Is our organization serving the right audiences to expand the reach and impact of our journalism? Are we fulfilling our social mission to inform the public and represent the variety of viewpoints of our society? Are we relying too heavily on one type of reader to sustain us financially in the future?
Those are some of the questions that dominated the discussions over the course of FT Strategies and Google News Initiative’s Audience Diversity Academy. In this inaugural six-month programme, six publishers across Europe came together to better understand and address the needs and behaviors of younger and women audiences. This article summarizes our approach and subsequent report, Seizing the diversity opportunity: enabling growth in the news business. Here, I will focus on strategic guidance, and you can read the full report for case studies, practical experiments and more.
For the skeptics out there, addressing such organizational and coverage disparities can lead to commercial upsides, among other things. Growing diverse audiences and ensuring a more diverse organization can help your company respond to changing consumer behaviors and economic headwinds. It can also help organizations proactively gain a foothold in the increasingly aggressive battle for talent.
So how can I seize the opportunity of audience diversity?
Our framework below was crucial to building an audience diversity strategy for the participants:
Start with a clear case and diversity goal, backed up by leadership
There are many aspects to consider when baking audience diversity into your strategy. However, a few influential leaders working with a group of highly engaged employees, who strongly identify with the mission, is a great place to start. This means ensuring enough traction at the top to prioritize audience diversity and communicate across the business, while the grassroots can generate practical ideas and excite colleagues. The publishers who moved ahead quicker are those who created a clear goal with hypotheses to test, measuring their progress with defined metrics.
Create regular, authentic mechanisms to listen to your audience and act on their feedback
Journalism is no longer a monologue; the more you invite the underrepresented segments to be part of a conversation, the more heard they feel and the better you understand their needs. Go beyond ad-hoc feedback such as with regular initiatives to collect qualitative and quantitative information such as interviews, surveys, newsroom tours, video calls, website analytics. Make sure you can include audience suggestions on the content and product in your strategic activities in order to create a more diverse proposition. At the FT we have an Audience Engagement team that advocates for high quality, diverse readers.
Sustain the effort to connect to an audience with content for them, experienced in ways that suit their needs
While it is important to avoid negative media stereotyping, underrepresented segments should have access to authentic, equitable and representative content. Having the data in the newsroom to track coverage across communities, how they engage with the stories and the amount of voices, images and sources included can shine light on the limitations of existing content and encourage more diverse commissioning decisions.
This partly lies with the newsroom. But marketing, product and data should work in cross-departmental teams to ensure there is a variety of tactics to acquire and retain audiences. For example, we found that women are often confined by time, so offering them alternative methods of consumption, such as audio or newsletters, strengthens their engagement with the product.
Reflect the society you serve in your organizational make-up–but look beyond hiring
It is challenging to create a diverse product without a diverse employee base to weave their ideas in stories, design, production and delivery. However, we found that publishers look at their employee data split by (e.g.) gender and tend to conclude they are 50:50. Certainly, you should recognize this achievement. However, it is also critical to examine how employees from minority groups feel at the workplace, how many progress upwards, and what their tenure is, in order to measure your ability to both acquire and empower talent. We experimented with a group of women writing on rotation a newsletter on topics that matter for women. The results showed better individual recognition and a higher uptake of the newsletter by women readers.
I want to note that we cannot reduce diversity to simply age and gender, and diversity is the first step in a long journey towards a more inclusive and equitable audience and organization. However, for the purpose of the programme, we focused on age and gender to make our efforts most impactful. We believe that the approach and the learnings are applicable to other diversity aspects.
Diversity is not simply about representation in the newsroom, or in the content we produce. It serves our readers by better reflecting society. And it serves our business by attracting a broad talent pool, and better meeting the expectations of our audiences.
About the author
Rumyana is a manager at FT Strategies, and has worked with large media & publishing companies across Europe. She led FT the Google News Initiative Audience diversity programme, and also has experience in content strategy and engagement tactics. She was recently part of the Financial Times’ Audience Engagement team supporting their audience diversity initiatives. Prior to joining the FT, Rumyana was a consultant at KPMG.
The Association of Online Publishers’ (AOP) new report, Digital Publishing: Outlook and Priorities 2023, offers insight into this year’s top priorities for media companies – which unsurprisingly featured revenue growth. Publishers are also focused on talent and building a diverse and inclusive workplace.
As digital media companies look to grow their businesses, they assess internal strategies and external macroeconomic and legislative influences. Both publishers and solutions providers report being well-positioned for the year ahead and rate their confidence level a 7.2 based on a 10-point rating scale.
The AOP surveyed 92 digital publishers and 16 solution providers; 26% of respondents are at the board level in their organization, and 51% are heads of departments.
Internal business priorities
Revenue remains a top priority for publishers. Subscriptions (17%), sponsorships (15%), and lead generation (13%) rank as top revenue sources for growth among consumer-based publishers. B2B publishers see stronger growth opportunities in lead generation (28%), events (22%), and sponsorship (20%). Digital publishers targeting business and consumer audiences rank developing new revenue streams through product innovation as their highest priority (3.9).
Developing new audiences is important for revenue growth. To that end, consumer publishers work across multiple platforms to drive content discovery while B2B publishers are more reliant on LinkedIn (44%).
For advertising, publishers targeting consumer audiences report they depend more on advertising deals in the open marketplace. In contrast, B2B publishers divide more evenly across open and private marketplaces and non-programmatic. Further, 44% of all publishers expect revenue growth from private marketplaces and 42% from non-programmatic revenues.
Publisher respondents appear to be highly focused on their employees. Asked to rate how important different organizational priorities are [where 0 is not a focus at all and 5 is a very strong focus], B2B publishers ranked recruiting and retaining new talent as the most important priority, with a score of 4.1. Consumer publishers ranked ensuring a diverse and inclusive workplace as the most important priority, at 3.9.
External factors
With new legislation a key focus, digital media companies are mildly confident of their knowledge of the UK’s Online Safety Bill. This legislation establishes a new regulatory framework to ensure tech companies protect users from illegal content and activity, specifically social platforms, and other user-generated content-based sites. Publishers rate their confidence in understanding the Online Safety Bill’s impact on their organization at 5.6 on a 10-point scale and solution providers at 5.3.
Some publishers report that their companies are preparing for this new law by consulting with their legal teams, providing a comprehensive editorial policy, and relying on browser options. However, many also reply that no actions are needed because quality content publishers do not target children.
Further, publishers’ confidence rating is 6.5 regarding their readiness for the end of third-party cookies, while solutions providers report lower confidence in readiness (4.8). Publishers prioritize their investment in first-party data and user experience in preparing for the end of cookies:
Enhancing the engagement funnel to build better first-party data (23%);
Implementing tech solutions to provide a 360-degree view of audiences (15%); and
Investing in solutions to deliver a more personalized user experience (15%).
With a strong focus on first-party data, 58% of publishers are working to ensure their audience informs their business decisions and their investment in a data-led organization. Another 21% highlight the importance of internally managing and communicating audience insights throughout their organizations.
The AOP provides a snapshot of important focus areas for the year. A strong confidence level among media companies reflects positive internal alignment on essential strategies to develop and grow their businesses further. They are focused on building a diverse and strong talent pool. In terms of strategy, they are taking an audience-focused strategy and look to diversify revenue growth beyond advertising sales and subscriptions and increase sponsorships, lead generation, and event revenues.
As we approach the end of 2022, it’s never too early to plan promotions and set an end-of-year calendar for your organization.
These initiatives often require buy-in from the whole company. While editorial and marketing teams often lead the effort, product, technology, ad sales and senior leaders all play important roles. That’s especially true when an organization is shifting from an advertising-first strategy, focused on pageviews and engagement, to a user-centered strategy. The entire team will need to be aligned on KPIs and work together to execute the digital subscription strategy.
Key roles for successful subscription marketing
The most successful subscription publishers have dedicated resources for their digital subscription business that allow them to market their offerings nimbly, and continuously optimize their efforts. For those building or growing their teams, the following roles are foundational for success:
Head of consumer revenue
A senior revenue leader directly influences the future of the company and its business model, focusing on sales and everything that drives them, like marketing campaigns and product pricing.
This individual sets group goals and KPIs and typically is not executing day-to-day efforts, but does ensure campaigns are focused on the proper channels and customers, using the most impactful messaging. The head of consumer revenue usually has product knowledge and understands what makes the product unique and valuable to users in order to monetize it.
Marketing manager
A marketing manager is typically the person who oversees day-to-day marketing campaigns.
They possess experience identifying target audiences and executing campaigns that target, engage, and convert users throughout the customer journey.
This person should have a background in digital marketing or audience engagement to be most successful at understanding the audience and how to serve them with the right message at the right time in the most impactful way. Their goals are to enhance sales and remind existing users of their benefits. Subscriptions aren’t a set-it-and-forget-it business, so the marketing manager is also important for testing different aspects of the user experience to constantly be iterating and improving campaigns.
Creative team
Every publisher needs a resource with a creative mindset to help provide a frictionless UX while adhering to company brand guidelines. In many organizations, copy comes from the marketing manager and then designers ensure the look, feel and messaging of the campaign are aligned.
When design and copy are complete, a front-end developer may build templates to use with the software that’s serving promotions. Developers are often shared resources, so we always recommend creating templates with content fields whenever possible so that others on the marketing team can create variations—updating messaging, changing headlines, moving forward with new tests or promotions, etc.—without that technical background.
Data team
It’s helpful to have data analysts working closely across functions to help marketers understand what audience segments they are looking at and what information they have about them. Based on this performance, data experts can then help enhance segmentation and build out additional campaigns. They can answer questions like, where are the low-hanging fruit? Where can you drive business? How are campaigns performing among specific audience segments? Where is there an opportunity to iterate and improve results?
As a subscription business grows, the data team ultimately plays a critical role in benchmarking KPIs like cost of acquisition, customer lifetime value, retention rates and more. More sophisticated data scientists can also provide attribution models, revenue forecasting, or even come up with creative algorithms to segment your audience.
Tech team
Although they might not be needed on a daily basis, having a technical team that can support your business is very important. This group is aware and understands the technical objectives and gains knowledge of systems and processes, learning how relevant data is leveraged throughout the organization. They can also make sure integrations are functional and that data is passed correctly between systems, which is important for making strategic recommendations around price, revenue, etc.
If there’s a single most important factor in successfully marketing a subscription program, it’s having a top leader in the newsroom and someone on the business side engaged and in agreement that subscriptions are the priority. The group can build a marketing team to be responsible for executing this strategy.
How trials & promotions can help
Depending on how complex your organization’s audience segmentation is, trials and promotions can be worthwhile for all segments if they’re well-planned and used appropriately. How can you plan now to offer the right trials and promotions in the coming months?
Trials are a way to offer sampling; in other words, trying the product before a user makes a long-term and possibly expensive commitment. In subscription, these can have a big impact on conversion rate: At Piano, we’ve seen between a 20% and 150% lift in conversions after users enter a trial period.
However, free trials on annual subscriptions are not recommended. These typically result in very low retention rates and negate much of the benefit of offering a trial in the first place. One exception is to offer introductory pricing for annual subscribers. This can be an effective way to incentivise choosing a longer subscription.
Nonetheless, promotions are a way to encourage conversion among users who might otherwise consider a product too expensive, or who previously passed on an offer to subscribe. Through pricing research, you should be able to map out a revenue curve that helps you understand what different user segments might be willing to pay and how that impacts your overall revenue projections.
Running promotions creates a sense of urgency and pushes users to convert: At Piano, we’ve seen a 64% lift in revenue during a month with promotional offers, relative to the month prior. But the key is making these promotions targeted, temporary and irregular. Keep the offers in the market for a week or two at most, allowing the most motivated, price-sensitive users to respond.
The right team will help guide you on the effectiveness and performance of trials and promotions. With strong leadership, there’s still time to put in place a strong subscription marketing plan for the rest of the year and beyond.
DCN’s editorial director Michelle Manafy interviews Nicole Carroll, the Editor-in-chief of USA Today and Aja Whitaker-Moore the Executive Editor of Axioson Newsroom innovation: What’s the future of storytelling at the Collision conference, which was held in Toronto, Canada June 22-24, 2022.
[Full transcript below.]
WATCH/LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Michelle Manafy
I’m back! But I’m in good company. I’ve got some terrific speakers here joining me to talk about newsroom innovation. If we could, I feel like the topic is just huge. If maybe you’d like to kick us off with what the heck does it even mean?
Nicole Carroll
You know, I think innovation now, in the olden days, it was always tech and what’s the next product? And what’s the next thing? And I think now honestly, it’s about engagement is like how do we truly authentically engage with our audiences. And that could be tech that could be in person storytelling, that could be, you know, lots of different ways. I also think innovation always is just about to keep moving forward, you know, every generation of journalists is going to do it a little bit differently. And I think we’ve got to find our way. So, I think about innovation, not just in a technology sense, but literally everything we do in hiring, and how do we fund our journalism? How do we connect with our audiences? We’ve got to keep moving forward.
Michelle Manafy
Aja, anything you want to add to that?
Aja Whitaker-Moore
No, I mean, I think you’ve covered a lot of it. And from the actors perspective, you know, we’re a startup. And so everything that we do is kind of innovative, in our opinion. And we were born of, you know, we thought a problem, which was, there’s too much information, and people don’t know how to keep up with it, they don’t know how to access it. And, you know, we think that our promise is innovative in the sense that we came up with a new format, came up with a new delivery mechanism, and are coming up with new ways to reach an audience on an everyday basis. So that’s our version of innovative, I think.
Michelle Manafy
So let’s go back to Axios then for a second. How do product and editorial work together in your organization, and how do you drive innovation in that relationship?
Aja Whitaker-Moore
Yeah, I mean, pretty closely, because, you know, like I said, you know, we are focused on smart brevity and packaging things in a way that people want to digest them. And that means that we’re mobile first. And that means that everything we do has to be looked at from a product perspective, how are we delivering lists in a mobile friendly format? How is our app working? How are we delivering products to people, you know, in the way that they want them. So we work really closely together with a product team that I think understands journalism and understands news in a way that is really important.
Michelle Manafy
I mean: easy for you to say, “built from the ground up.” But let’s talk about USA Today. Like, is there a tight integration of product and editorial, editorial, huge,
Nicole Carroll
we’re, you know, we’re one of the OG startups, but we were actually smart, brevity 40 years ago, and we’re pretty, you know, made fun of because of that. So I’m you know, I’m glad to see the world has, you know, come around to that you can get good information in smaller amounts of words or video. So I, I’m really proud of the work we’ve done. But yes, we are really tight with our product teams, the fact that we just want to call with them this morning. You know, we’re constantly looking at not here’s what we should do. But what is the outcome you’re looking for? And then working together? How do we get to that outcome? We try not to go into it with the solution you go into it with what’s the outcome you’re looking for, and what do we need to bring to that equation?
Michelle Manafy
So one of the things you touched on in like your “what is innovation” was: staffing, diversity, leadership, those those issues… Can you tell me a little bit — let’s start with USA Today — about how you’re approaching leadership and recruiting with an eye to fostering innovation to fueling it.
Nicole Carroll
It’s never been more important to recruiting and what we’re doing right now. And I don’t know if how many of you are in the industry. But there’s the great journalism shuffle going on right now. I mean, everybody is moving somewhere else. Right now, there’s a real fight for talent and leadership. And I think people want to be part of authentic companies, who are really trying to again, I always say our job is to spread truth, you know, to engage with our audiences. And so showing a path having mentorship programs showing an opportunity for leadership, showing industry leadership is really important to creating the culture that will keep people in our organization. We’ve made the pledge at Guenette, that we want our newsrooms to reflect our communities by 2025. And we measure ourselves every year against that benchmark around racial diversity. I measure it every quarter at USA Today and report that to the staff. I think it’s really important we hold a mirror up to ourselves and be really honest about how we’re doing.
Michelle Manafy
How about Axios? What what what is the approach? How are you thinking about like, what is this newsroom? What is the staffing what does the leadership mean, to our ability to be innovative?
Aja Whitaker-Moore
Yeah, I mean, I think we we agree at that at the start the diversity of our newsroom should reflect the diversity of our audience. And that will then you know, result in diversity of coverage and that’s really what we’re striving towards. You know, our founders are committed to that goal as well. You know, in the fall, we’re releasing a smart brevity book. And they dedicated the proceeds the advance from that book to fund a fellowship program that we’re really proud of where we’re focusing on hiring from diverse communities in underrepresented backgrounds, to mentor them into Axios. And focusing on developing a beat developing the next generation of leaders that we think is, you know, missing from journalism right now. And it’s something that is a part of, you know, our newsroom recruiting our newsroom leadership. Axios is led by two women of color. And myself, and our editor in chief, Sara Gu. And it’s something that we you know, walk, talk, live, breathe and think, is the future of innovation at our company and everywhere, so we’re really focused on it.
Michelle Manafy
Alright, so let’s shift gears a little bit. We there’s been a kerfluffle, of late around the social presence of journalists online, rather spectacular, blow up, in fact, quite visibly on social media. For for Axios, let’s start there. How are you balancing the desire for reporters to have a social presence to leverage that social presence? With your standards?
Aja Whitaker-Moore
Yeah, and when I think we’re, we’re not like, any, you know, we’re similar to every other media organization out there, that’s figuring out, you know, how to balance that, but we’ve been really proud of our track record so far, you know, in the past five years, you know, we we’ve really just said to our staff, we trust you. You arer adults. Represent yourselves represent Axios the way that you, you know, would expect to in public. And that’s actually what’s happened. So I think we are, you know, proud of how we’ve done it so far. And we’ll continue to act accordingly on social platforms, and still be able to share our journalism with the world engage with people in a responsible way. And I think we’re all doing that.
Nicole Carroll
I know that at USA Today, the social presence is a big part of the work. So how are you setting your standards and communicating to your staff that this is important? But you still have to represent our brand.
Right? I mean, we know that, you know, our integrity and our fairness. And all of that is just the bedrock of what we are. And so we want to make sure that we represent our way ourselves that way. On social, we tell people, we want you to bring your authentic selves, we want you to bring your lived experiences. But obviously, we can’t slip into advocacy. And I say this all the time: The power you have as journalists, to choose stories to tell stories to spread stories, is so much more power than you’re going to have in that tweet. And so you know, again: Bring your true selves, bring your authentic selves, but but let’s not tip into advocacy that could harm the integrity of our brand.
Michelle Manafy
So I think another issue digitally in particular is the 24 hour news cycle, right? We’re all facing this kind of pressure to constantly be online, constantly be informing our our consumers. But how are you balancing the 24 hour news cycle with your again, with your standards and your goal to provide actual, trustworthy news?
Nicole Carroll
Well, we’re really lucky and that we’re spread across the country from, you know, Washington all the way to LA. And then we also have a London bureau. So, we really are on 24/7, which, which makes things a little bit easier. But you know, I tell people 100 times out of 100, I’d rather be second than wrong. 100 times out of 100. So if you’re ever in doubt, don’t do it. Double check it triple check it, I’m going to be fine. If we’re last as long as we’re right.
Michelle Manafy
I see a lot of scoops and exclusives at Axios. So how about you? Is there a difference there? Is there pressure?
Aja Whitaker-Moore
Yeah, Imean, I think that our philosophy is a little bit different. We’re not there to deliver you every piece of news. We’re there to deliver you what you need to know, and the things that are important. And so I think that our model is a little bit different in that we package our version of the 24 news cycle into a newsletter suite. So if you’re getting Mike Allen’s AM, and PM and Finish Line newsletters, that’s what we call our daily essentials. And he’s set a really diverse kind of breakfast table for you in the morning. Happy Hour, four in the evening. And he’s telling you the stories that you need to know and so we’re curating that and packaging that I think in a different way than you know, a news wire or or a news organization that’s giving you breaking news 24/7.
Michelle Manafy
It’s interesting. We used to call those “newspapers” where we curated what you need to know i the course of a day. I do think it’s interesting. The last panel was very much touching on this deluge; this fire hose, and how we can discern. And of course you know, I advocate for trustworthy sources like y’all.
Nicole Carroll
Yeah, absolutely.
Michelle Manafy
All right. So, innovation in delivery and formats. I know you specifically mentioned Axios being mobile first. And I think that’s for a little while there that was almost a cliche industry. But I think it’s, it’s a given, is it not? Are you thinking a lot about innovating in terms of say, Tik Tok? Let’s just throw out like, are you looking at new formats?
Aja Whitaker-Moore
Tick Tok? Not so much. Not yet. I mean, we have experimented, I think on all the platforms, you know, we do Twitter spaces, we do curated videos on You know, on Instagram, I think Tik Tok is an amazing platform. And a lot of I think publishers have figured out a great way to do it. But I think it actually is we, you know, right now, you know, we really are interested in podcasts, we’ve found a way to tell long form stories in smart brevity, through audio, which, you know, is is challenging, but we’ve done it with our How it Happened podcast series. It’s got, you know, 3 million downloads, and it’s really resonating with the audience. And we also have, you know, a daily podcast that we think is, you know, really innovative and how we’re telling stories in, you know, 10 minutes a day, and our audience is telling us, you know, they can’t get enough of it. So, I think that’s definitely interesting to us. You know, we just hired our first SEO editor and we’re really focused on you know, packaging our stories for social and, you know, making sure we’re we’re meeting people where they are.
Michelle Manafy
I know that social audio has been really good for you guys too. How about USA Today. What do you do?
Nicole Carroll
Well, it’s funny: I was just checking or TikTok I think we’re just checking to see how many followers I think we’re over a million somebody check me so we’re over a million and when we you know, I love it. My son’s 16 He gets all his news on Tik Tok. So whenever we show up in his feed, he’s really proud. He’s like, there’s my mom. So I mean, we’re gonna be in the spaces where people are, we’re doing Twitter Spaces, we were on Clubhouse, we were doing all the things. Really, it’s because we just want people to know that we’re there with the information they need, again, whether it’s Instagram, or Tik Tok, or a newsletter, or a podcast. And it just helps the overall reach and hopefully, you know, to your point about trust and media, if they see us enough, if they see that we’re right enough, if they see that we’re responsible enough, I want to develop that trust. And so I think it’s not just about the audience. It’s about developing that relationship and trust and like, Oh, I’ve seen you three or four times now. You know, I I know your real I know, you’re a trustworthy news source. And that’s really important to me.
Michelle Manafy
Yeah and that’s interesting, because you both mentioned, you know, being where they are.
Nicole Carroll
Yeah.
Michelle Manafy
But then your values like perpetuated values and your ethos there to build that trusted relationship.
Nicole Carroll
Well, it’s funny when the last join some of the January 6, and we made some decisions about, you know, we didn’t errors, certain of Donald Trump’s speeches, because I did, they were misinformation, and we chose not to air them live. We would go back and we would package them so we could fact check them before we did it. I actually went on Tik Tok. And I told people why we were doing that. And I did a video like: Hey, here’s we may be hearing about this. And this is why we’re doing that we think it’s important to fact check before we put information out there. So it was kind of fun to be able to talk directly to that audience
Michelle Manafy
Addressing that that demand for immediacy. Head on,
Nicole Carroll
Right, exactly.
Michelle Manafy
We want it now. But here’s why we’re not.
Why don’t you tell me each of you just very quickly, a project or product that you’ve done recently that you feel is particularly innovative?
Aja Whitaker-Moore
Sure. I mean, I think Axios local is probably our biggest project of the year. And, you know, talking about rebuilding trust, we want to meet people in their communities, and talk to them about the economic situation where they live, the lifestyle opportunities, where they live, also, the political landscapes where they live. So we’ve stood up in 17 cities, and we’re going to be in, I think, another 25 by the end of this year. So, we’re really proud of that expansion and trying to recapture some of what’s been lost in the local news landscape. And, you know, it’s really resonating with audiences, we’ve had over a million subscribers in those local markets, generated, you know, 5 million in revenue last year from loca. And so we think that’s, you know, a really big part of the future of Axios. And hopefully the future of restoring trust and journalism in America.
Michelle Manafy
No small feat.
Aja Whitaker-Moore
Yeah, just a little, just a little project.
Michelle Manafy
Just a Tuesday. How about at USA Today?
Nicole Carroll
Sure. Well, I really hope you guys will check out some of the AR we’ve been doing. And again, this leans more into the tech, but it’s really cool tech. So you can we did a series this past year on 1961 and the importance of what happened in 1961, around voting rights to what’s happening today. And our AR team built this amazing experience where you could actually ride the bus as it was being attacked by rioters and you can hear the story and you can you can you can hear we brought in historical video and audio. And you really feel like you can see the flames around you and you are really immersed in that experience. So, you know, again, we’re trying to bring the truth to people and help them understand news that empathy that you get from immersive storytelling is really important. Not just reading it; you’re experiencing it. So really proud of some of the work we’ve done on AR.
Michelle Manafy
That’s a great example. Just before we’re done here: How about something that you think that everyone is talking about in media right now, that maybe is hype or that maybe you’re a little skeptical about?
Aja Whitaker-Moore
Just in general?
Michelle Manafy
In the digital media industry. Hype cycle?
Aja Whitaker-Moore
I don’t know,
Michelle Manafy
Alright, we can do NFTs? [laughter]
Aja Whitaker-Moore
Well, we do have a newsletter that covers crypto and I think we do talk about that, you know, quite a bit. And NFTs have their place in the crypto world.
Unknown Speaker 15:48
Oh ho ho. No, it doesn’t have to be NF T’s. Metaverse can do another one. You guys bullish?
Aja Whitaker-Moore
I mean, I think the Metaverse is interesting. If you think about it from the standpoint of like, we’re just building it now. You know, we don’t actually know what it’s going to be.
Michelle Manafy
Is it going to be the Facebook-averse. Is that? Or is it going to be an open platform?
Aja Whitaker-Moore
I guess it depends on who you ask.
Michelle Manafy
We’re not going to ask Mark. Apparently, he didn’t want to talk to us about this.
Nicole Carroll
Which is weird. So weird. I mean, I think we just have to keep moving forward. Like I said at the beginning in all these spaces, and here’s the cool thing, we get to invent them, right? We get to say what they’re gonna be. So that’s awesome. We’re like, you know, I know, there’s a lot of stress in media right now. But I’m really excited about where we’re at right now in media, we’re, we get to invent the future. And that’s pretty cool.
Michelle Manafy
All right. The very last thing: leadership, like if you are looking out into the industry, and you want to just impart one piece of wisdom about leading an innovative team, no pressure. Aja: pressure.
Aja Whitaker-Moore
I mean, I think it’s really just about having a culture of activation and being able to experiment with an idea and nurture it from experiment, you know, to fruition. I think we do that, you know, every day at Axios. And really, every day in media. Every day, we’re writing a story. It’s like, you know, where’s this going to take us at? Where’s this gonna go? And just continuing, you know, to do that?
Michelle Manafy
I love that.
Nicole Carroll
Yeah. I think it’s all about the people. No matter what you do, you’ve got to create the culture. You’ve got to believe in people you’ve got to have, I think I call realistic optimism. We are in a tough world. But you realistically have to think “we can do these things.” And you have to impart that to people. You have to have a culture of “yes, let’s try it.” What can you do? What can you do in a month? What can you do in two months? We have to keep moving forward.
Michelle Manafy
Love it. Well, thank you both. I sincerely appreciate this. It was a great conversation and went to fast.
Anita Zielina founded the Executive Program in News Innovation and Leadership at CUNY in 2019. Since that time, she has shaped the leadership skills of executives from local media, start-ups and major outlets such as The New York Times, Reuters, Bloomberg, and ProPublica.
“I just built the program that I wish I had a bit earlier in my career,” explains Zielina. Like so many in our industry, she says “I started out as a journalist and I never had the management training, the product training,” she says. “I never learned how to speak the language of the business and strategy side of things.”
An Executive MBA at INSEAD, addressed some of those needs, but “there was not one other person from media in my class,” Zielina observes. In a cohort of 120 people, all of her peers were from consumer brands, oil and gas consultancies, banks, and the like. Nonetheless, she says, “I loved the experience.” But she could see that there was a need for such a program tailored to the media industry.
Zielina has set out to fill this need at CUNY. She built a program offering elements of a traditional MBA – with classes on strategy and organizational change – alongside a “comprehensive leadership growth development program,” and a focus on media best practices.
Anita Zielina
In a wide-ranging interview, Zielina – who is returning to Austria to launch her own consultancy focused on digital and leadership transformation – shared her views on the key challenges facing the news and media industries.
Here are five of the core elements that emerged from our conversation, with a focus on supporting future leaders – and the challenges facing them – in the media industry:
1. Training the next generation of leaders
Zielina has extensive leadership experience in media including stints as Chief Product Officer & Editor-in-Chief Digital at the Swiss-based NZZ, Digital Editor and Deputy Editor-In-Chief at Stern the German current affairs magazine, and as an Editor at the Austrian newspaper Der Standard. Looking back at previous roles she says, “I think I did a decent job. But I had to teach myself a lot of the skills you need as a leader.”
Those skills include an ability to navigate the intersections of business product, audience, editorial, technology and innovation. They are not necessarily acquired in the newsroom, she suggests, and the media context is often missing from traditional business programs.
“Our industry has a tradition of people rising to leadership roles,” she says. “They were great journalists. Then suddenly they become managers, and they do not get the support that they need.”
The need for this type of support is clear when looking at the graduates from CUNY’s executive programs. “Half of the people in that cohort that just graduated have taken on a larger role throughout the year or immediately after the program,” Zielina told us, “either in their own organization or in a different organization.” The training CUNY provided has been crucial to enabling them to effectively step into these leadership roles.
2. Strategic vision and execution
“There are some similarities in organizations whether they are large or small,” Zielina says when asked to share the biggest challenges for participants in the CUNY’s Executive Program in News Innovation and Leadership. “Number one is strategy.”
Shortcomings in communication, as well as the need for strategy to continually evolve and be updated, are key factors. Even when strategy exists, she says “it’s not clearly communicated. In other cases, the strategy “is old, it’s faulty, it needs to be adapted to new challenges.”
To address this, Zielina encourages leaders to think about whether their organization is prepared for transformation. They must focus on which audiences they want or need to reach, and how to ensure that appropriate resources are prioritized. Integral to this is a “talent pipeline” as well as clarity about the type of work culture you want to instill.
“The difference between an organization that successfully manages transformation, and an organization that doesn’t, is not necessarily that one has a strategy paper or slide deck while the other does not.”
At the heart of this are leader who can turn strategy “into products, into audience work, into services, into organizational structures, and the daily execution routine.”
3. Detoxifying the workplace
Implementation is about more than just the products you build, and the platforms you use, Zielina reminds us. People, ethics, and culture must not be overlooked.
The workplace is an area in which she believes change is long overdue. If not, then talented people will leave. For good. In fact, Zielina says, many are already gone.
She notes a generational shift whereby Millennials and Gen Z “are not willing to put up with the not-so-great culture and ethics anymore.” “They are opting out,” she says. Unfortunately, “these people are never going to come back if we lose them now.”
According to Zielina, the size of this issue is one that too few industry leaders grasp, although she believes the trend is “becoming more obvious.”
“Younger colleagues in this industry, are waking up to the fact that they don’t have to stay in places that are toxic. They don’t have to stay in places that don’t let them have impact.”
“I think it’s the big the big issue that we’ll have to tackle the next few years,” she says.
4. Making DEI commitments a reality
“A lot of tensions obviously revolve around women, people of color, [and people] from different socio-economic backgrounds, finally saying, ‘I want a seat at the table. And if I don’t get a seat at the table, I’m going to leave.’ So really prioritizing DEI is so crucial.”
Zielina feels that “there was a certain reckoning after the murder of George Floyd and we see movement there.” However, many organizations are failing to deliver on their DEI promises.
Too often, she says, we hear companies say “yes, we are prioritizing, but it was so hard to find a woman and it was so hard to find that person of color. So we took another white man, but next time, we’re definitely gonna do it.”
“If we don’t tackle the big underlying cultural issues of this industry, if we don’t make this industry more attractive, if we don’t make this industry more equitable, if we don’t make this industry a healthier, better and more supportive space, we are going to lose all those people,” she adds.
5. Updating outdated modes of human capital
Making the industry more attractive, Zielina suggests, includes learning from the creator economy and the great resignation.
“More folks are realizing maybe I don’t want [to work for] an employer, maybe I want to do my own thing. But I don’t want it to be a kind of hockey stick startup with venture capital, I just wanted to work for me. I want to tell my stories. I want to serve my audience, who I care about.”
“We are going to see more of that,” she says, which means rethinking collaboration and working with creative/journalistic talent. She also believes we will see increased emphasis on impact, flexibility, and hybrid work – issues that matter to growing numbers of the workforce.
“There is a huge disconnect between the corporate world, and specifically corporate HR and applicants and employees,” she cautions. “And this disconnect is getting bigger.”
“You can start that tomorrow,” she says, urging organizations to ask “whether our incentive systems, our HR processes, our way of work is still adequate for this day and age.”
Future plans
After she leaves CUNY, Zielina plans to continue to focus on ensuring organizations have the structures, skills and talents they need, “in the space of digital leadership and product.”
Zielina sees signs that a famously myopic industry is starting to look beyond national markets for solutions. “It makes me optimistic that it seems that we are getting a bit more global and a bit more international as an industry,” she says.
“Those best practices are really starting to be shared across borders, and that that I think is an a fantastic development. We need more of that,” Zielina adds, “and I hope to play a part in that in at least bridging that gap between the U.S. and Western Europe.”
Publishers continue to remain highly focused on revenue diversification and the value of first party data according to new research from the Association of Online Publishers (AOP), a UK industry body that represents digital publishing companies. The AOP undertook its Digital Publishing: Meeting the Future survey to provide “a snapshot of how digital publishing companies across the UK are continuing to respond to the challenge to change.” The research offers a look at publishers’ business priorities and the future-readiness of the media industry.
The AOP carried out its survey between January 5 and February 9 of 2022. Of the 111 responses, 83% were from publishers and 17% from organizations providing solutions to the publishing sector.
Diversifying revenue streams
Across all types of publishers (B2B, B2C, or a combination), respondents said that their highest priority is developing new revenue streams through product innovation. Ensuring data privacy compliance and transparency ranked second.
The AOP’s publisher respondents ranked opportunities for revenue growth over the next three years. More than half (55%) feel that subscriptions are the big revenue opportunity right now, with lead generation-based revenues ranking second (33%). The report concludes that these findings mean that publishers are highly focused on building direct relationships with audiences and leveraging their first party data.
Audio and ecommerce tied for third (31%) in terms of revenue priorities, which points to continued revenue-model innovation. The research finds that both B2B and B2C publishers agreed that subscriptions have the most potential for growth. However, publishers that target both B2B and consumer audiences saw ecommerce as the most promising revenue generator.
Data dominates
While publisher concerns about ensuring privacy and providing transparency rank high, they clearly know the value of their first party data and seek to maximize its use. According to the report, publishers are focused on building the right ecosystem of commercial, data, and tech partnerships.
In the shadow of cookie deprecation, some publishers are considering collaborating on data initiatives. AOP found that, while 12% of publisher respondents are unsure of their next moves and 12% do not expect to collaborate, many publishers are either already collaborating (20%), are discussing collaborating (16%), or are open to the possibility of collaboration (40%).
The majority (75%) of publishers said that they are working to ensure that audience data informs everything they do and that they are investing in tools to help achieve this. Despite the emphasis on data, however, only 17% of publishers said that all their teams are aligned internally around their audience data. Half of the solutions provider respondents suggest that, while publishers understand being joined up internally around audience data is important, many don’t yet have a strategy in place to achieve their goals.
Workforce and workplace concerns
Interestingly, recruiting and retaining talent, and ensuring a diverse and inclusive workplace, are rated higher (tying for third place with “developing new first party data strategies”) than the tech-based challenges you might expect the digital publishing sector to be focused on.
Most respondents (75%) report that “supporting and retaining current employees” is their top priority when it comes to recruitment and workforce development. This was followed by adapting the publisher’s offering to appeal to new talent entering the industry.
Putting in place recruitment processes that eliminate bias and support the development of a more diverse workforce is ranked third here. However, when asked how they would describe their organization’s diversity, equity & inclusion (DE&I) strategy, respondents suggest confidence in their progress on this challenge. Just over half (51%) believe they have made good progress with areas for continued improvement, and 24% believe they have an effective DE&I strategy. Only 5% of respondents don’t believe they have a clear strategy on DE&I.
As Covid-19 restrictions are being eased in the UK and elsewhere, publishers are evaluating their working environments and plans to return to offices. This survey found that 37% of respondents say their ideal working pattern would be to work from the office two days a week and 24% would be happy to come in for the occasional key meeting, but primarily work from home.
Nearly a third (30%) of respondents expect their employers to be fully flexible and happy for them to choose to work as they wish. However, 66% believe they will be asked to work at least a few days in the office each week.
Clearly, the past couple of years have seen trends like ecommerce intensify and placed increased pressure on publishers to innovate. That innovation has, unsurprisingly, focused on product and revenue. However, it has also required publishers to reexamine workplace culture, recruiting, and retention strategies. The AOP’s survey finds that digital publishing companies that understand the bigger picture challenges and have identified many opportunities. However, it appears that they may still be working through the best tactics and strategies to provide the requisite competitive advantage moving forward.
Held virtually January 31-February 3, the 20th annual members-only DCN Next: Summit was a gathering of digital content companies from all over the world.
CEO Jason Kint opened the event by offering his perspective on how the last few years have underscored the need for quality information. He also reinforced the need for trust, particularly as we move toward web3. “Where people have choice and a competitive market, where they spend their time, attention and relationships, trust will matter. Trust matters more than ever,” Kint explained.
Keynotes and discussion sessions touched on subscriptions, paywalls and reader revenue, video, film, audio strategy, and AI. The event also explored the political and technical forces shaping the media landscape today, with sessions focusing on cookies, identity, trust, privacy, and platforms.
The personal is political, and platforms
The opening keynote featured 2021 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Maria Ressa speaking with investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr. They discussed platforms and the critical role a free press plays in healthy democracies. As Ressa put it, “Until technology gets guardrails around it, until we get to the point where the platforms that deliver the news are redesigned so that lies laced with anger and hate do not spread faster and further than facts, journalists will be under attack.”
Investigative Journalist Carole Cadwalladr in conversation with Maria Ressa, CEO of Rappler
Platform concerns and necessary regulation arose again throughout the event, notably in Thursday’s final keynote. Attendees heard from U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, mere hours after a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights hearing.
Klobuchar, who has been working to hold big tech platform accountable, provided an update on the bipartisan antitrust app store bill that just went through committee, as well as other bills she’s leading. “We just had an incredible vote on a bill that Senator Blumenthal and Blackburn and I … put out a few months ago on app stores: 21 to 1,” she said.
The bipartisan legislation, called the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act would enable news organizations to collectively negotiate terms with platforms to provide fair compensation for news content. Klobuchar told attendees, “The big issue is advertising money and fair compensation. These companies are sucking up the ad dollars using the original content that you produce and they’re using the data they collect from your audiences to compete against you.”
Chris Pedigo SVP, Legal Affairs of Digital Content Next, interviews Senator Amy Klobuchar
First-party data and identity
Unsurprisingly, the upcoming deprecation of the third-party cookie was a topic of much discussion at this year’s summit. The change has destabilized the advertising ecosystem. Experts discussed how to prepare for the post-cookie reality and how publishers could invest in their first-party data.
To prepare for the post-cookie reality, Rachel Parkin, CafeMedia’s EVP, Sales and Strategy, suggested publishers strengthen relationships with advertisers and build up their arsenals and come up with the right framework for identity and authentication for users and content.
TRUSTX CEO David Kohl suggested that publishers, by acting as a group to create scale, can create competitive advantage. ” We are in transition and there’s tremendous chaos in identity and audience data. But here’s the thing: Chaos creates opportunity,” he said. “And the question is, how can publishers take the lead in organizing the chaos? How can we band together? It is time to create an ‘easy button’ for scale.”
Another session discussed how publishers are leveraging consent-based visitor relationship data sources to fuel monetization as the industry moves forward into a cookie-less future. David Rowley, senior director data and identity products at News Corp. said they feel first party data is going to be one of the most important assets to a publisher. News Corp is assessing what’s out there for external identity solutions, Rowley said, and building out a proprietary identity solution.
“Publishers use so many different types of technology, DMPs, CDPs, analytics platforms, you name it, all of them spit out and create their own identifiers. Being able to stitch all of those together to have a unified view of a user is critical, so you can have that one-on-one relationship with a user,” he said.
People and empathy
Another theme that echoed through the conference was that of managing during these difficult times. As Agnes Chu, president of Condé Nast Entertainment remarked, “I think it’s hard to drive change during a time where people are experiencing so much anxiety themselves.”
Lindsay Peoples Wagner, editor-in-chief of The Cut, outlined that it’s important for leadership to have and bring a sense of empathy. Leaders must “be able to step outside of yourself and understand that, yes, we’re all employees and work at a company, but we’re human beings,” Peoples Wagner said. “People, especially in the past couple years, have had a really hard time with mental health or their family issues or being sick. It’s important to understand, I think, that people may need time, and that push and pull as a manager, I think is more important than ever.”
Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director of DCN interviews Lindsay Peoples Wagner, Editor of The Cut
The biggest shift for TripAdvisor’s Christine Maguire when the pandemic hit, was from building products to empathy. “I had to sort of take a step back and realize where everybody was in their journey,” she said. “Having empathy for what goes on in their day to day is so important, because oftentimes we come in to make a change when there is a problem, and that’s too late.”
The future of work
The newsroom of the future may look nothing like the pre-pandemic one. Indeed, as publishers move forward, they’re stepping into a future which doesn’t look much like the past. There’s upside, such as the ability to create more flexible working situations, which facilitates broader recruiting.
However, as author Anne Helen Petersen noted, when companies allow their employees to live anywhere and work any time, they may run into a lot of sticky situations.
“The larger question that a lot of companies are dealing with is if we say that people can have really flexible work schedules and can go in when it is most convenient for them, are we also going to put stipulations on the states or countries where they can live,” she said. “Are we going to say that they get into New York within the day, that they take the train in? Is that okay? Or are we going to say that it’s one flight away? What are our boundaries?”
The future of the industry
On the last day of the summit, Co-founder and CEO of Insider Henry Blodget and Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson engaged in a spitfire conversation about the digital media industry. They discussed the complicated relationship with platforms, new technologies like AI, NFTs and blockchain, and made predictions for web3.
Blodget was optimistic about the future of local news. However, he sees a different scenario play out for others going forward. As the industry evolves, he thinks there will be three to five big generalists, a bunch of targeted specialist publications that serve a particular niche, and everyone else is in the middle.
Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson in conversation with Henry Blodget Co-founder & CEO of Insider
“I do think we’re all going to face pressure and there’s going to be a lot more consolidation because there are enormous returns to scale,” Thompson replied. “We see that every day with The New York Times, when they roll out some cool new tech feature that they can spread across their 10 million subscribers.”
“Let us just acknowledge that The New York Times is Netflix of journalism,” Blodget said. “My view is in five to 10 years, they will have 25 million subscribers and they will still be growing strong and they will become one of the most powerful English language journalism publications in the world. And the rest of us are gonna have to find places to carve out what is left.”
From the narrative-changing storytelling initiative, “Driving Change From the Inside“, a look at the DE+I movement in organizations across the country.
CHECK OUT THE FULL SERIES: Summaries, Key takeaways, and Video Highlights
One wish that I have for America is for more organizations to have the clarity of logic, depth of commitment, and force of execution happening at NPR as they address their businesses challenges and needs concerning Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
In January of 2020, NPR President and CEO John Lansing made audience diversity NPR’s number one priority. Since that time, the organization has shared its progress across workplace, content, and audiences. This includes a three-year strategic plan that opens with the words “NPR must change to survive.” To get a first hand view into this progressive change agenda, I had the privilege of sitting down with the Chief Marketing Officer of NPR, Michael. The conversation that unfolded might be considered a masterclass on establishing a long term DEI strategy.
According to Michael, the business imperative for DEI is simply “believing in the strategy that to serve a more diverse America, you need to have a team of people whose life experience is more in line with the customers that you’re serving.” That sentiment is shared from NPR CEO, John Lansing down through the organization.
“NPR came out of the Great Society program of the 1960s, where the government set up the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helped launch NPR and PBS. Their mission was to create media resources that weren’t being fed by the commercial media.”
Back in 1971 when NPR launched, their audience was in line with the United States. About 80% white and 20% diverse audience, similar to the country at the time. Today, their radio audience is still about 80-20, while the composition of the American population has shifted to 60-40. And, of course, the country has made a massive switch to digital in the intervening years as well. In order to get back in sync with America, NPR has been prioritizing efforts to make the network younger and more diverse.
Michael says that NPR has a fiercely loyal audience, because their values align with those of the audience. However, he says most Americans are not even aware of NPR. “We know from research data that only 30% of all Americans have actually even heard of NPR, which is maybe surprising to people who are big fans of the brand. There’s a huge swath of America that we need to make aware of the great work that we do, and a lot of that audience are younger and more diverse people.”
As impressive as NPR’s DEI strategy and tactics are, so too is Michael Smith. The second son of “immigrant strivers” from Jamaica as he describes, Michael was raised by a single mother, gained admission and scholarships to Stanford University. Now, he is living his childhood dream of being a leader in media and entertainment.
“I’ve always had this feeling of being the new kid and being outside, and I think there’s something actualizing about the power of being able to have your voice heard, even if it’s not being heard in your day-to-day life. You feel like if you’re making media content, you can be heard by the world. So I think that’s what drew me to it.”
The beneficiary of an 1980s minority-focused internship program at the San Francisco Chronicle Foundation, Michael, like myself, took advantage of internship opportunities designed to address diverse pipeline issues. I benefited from a program at Viacom that still exists, which recruits and trains underrepresented media talent. Throughout our conversation, Michael offers insights from his four decades of navigating the media industry, from an intern to founding the Cooking Channel to the CMO of NPR — as a Black man.
His story is inspiring to anyone who is interested in a career path, but lacks the immediate familial access to knowledge and mentorship in that industry. His combination of hard work, curiosity, creativity and agency provides a blueprint any individual can follow to manifest their professional dreams.
Here are a few highlights from our conversation, curated to help any individual or organization seeking to adapt to societal change and create a safe space for employees of all backgrounds, orientations, races, and beliefs.
This is NPR’s “number one priority. To really diversify our audience to better reflect and serve America. We’ve always been about making a more informed, and more culturally enriched population through our content, but we haven’t always done it. Our commitment right now is to very much reflect all of America, and put the public back into National Public Radio.”
“It’s really one big thing, which is just believing in the strategy to serve a more diverse America. You need to have a team of people whose life experience is more in line with the customers and service users that you’re serving.”
“If you think about when a brand like NPR started in the 1970s, the country was about 80-85% white. If you think about who the listeners were, most of whom were in colleges, who were in corporations, and all kinds of institutions, it was 80-90% white. We’re at a time now where it’s really changed. For the first time in some states like California, the majority of kids who are in elementary school are of color.”
Act:
Change or risk extinction. It appears NPR sees something that many organizations are failing to prioritize. If you cannot relate to your audience, then you will eventually lose them. Our nation has become more diverse and our nation’s media (and other organizations) need to adapt to meet their audiences’ expectations and sensibilities. Once you identify the core business case for diversity, it unlocks the license to infuse DE+I goals intrinsically into your business strategy, goals, and roadmap.
2. Get educated on the headwinds BIPOC employees face
Listen and learn:
“I know from my own career, when I got out of college and business school and was working on Madison Avenue back in the ’80s at Young & Rubicam, a popular and famous agency. There were only two African-Americans, me and one other gentleman, in the entire company – account management – and they had, I think, about 800 different people in account management.”
“One of the things that I had noticed when I was younger is that a lot of senior executives in media: If you looked at their family backgrounds, their fathers were also in media. Or they had brothers or cousins, or there were the people around the dinner table when they were 12 or 14. Their dad was reading The Wall Street Journal and talking about what was going on at work. They just had certain insights that people, especially BIPOC people, we just didn’t have.”
“In terms of discrimination, I think that the biggest thing that I’ve faced, and I think a lot of people of color have faced, is being underestimated, undervalued and marginalized in terms of what people think your potential could be.”
Act:
In today’s job market, if you wish to foster safety and retain high potential BIPOC employees, it is unwise to ignore the effects of race and privilege. Creating lasting inclusivity requires the hard work of building trust and connection for team members to explore privilege and bias. Peer to peer storytelling can be effective when appropriately moderated and as bonds of trust in organizations are strengthened. Ongoing people-manager training, community gathering, and proactive mentorship programs can help to close the trust gap, and reduce missed opportunities between employers and underrepresented talent.
3. Make long term investments in BIPOC pipeline
Listen and learn:
“When you think about diversity and inclusion across U.S. companies, there are two things going on, and they’re both related to this question of the pipeline. One is getting more people into the pipeline. Two is once they’re in the pipeline, making sure that they actually make it through and thrive.”
“You see, what C-Suite leaders need to do to really make diversity a reality is, first get true buy-in to why this matters. Not just the moral reason behind it, but the business imperative. Because your audience is changing and you’re gonna become a dinosaur if you don’t reflect the people you’re serving outside of your company. You gotta get buy-in at first, and then understand the nuances of the situation. It’s a combination of bringing people into your organization, but more importantly, what do you do once they’re in the organization.”
“I give a lot of credit to, as we talk about diversity, to the San Francisco Chronicle Foundation, which is a newspaper foundation that had created a minority internship program back in the 80s. The idea was to help kids of color get exposure to the business. If it wasn’t for that, I don’t think I would have gotten my foot in the door at the TV station that they owned. And then that led to other internships that I got in the industry and started my career.”
Act:
Content is king and content companies are the king makers. In the cases of media and advertising, as the cost of creating content falls and new platforms for brands and storytellers emerge, the competition for all talent is increasing. In order to create long term demographic shifts, investments need to be made that recruit and support the retention of candidates over an extended period. If you aren’t investing in BIPOC talent, stand back as players from all sectors win the love of the talent and audiences that you covet.
4. Measure the impact of investment in DE+I
Listen and learn:
“We measure our social impact on how many people we reach with our content, and how much of a change we make in our society through that content. When we look at NPR historically: We had about 80% white audience, 20% diverse audience, and that was similar to the country. But if you look at us today, our radio audience is still about 80-20, and the country has changed to digital. So we realize that we’ve gotten out of sync with America, and so we’ve been re-doubling our efforts to make the network younger and more diverse.”
“We’ve had great success in podcasting, because that’s the platform that younger people really resonate with. It’s on demand. They listen on their smartphones. We found that our podcast content, whether it’s shows like How I Built This or Planet Money or Code Switch, or It’s Been a Minute, those shows actually have about a 40% to 45% people of color audience.”
“So we see the path forward. Which is to make content and put it on the platforms where younger people are. We have another series on YouTube, which is another place where young people love to go. It’s called Tiny Desk Concerts, and it’s basically live concerts featuring a wide variety of diverse artists. And that series is bringing in young and very diverse people into the NPR fold. So we just feel like it’s about those series.”
Act:
Numbers don’t lie, unless you want them to. For NPR, by focusing on goals of attracting a younger and more diverse audience, they were able to implement strategies that are yielding the processes and connections necessary to produce the content that appeals to their desired audience. Whether your business goal is to appeal to more consumers, employees, clients or potential partnerships, identifying the business imperative for diversity, equity and inclusion and measuring it clearly, is the most effective tactic of assuring your moral goals remain linked to your business health regardless of leadership or cultural changes.
Watch or listen to highlights of Michael Tennant’s conversation with Michael Smith
About the author
Michael Tennant is a founder, writer, and movement-builder dedicated to spreading tools of empathy and helping people find their purpose. Before founding Curiosity Lab, Tennant spent 15-years becoming a media, advertising, and nonprofit executive, and delivering award-winning marketing strategies for companies like MTV, VICE, P&G, Coca-Cola, sweetgreen, and Oatly.
Tennant founded Curiosity Lab in 2017 and created the conversation card game Actually Curious. Actually Curious became a viral sensation in 2020 during Covid-19 and the rise of the racial justice movement for helping people build meaningful connections and to tackle the important topics facing our world.
He has channeled his business success and momentum into a sustained movement supporting BIPOC and other underrepresented communities through speaking, writing, leadership, mentorship, consulting, partnerships, and talent-pipeline programs.
From the narrative-changing storytelling initiative, “Driving Change From the Inside“, a look at the DE+I movement in organizations across the country.
Madison Avenue has long been one of the most coveted industries to work for in America. Today advertising stands among the masses anxiously awaiting the end of the pandemic while striving to adapt workplace culture to address the “great reshuffle” happening in the U.S. job market.
Every major industry has been faced with a reckoning around equitable opportunity and a need to attract and retain diverse talent. For advertising, this has been keenly felt as it becomes increasingly evident that messaging that reflects the audiences it serves is best created by diverse talent. To put this industry’s situation into context: In 2020, major Advertising holding companies responded to the fallout following the rise of the Black and AAPI advocacy movements with grand pledges to correct the inequities being denounced on a National and International level. A full year later, despite what appears to have been a genuine effort across the industry, the incremental advancements have been underwhelming.
Like many of the holding companies, Havas Group released its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Stats in Q3 of 2021. It showed improvement—and room for improvement. Havas Group North America increased the number of diverse employees across all career levels within its U.S. offices by 3% between July 2020 and June 2021. A closer look at the data shows Hispanics/Latinos were up 1.6%, followed by Asians at 1%, multiracial people at .2%, and American Indians/Pacific Islanders and Black people at .014% each.
But these numbers only paint part of the picture. So, I sat down with Juliana Akoumouh, Chief Culture Officer and Head of Diversity Equity and Inclusion at Havas North America to get a holistic view inside this agency group. Julianna’s job as the NA DE&I lead is to work closely with Havas’s global talent leader, as well as agency CEOs, to help them bring their DEI efforts to life and make them successful.
As Julianana describes it:
“We’re in the middle of the most dramatic talent management situation I’ve ever seen. People are reflecting on the world around them, on their careers, on their lives, what’s valuable to them, what makes them happy. We’re in a major talent shift.”
“We’re in a moment where, and it’s not just us, retention is a challenge. There’s a moment happening right now from a talent perspective where, certainly for under-represented talent, that they’re being sought out. So it is challenging to keep talent.”
Our conversation was a deeply personal interview for myself, an admitted Media and Advertising refugee who went out on my own because of a lack of feeling safe and inspired within workplace culture. A strategic and thoughtful HR leader, Julianna has felt this first hand. Speaking candidly with me, this outspoken change agent reveals that she has seen her fair share of conscious and unconscious biases on her way to excellence in her chosen path.
“You don’t hear it in the words. You may not hear it as discrimination. But I understood that they were talking about me as other.”
To address the ongoing and emerging issues in HR, Julianna describes the all-hands approach she’s part of. It spans a network of hand raisers, executive leaders, and employee resource groups. This community of people within Havas Group have come together to weather these uncertain times, while laying the foundation for a more inclusive workplace.
“I’m really optimistic that our numbers will be better. They could not have gone in the opposite direction with the level of attention and focus that we’ve had in every agency, with every leader, with every open role. So I’m optimistic. We’ll be reviewing our data and sharing [more] in the coming months. I’m really excited to see the progress that we’ve made. I know that it will be in the right direction.”
Below are a few highlights from our conversation (full transcript), curated to help any individual or organization seeking to create a safe space for employees of all backgrounds, orientations, races, and beliefs.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
To read the full interview and to follow the developments of “Driving Change” follow us at Curiosity Lab.
1. Have the difficult but necessary conversations
Listen and learn
“I think there’s a lot of value in just saying how you feel plainly so that we can actually deal with what the matters are at hand, for better problem-solving.”
“It’s difficult for people. And I understand why. But we can still work towards it.”
“I definitely want every individual to be personally accountable and understand their role in change. At the same time, I am very aware of each individual’s challenges in trying to prioritize all of these things that really matter. Our business matters. Inclusion matters in order for us to have a successful business. That’s my belief.”
“When someone identifies a situation as difficult, no matter what it is, I try to break that thing down in a way that’s digestible and give specific steps or a new way of looking at the situation that will help them still move through it.”
“That’s how we’re gonna make that progress consistently: Consistently pushing.”
Act
The tragic events of 2020 and early 2021 made our entire nation stop and pay attention to issues of inequity across our society. However, achieving measurable and sustainable progress will require leaders across all levels to continue difficult but necessary conversations about workplace inequity, safety, and culture change. In an increasingly competitive job market for top diverse talent, this is no longer an altruistic goal. It has become a business imperative to commit to sustaining the conversations that lead to inclusive workplaces and cultures.
2. Invest in this talent-driven market
Listen and learn
“We’re in the middle of the most dramatic talent management situation I’ve ever seen. People are reflecting on the world around them, on their careers, on their lives, what’s valuable to them, what makes them happy, and we’re in a major talent shift.”
“We’re in a moment where, and it’s not just us, retention is a challenge… There’s a moment happening right now from a talent perspective where, certainly for under-represented talent, that they’re being sought out. So it is challenging to keep talent. “
“I hope that all of the angles by which we’re trying to tackle this will signal to any current employees or people joining the organization that we take inclusion, belonging, and safety seriously.”
“I think our recruiters in the past have done a really good job of bringing diverse talent to the table. But we’ve seen in the past, how they don’t make it through. That diverse talent doesn’t make it through to the internship or beyond. So now, as an organization, we’ve been talking about how much this moment of access matters.”
Act
Having difficulty hiring diverse talent? You are not alone. We are in the midst of a hiring crisis, only exacerbated by a reckoning around employee burnout and renewed calls for more supportive work environments. Unfortunately, long standing issues with attracting and retaining under-represented talent creates a further issue in the lack of representation in mid- and upper-level management. This, in turn, makes it a challenge to recruit at all levels. Breaking this cycle will require a significant investment. Hiring top talent will require top dollars and filling the pipeline with good young talent will require proactive investment in training and PR to raise awareness, interest, and access in underrepresented communities.
3. Reshape corporate norms
Listen and learn
“The working environment or what it means to work together in an office space and the experience of collaborating will be changed for the better, for the future.”
“The talent is demanding it. In order for us or any organization in this industry to stay competitive from a talent retention standpoint, you’re going to have to do things differently to keep people and keep them happy. There’s going to be a shift in terms of what we think about the future of work, that people will have to adjust to. Be different and think differently.“
“I think that as we start to see demographics shift, we’ll also see corporate culture shift. Corporate culture meaning, when we think about what’s “professional” or what’s corporate. A lot of those standards have been very white-centered and very eurocentric.”
“From appearance, to tone of voice, to the language that’s used in corporate culture. Even how we interact with people will be different. Because we will have more backgrounds of people that communicate in ways that we hope are based more on empathy. Based more on honesty. Based more in vulnerability and safety. And that will definitely challenge corporate culture.”
Act
Leadership teams that are more male and more white than the populations they support are finding themselves out of touch with the desires of their staff. An inclusive workplace is not one in which everyone is invited to conform to a “corporate norm.” The very notion limits who will raise their hand to participate.
Once we’re able to acknowledge the likely existence of unconscious biases in ourselves and our organizations, the process of deep listening can begin. In order to remake corporate culture to meet the needs of the future workforce we need to involve them in the process. From investing in eye opening programming, to adapting past customs and expectations to address issues of burnout and mental health, staying competitive will require shifts that ask leaders to check their egos and acknowledge their blind spots.
4. Practice gratitude for the wins
Listen and learn
“I’m very grateful that the work that I’ve done over the last year in terms of sharing an approach for employee resource groups and in sharing a framework for DEI initiatives and audits has been received. I’ve been received with very open arms. It means that other people can share their ideas too.”
“I am really grateful for the women of color being added to senior leadership positions within the organization. They are dynamic and wonderful, and thoughtful, and I’m so happy to not be the only at such a senior level. “
“I am grateful for all of our employee resource groups and their leadership. We have staff across the entire network who are so passionate, who have real-life experience and pain that they work through and share with the entire network. And every moment of those shares, I have extreme gratitude for, because people are baring their souls, and everyone has the opportunity to be better for it.”
Act
For DE+I leaders like Julianna Akuamoah, the pursuit of a more safe, equitable, and inclusive workplace is the result of a life of facing and overcoming the very challenges our culture is confronting today. Understanding her experience teaches that driving change is a marathon-like endeavor that requires patience, strategy, and grace — empathetic qualities that all leaders should have. Taking a moment to reflect on and celebrate your wins helps to cultivate the consistency, poise, and resilience required to face these challenges over the long haul.
Watch or listen to highlights of Michael and Julianna’s conversation:
About the author
Michael Tennant is a founder, writer, and movement-builder dedicated to spreading tools of empathy and helping people find their purpose. Before founding Curiosity Lab, Tennant spent 15-years becoming a media, advertising, and nonprofit executive, and delivering award-winning marketing strategies for companies like MTV, VICE, P&G, Coca-Cola, sweetgreen, and Oatly.
Tennant founded Curiosity Lab in 2017 and created the conversation card game Actually Curious. Actually Curious became a viral sensation in 2020 during Covid-19 and the rise of the racial justice movement for helping people build meaningful connections and to tackle the important topics facing our world.
He has channeled his business success and momentum into a sustained movement supporting BIPOC and other underrepresented communities through speaking, writing, leadership, mentorship, consulting, partnerships, and talent-pipeline programs.
Many white Americans—and American corporations—were shocked into a recognition of America’s ingrained racism, past and present, by the brutal drama that played out in 2020 on the blacktop of a Minneapolis street and under the knee of a former police officer.
The callous murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless other Black Americans spurred millions to finally take a close, honest look at their communities, schools, and businesses. Eyes turned to newsrooms as we sought to understand why the media’s depiction of these institutions do not reflect the diverse reality of our lives.
History lessons
Echoing uprisings in the streets, we saw similar uprisings within America’s newsrooms. The inequities seen in our communities parallel those long in place in media institutions. And our news coverage and the framing of news stories and issues reflect these biases.
Racial disparities in America are older than the Constitution. They began with America’s original sin of chattel slavery. Tremendous leaps and bounds have been made in the fight to realize the promises in our founding documents for all Americans. Yet those words—that all are created equal—remain aspirational.
The Institute for Journalism Education was born out of this aspiration, of the struggle to ensure all segments of our society are fairly, accurately, and equitably represented. This applies not only to the halls of Congress, but to the pages and screens of our journalistic institutions.
Long before the ubiquity of “DE&I” initiatives and Black Lives Matter marches, Washington Post journalist Robert C. Maynard recognized that white men dominate America’s media organizations. Declaring “We must desegregate this business,” Maynard and eight other journalists founded the institute to train and lift up journalists of color. Robert Maynard’s ineradicable legacy as a true pioneer was solidified when the organization he helped create was posthumously renamed the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.
Amplifying voices
The Institute’s flagship program, the Maynard 200 Fellowship, is about building a new and lasting legacy for entrepreneurs, leaders, and storytellers of color who will shape the future of journalism in America. What we are seeing across journalism right now is a modern-day Civil Rights Movement for journalists of color.
In response, we must foster substantive power, belonging, and agency within the institutions that tell the stories of our society and our world. Through Maynard 200, the institute aspires to empower journalists of color to lead and grow organizations to have cultures of belonging. These leaders will help ensure that media organizations continue to serve our democracy. To do so, they must accurately represent the minds, souls, histories, and perspectives of all Americans.
Like many organizations, we’ve had to pivot following public health protocols due to the ongoing recovery from the global Covid-19 pandemic. That means that, for the first time, Maynard 200 will hold an all-digital training component to serve more than 40 diverse media professionals as fellows across the country. The program provides them with tools to elevate their own digital voices through panels, dialogues, and events.
Diversity and equity
For decades, Maynard has been the standard-bearer of aspiration and expertise in its primary mission of making newsrooms reflect America. It has led the re-envisioning, and advancing, of what it really means to be “diverse.”
In fact, Maynard has flipped the prevalent DE&I convention upside down, by bringing equity to the forefront. Without equity, diversity is only performative. By focusing on equity, Maynard has forged a longstanding record of training and advancing individuals from a varied diaspora of racial and ethnic communities throughout newsrooms and media organizations across the country.
Maynard conceived the “Fault Lines” framework for facilitating honest discussion about highly charged issues, through an understanding of how people with different perspectives can view something in completely different ways. In other words, the way we perceive the world and experience each other is filtered by our own backgrounds and experiences. Thus, diversity of perspectives produces a strength greater than the sum of each individual alone.
We belong
And, as a result of Maynard’s framework, a new narrative has emerged: the necessity and power of belonging. It is not nearly enough for organizations to check a diversity box with new hires. The perspectives and backgrounds and ideas that each individual brings to the table must be fully absorbed into the culture and decision-making of the organization itself. Inclusion alone is surface-level; inclusion can be as empty as toleration. But when you belong, you can feel it. And the implications can be felt in the work you produce.
For the Maynard Institute, pursuing belongingness is about far more than mere integration. Belonging creates the kind of atmosphere where people of color can feel empowered and entitled to bring their full selves into the newsroom, including their history and their perspectives, rather than feeling pressured to contort themselves to fit existing narratives.
Maynard 200 is the institute’s answer to the breakdown in the pipeline of training and jobs for journalists of color. In the wake of the Great Recession, years of progress were decimated in a matter of months. The ongoing public health crisis vis-a-vis the pandemic, America’s widening racial disparities, and the division and hate provoked by the Trump administration have only increased the urgency and salience of Maynard’s cause.
Writing a new story
Repairing all of this damage requires institutions of journalism to be active participants in the dismantling of structures of systemic racism—rather than the enablers of inequity and oppression.
Media organizations can be part of the solution. From the stories they tell, to the sources they use, to the framing of what is news and who is newsworthy, the media is a powerful component in our nations racial reckoning. We believe that strong diverse leadership is critical for this to occur. And so, with this year’s Maynard 200, we renew our commitment to supporting the growth and equity for future media leaders. And it is our belief that these leaders will make an impact that will resonate across all sectors of American journalism and media.
Women journalists work on the frontlines of online and offline violence. In the past three years, The Coalition For Women In Journalism (CFWIJ) has documented a significant rise of organized troll campaigns, as well as physical threats, targeting women journalists. This threat is one that should not just trigger anger and outrage, it must inspire political, structural, and societal change.
From India, the world’s largest democracy, to Northern Ireland, CFWIJ monitored cases of violence and threats against women journalists. We documented how women journalists have been subjected to violence both online and offline across 74 countries. These cases included various forms of physical violations, from kidnapping to murder, harassment, and attacks. We also observed increasing attempts to silence women’s journalistic work through state persecution and the weaponization of law, among other tactics.
In 2020 alone, CFWIJ documented 716 cases of threats and violence against women journalists. This was an increase of 138.6% in comparison to 2019, when we documented 291 cases. These include impediments in the field, detentions, imprisonments, legal harassment, and physical attacks — including four murders.
Signs of the times
The significant increase of targeting emerged right after the pandemic. We found most of these violations to be linked to the widespread efforts to suppress Covid-19 related coverage by many governments. Astonishingly, this includes The United States.
2020 was also a year of protests. Despite the fact that the entire world faced a pandemic, hundreds of thousands of people across many nations — from the United States, through Belarus to Hong Kong — took to the streets in protests against government policies and civilian deaths due to state brutality or its indolence. These protests were covered around the clock by the media.
We saw women journalists on the frontline, consistently targeted while trying to document demonstrations. Police brutality against protesters garnered global attention. However, journalists working on the ground to document these unprecedented historic moments also found themselves among those injured, attacked, and detained. Their press credentials and rights to report were not respected by the authorities. The CFWIJ documented numerous examples of physical injuries and other incidents of harsh impediments to women journalists at work.
Trolls, threats, and power
Our work reflects the deteriorating working conditions in which women journalists continue to do their jobs. They remain alarmingly vulnerable to attacks. Certainly, the physical threats are a major call for concern. However, online trolling remains one of the most critical tools that has been weaponized against women in the media. We tracked the sources of many major troll campaigns. And in many countries like Pakistan, Turkey, Mexico, Egypt, and the Philippines, online trolls were linked to the state or authorities who have also been aggressively trying to silence the press.
We have noticed that these threats have often also leaked from the virtual into the physical world. This has resulted in physical attacks against women reporters. In Pakistan, one of our members and leading news anchor Asma Shirazi has faced many waves of online trolling. These threats became all too real when she was physically approached by her trolls trying to break into her house one night. In Northern Ireland, journalist Patricia Devlin has faced consistent trolling for over a year, to an extent that her child got rape threats. Her reporting is considered biased by some of her readers. Their retaliation has escalated from online trolling to physical threats. Earlier this month (Feb), some of these trolls sprayed threatening graffiti in several locations with a bullet sign. This followed targeting of another Irish journalist, Allison Morris, in a similar pattern, which included graffiti targeting women journalists.
Big picture, big problem
Threats and violations against women journalists have become more than a job hazard. This is a threat to their lives. And it poses a threat to journalism itself.
These attacks are directly linked to the journalistic work of the individuals. However, there is very little thought or resource invested by media and journalism institutions into thinking about solutions for this massive — even deadly — problem.
Media organizations do not take sufficient responsibility when these threats take place. Often, they do not even report on the violations their reporters face. A lack of institutional support can be especially difficult for the many women who are freelance journalists.
Building a support network
In the absence of information about the status of safety challenges journalists face, we cannot grasp the gravity of the issue. Some of the ways we at the Coalition For Women In Journalism try to offer support is by documenting each and every threat and attack we can track down.
We have learned that support systems are extremely critical to ensure journalists that are not dealing with threats on their own. Through our various regional and local support networks, women journalists can report any violations they face and reach the needed help.
When journalists are targeted, they should be able to reach a trusted colleague, mentor, or organization that can acknowledge and advise appropriately. Newsrooms and media organizations can easily build such systems. And they should in order to defend freelancers, staff, and the institution of journalism itself.
About the author
Kiran Nazish is a former foreign correspondent, who reported from several countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Mexico, Turkey and Pakistan. After working for two decades, she noticed the various difficulties women journalists faced in many parts of the world. To tackle the problems, she launched The Coalition For Women In Journalism, a global mentorship and advocacy organization that aims at an equitable journalism industry worldwide. She is also the Stanley Knowles Distinguished Professor at Brandon University in Canada.
Since Covid-19 closed offices everywhere, the workplace has changed beyond recognition. Home working currently accounts for than more than two-thirds of economic activity in the U.S. Now, about a year in, employees have settled into a routine of working from their bedroom, office, or kitchen. And managers have found new ways to communicate and engage with their staff.
With the pandemic normalizing remote work, the question is: Will we ever want to work in an office again? According to research, 55% of US workers want a mixture of home and office working. Liz Vaccariello, Editor-In-Chief of Real Simple at Meredith Corporation agrees that hybrid is the best option.
“All remote, all the time is not healthy, especially in media, where the creative process needs to happen in person,” says Vaccariello. “But as a creative lead, I don’t see the need for office hours to be Monday to Friday, nine to six. It’s just inefficient. Twice a week is good enough!”
Many businesses are considering this hybrid option and starting to think about a long- term model. So, what lessons have been learned during lockdown that we can take forward into this next phase? We spoke to industry experts at Complex Networks, Meredith Corporation, and The Financial Times to find out.
Communication pro tips
“The pandemic has put a focus on intentional and clear communication,” says Krystle Douglas, VP People & Culture at Complex Networks. “So, think about what it is you are saying, how you’re saying it, and how it’s received.”
While Slack is great for keeping in touch with your team and dealing with daily duties, you need to make sure you take the time to personally reach out to individual staff. “I’ve been checking in with everyone by calling them every two weeks,” says Vaccariello. “A phone call feels more intimate and it makes us feel more connected. This is even more true than when we were in an office together, where I was around, but not always available. Additionally, I personally mail each person a note about each issue, mentioning a story they worked on, or how they contributed.”
Surveys are also a great way to communicate, as the anonymity enables employees to freely express their opinions. The Financial Times (FT) regularly surveys their staff. Since lockdown Kirsty Devine, the company’s U.S. Head of HR & Global Project, says they have been targeting questions around well-being and working from home.
Be empathetic
According to Vaccariello good communication starts with empathy. “Managers need to empathize individually and thinkabout each member of their staff and what they need,” she explains. “For example, when dealing with my younger team members, I think about my 22-year-old self. I ask: How would I be feeling?”
Douglas agrees that empathy is key to ensuring people interpret messages the way you want them to be received. “We are all busy, but you have to pause and pay attention. Everyone is dealing with a lot right now, but not everyone is ok with sharing it,” she states. “It’s about being more thoughtful in how you reach out and connect with people.”
Empathy doesn’t come naturally to everyone. However, according to research, it can be taught. The FT provides training and coaching on how to supervise staff according to their situation.
“Empathic leadership has never been so important, but not all managers are used to it,” says Devine. “In the office you can read body language. But with people working remotely they need to ask questions about how people are doing and not just brush off the response, which some people are uncomfortable with.
EMPATHETIC LEADERSHIP TIPS
The mindfulness app Headspace offers the following advice for empathetic leadership:
Look: Check-in with your team and look for the unsaid. How are people’s energy levels?
Listen: Give your team space to be open and honest about how they feel, both mentally and physically.
Feel: Taking the time to acknowledge how someone else is feeling empowers us to respond with kindness.
Respond: In times of high stress, it’s easy to let frustrations get in the way of skilful communication. Pause and give yourself space to respond in a kind way.
Flexible hours and expectations
With empathy comes an understanding of how people choose to manage their working day. This can be particularly important if they have other responsibilities, such as home schooling.
“Nine to five is out the door,” states Vaccariello. “Working during this pandemic is just about getting work done when you can.” You have to trust your staff to get their work done, at a time that fits in with their home life.
Giving them more autonomy, rather than constantly checking they are online, will cultivate a culture of trust, respect and ultimately hard work. “The work will speak for itself,” says Vaccariello. “If a team member can get their work done in five hours, good for them!”
Less can be more
The downside of flexible working is finding the “off button” at the end of the day. “The commute served as the emotional shoulder of the day,” explains Vaccariello. “You would read the paper on the way in to prepare for the day, and a novel on the way home to switch off. But now we have no practical or emotional boundaries. So, we work longer hours.
“Meredith may get more [time] out of us, but I don’t see it as a benefit. I want employees with a healthy work-life balance. if they spend 12 hours a day looking at a screen they are going to burn out, and that’s not good for business.”
It’s up to management to supervise their staff and ensure they aren’t working all hours. Real Simple has a “no meeting” policy on Fridays, so people can set their own hours and focus on creativity. Complex Network has Mental Health Friday, where the office is closed every other Friday.
Monitor mental health
It’s also up to management to keep any eye on their team and watch for signs of mental health problems. Of particular concern are employees who live alone because work is their main source of interaction. Research by TotalJobs found that 46% of U.K. workers have experienced loneliness during lockdown.
There are a number of things you can do to support staff, from offering virtual therapy sessions, to providing in-house mentors. The FT already had a network of employees with mental health training in place. Devine says they have been a great source of support during lockdown. The newspaper also offers an employee assistance program (EAP), which provides independent, confidential counseling and support 24/7. Plus, they offer to pay 50% of a Headspace subscription.
“Since lockdown we have also introduced five wellness days, which are paid days where staff can take a break to get their head together,” says Devine. “And we provide resilience training on how to manage yourself in a remote environment.”
Team building
No matter how much support you offer, nothing can replace the bonding and benefits of sharing office space. “Journalists in the newsroom are itching to get back to office. They miss those moments of serendipity, when they are working on a story and bouncing ideas between desks,” says Devine.
Without those watercooler moments, Vaccariello says you need to find new ways to kickstart a conversation for your teams – especially with new staff members. “We can’t grab a beer or have a welcome bagel party. So, to make new staff feel part of the team we play games on Webex. Or we go around and have everyone say something about themselves, such as a book they’ve recently read.”
Complex Networks has a similar system, set up by Douglas, called Complex Coffee Talks, where different staff members talk about their professional and personal lives. “I wanted to find a way to keep morale high, but also provide a learning experience, so that all employees understand what everyone else is doing,” Douglas says. “Because understanding is the route to empathy, which builds a stronger, happier workforce.”
While Covid has caused chaos around the globe, there is no doubt that some positives have come out of the pandemic. Workplace flexibility is one of them. It can increase productivity, decrease stressful commutes and save money on office space and travel expenses. But the key to successful remote working is good management and consistent support.
“It’s all about empathy, communication and understanding,” says Douglas. “You need to be in tune with your team, so listen and pay attention.”
