to their positioning and the nature of their content, many news publications have found it difficult to justify using the exclusivity of their content as the selling point for a subscription. After all, in the age of information overload you’d be hard pressed to find a generalist newspaper that isn’t covering the same beats as many free-to-access online outlets. Consequently, they have made their political affiliation or stance the core of their proposition – for better and worse.

In the UK, for instance, The Daily Telegraph recently ran an advertisement for its subscription options that used its close ties to the UK government as the primary message. The current prime minister is a former Telegraph columnist.

Enemy of my enemy

Therefore, many newspapers have decided to lean into tribalism, making it clear that the best reason to support them is that they provide a bastion for a particular way of thinking. You see this most clearly in the messaging of the single subject newspapers, like the UK’s pro-EU The New European and Scotland’s pro-Independence The National. However, it’s equally true at many of the larger titles as well. Nobody’s abandoning the ideal of objectivity, but they’re making a particular slant central to their identity.

Barnes explains that “The big newspapers – the Guardian, The Washington Post – you know, the media organizations that have almost been singled out by Donald Trump… I think they definitely are playing that card of ‘who’s going to hold him to account unless we’re here?’”

The “Trump Bump” has been a boon for left-leaning papers, with the NYT in particular being singled out as the paper of choice for the swathes of the public who oppose him. (Though arguably, the publication has parlayed that into some smart investments in future subscription growth).

In a sense, what those publishers are doing is just an extension of what they’ve always done in print. After all, a particular political niche is practically a prerequisite in an incredibly competitive landscape. What’s changing is how explicitly some titles are making opposition to their competitors and politicians their sole marketing message.

In the UK, the 10-month-old Byline Times is a newspaper defined by opposition. It has made criticism of most other UK titles the way it appeals to disenfranchised readers.

What the others won’t say

Its executive editor Stephen Colegrave told me: “That’s a very strong part of our positioning. We launched originally with the positioning, which is on our masthead, of publishing what the other papers don’t say. So, we’ve had quite a strong position in terms of getting subscribers by actually welcoming people back to newspapers and acknowledging, like most of our audience, that we stopped reading newspapers a long time ago because we didn’t trust them.”

In particular, he singles out the fact that a handful of billionaires own the vast majority of UK newspapers as being of concern to a large enough proportion of the public to be worth launching a newspaper that explicitly is not billionaire owned. The recent outcry over the mere suggestion that a member of the Murdoch family might be about to take the role of Director-General at the BBC would seem to back up that assertion.

Adversarial positioning

That move towards more adversarial positioning isn’t just cathartic for the journalists at a title. There’s a commercial consideration too. As the latest Digital News Report from Reuters demonstrated, people are more likely to trust and (therefore pay to support) the titles with which they share political leanings. Freed from the need to chase scale, but now yoked to the need to create community to aid conversions, publications are fostering tribes.

Consequently, even as Byline Times moves into paid-for marketing, Colegrave believes it would be folly to change tack on its adversarial messaging. “We have to maintain the same positioning. It’s very, very important for us because that’s what Byline is, while also maintaining the newspaper as a central part of that message. So, it’s more about how we communicate that positioning to people who don’t know anything about us.”

It remains to be seen what will happen to that marketing message if the incredibly polarized political landscape cools down. Until then, however, the fact that newspapers are prioritizing converting smaller numbers of like-minded supporters over appealing to vast audiences across the political spectrum means that adversarial marketing is here to stay. If creating a community is key, then it’s as easy to do that through defining what you are against as what you stand for.

Advertising | Featured Post | Innovation

How USA Today balanced advertiser and consumer expectations in its latest redesign

One of the biggest challenges facing any digital publisher is how to balance the often-competing needs of readers and advertisers. Brands may want visibility, but how do you ensure their presence doesn’t negatively impact the site’s look and feel? And how do you deliver the best possible user experience in a way that continues to deliver results to advertisers?

The product team at USAToday kept these challenges top of mind while working on its slick site overhaul unveiled late last year– its first major redesign since 2012. Among the most noticeable changes are faster speeds, different colored sections, clearer content labeling, more intuitive navigation and a more integrated presentation of sponsored content.

Doing the research

“Over the years we’ve collected a lot of information from both advertisers and users on what they want from us,” says Nicole Dingess, Senior Director of Product Design and User Experience Team at Gannett, USA Today’s parent company. “Our advertising clients had been saying they wanted something that felt special, and they kept using the word ‘premium’. So, we really dug into that and asked what they meant.”

After some questioning, most brands revealed they wanted to feel like a part of the content: “They don’t want a logo slapped on like an afterthought, they wanted something thoughtful that gave them presence.”

At the same time, the team also wanted to better serve their users, whether they came to them through search, social or homepage. “We describe our desktop users as our most loyal users – they’ll read three articles on average. And they’re the kind of folks that will engage with a 200-page photo gallery,” explains Dingess. “When people come from social, they want to know whether the article is what the headline said it was. We needed to meet their expectations and keep them engaged.”

Refined goals

With this in mind, the team set about work with three main goals: transparency, greater personalization for advertisers, and a more respectful user experience featuring faster speeds.

To improve the user experience, the team created new section colors to make it more obvious whether someone is reading a news story, opinion piece, or lifestyle content such as Travel. One of the most noticeable features is that op-eds now feature a ‘virtual highlighter’, clearly differentiating them from news pieces.  “We need to help consumers understand what it is they’re taking in,” says Dingess.

On the homepage the team created “section bundles” to help readers locate the latest content and ensure they’re up to date with the day’s latest news. “We’re doing organization for them. It’s quickly scannable, and then they can go deep into articles if they want,” says Dingess. They also came up with new ways to offer special content to users, such as investigative pieces or a podcast series, by adding pathways in the masthead. “We can catch your eye and reveal USA Today content that you might not otherwise know about.”

A premium experience

In order to satisfy advertisers’ needs, the team developed a page template to present sponsored content in a more natural-feeling way. “If someone sponsors a section, they get the background color as their brand color, so it feels very immersive,” she says. “Their logo is on the masthead, making it feel integrated rather than ‘stuck on’.”

Of course, user and advertiser needs can sometimes clash. Therefore, balancing these two goals at all times was the team’s biggest challenge. “We looked at every decision through those different lenses,” she says. “We needed to make sure we were not over-investing in one at the cost of another.”

A rigorous testing method was applied to ensure that all goals were being hit. “The team often had their own thoughts about what might be tripping people up or what could change, but we wanted to get a sense of how users were interacting,” she says. They used a card sorting exercise to test out the navigation, and each article layout was also put through user testing.

The big reveal

The final redesign was released to 2% of the website’s users. Then, after about a month of refinement, the site was rolled out to everyone.

Thus far, Dingess says the team has gotten “fantastic feedback” on the user experience, the site speed and the new premium look and feel. Advertisers and users alike are also fans of the clearer labeling of content. Overall, she says, “we’re hearing that the site’s much easier to use.”

One of the most discussed aspects of the redesign is the fact that comments on articles have been removed – a move in line with many other publishers, such as Vice and The Guardian. “We’d received feedback over time that people disliked the comments,” says Dingess. “Internally, we need to have an ongoing conversation about the role of commenting and what alternatives we might put out there, or how we might improve the experience.”

Overall, Dingess is confident the team has created an excellent base that will allow for tweaks and improvements as and when necessary. “We’ve built a solid foundation that we can refine over time, and we intend to do that,” she concludes.

Featured Post | Innovation

In the wake of several big name failures, the industry seeks a solid Spanish language news model

2019 will be remembered as a turbulent year for Spanish-language news in the U.S. The New York Times, BuzzFeed News, the Huffington Post, and the Chicago Tribune all shut down their Spanish-language websites in a large blow to parts of the 59 million Spanish language speakers in the U.S.

However, as the old decade folded into the new year, national news outlets confirmed that they weren’t giving up on Spanish-language news. In the past two months, The Washington Post launched its first Spanish-language news podcast, El Washington Post, and USA Today started Hecho en USA, its series on Latino communities. As the new decade begins, the future of Spanish-language news in the U.S. remains a puzzle, difficult to piece together.

Revenue review

The reason for the failures of 2019 largely boil down to money. The Times, for instance, initially launched NYT en Español in early 2016 as a way to grow its international audience. This was part of an optimistic goal to generate $800 million in digital revenue by 2020. At the time, Donald Trump’s racist rhetoric was in full force. So, putting the Times’ journalism stamp on important issues south of the border was meant to be a significant step towards the outlet’s lofty aims.

The plan was to support NYT en Español with advertising revenue, along with the hope of turning readers into subscribers. But a little more than three years later, NYT en Español closed its Mexico City bureau. Despite a potential audience of 80 million people, the advertising dollars weren’t coming in, a Times spokesperson said when the website shut down in September. Nor were these readers subscribing. But according to NYT en Español’s founding editorial director Eli Lopez, the Times lacked a credible plan to monetize his team’s content.

In the wake of these ill-fated efforts, Spanish-speaking communities pay the price. More than 8,000 English-speaking news organizations currently serve approximately 250 million English speakers in the U.S. However, for the almost 59 million Spanish speakers – 10 million of whom don’t speak English well – only approximately 624 news outlets serve them.

When Tribune Publishing shut down Hoy Media, their Spanish-language newspaper in Chicago, in November, reporter Laura Rodríguez lamented the news that would no longer be reported for Chicago’s Latino and Hispanic communities.

Markets in need

“I’m seriously so angry and frustrated at the fact that the company decided to get rid of such an important platform for the Spanish-speaking community in Chicago,” Rodríguez tweeted. “I wrote so many stories no one else did — we had our space! Our Latino, Spanish-speaking community counted on us to tell their stories. Those that are often not told.”

While some of the nation’s largest outlets can afford to experiment, the same can’t be said for smaller organizations across the country. Statewide and citywide newsrooms have already faced crushing layoffs and decimated revenues in one of the hardest decades ever for journalism. And Spanish-speaking communities are among those that will suffer the most.

In New Mexico, where slightly more than one million Spanish speakers represent 49% of the state’s population, the Hispanic population is the most underserved. Despite having a long history with the Spanish language that dates back to before the Constitution, the state only has three Spanish-speaking news outlets. And they are all TV stations and all based in Albuquerque. Compare that to neighboring Arizona, home to a Hispanic population around double the size of New Mexico at more than two million. It is home to 17 Spanish-language outlets, more than five times the amount in New Mexico.

Size matters

At a time when local news has already suffered greatly and positive signs are few and far between (it’s estimated that more than 13,000 communities in the U.S. don’t have any local news coverage) is it too much to expect smaller and medium-sized outlets to launch Spanish-language offerings? Given that national outlets such as the New York Times can’t turn a profit from such investments, the answer for many local newsrooms with fewer resources may just be yes. Right now, it is too much.

Scott Brodbeck is just one local news editor who is familiar with the obstacles of running a local news website. Brodbeck is the founder and CEO of Local News Now, a network of hyperlocal news websites he launched in 2010 that serve markets in northern Virginia and Washington, D.C. With the shrinking advertising market for most media companies due to Google and Facebook’s dominance, financial uncertainty is just one reason why local news companies such as Brodbeck’s aren’t able to implement new products specifically for non-English speaking audiences.

“The biggest challenges are recruiting, training and retaining talented people; producing consistently excellent local journalism that attracts a large local audience; and growing sales to keep growing our organization,” Brodbeck said. “Given the challenges of just putting out our current news product, it would be unrealistic to try to do what we’re doing in a second language.”

Demanding demographics

America is undergoing a rapid change in demographic identity. According to Census projections, the Hispanic and Latino population represented just more than 17% of the U.S. population. By 2060, that population is predicted to be roughly 120 million people, or 28 percent. That’s why Brodbeck said that the best solution for local newsrooms in the future could be for them to focus on hiring reporters from diverse backgrounds. That would allow them to serve as many communities as possible.

“Having separate Spanish language brands may make sense for some of the largest news publishers. Smaller newsrooms would be better off putting their energies into developing robust hiring, training, and employee support practices, to cultivate a diverse workforce that can better serve all readers

News outlets continue to wrestle with how to serve diverse audiences. Thus, it might be down to schools and universities to take a proactive approach by preparing the next generation of journalists for the ever-changing media landscape.

One journalism school that’s already doing so is the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. The school’s Spanish-language journalism program aims to train bilingual journalists to better cover issues important to Latino communities. This program could be a footprint for other journalism schools across the country to follow. It could also provide news outlets with a new generation of journalists to serve an increasingly diverse population.

Like many other aspects of an industry grappling with profitability and even survival, the future of Spanish-language news remains uncertain. And just as the industry experiments with reader engagement and revenue models, news organizations and universities are now exploring different methods of delivering Spanish-speaking news, such as podcasts and special series. With so many moving pieces, only one projection is relatively certain: the growing population of Spanish speakers in the U.S.

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