A few weeks ago, a colleague and mentor said something in passing that has stayed with me. To paraphrase, he mentioned that in journalism, we often assume others know as much as we do. It strikes me that this assumption can create a gap between the information we provide and the audience’s ability to connect with it. And let’s be real: that disconnect blocks impact.  

Journalism drives action when it delivers clear, relevant, and accessible reporting that meets people where they are. Strong reporting builds trust, deepens engagement, and empowers communities to make informed decisions. It shapes public opinion, sparks movements, and creates change that leads to accountability, policy shifts, and meaningful progress.  

Having led audience development initiatives for some time, I’ve seen firsthand the tangible benefits that can come when journalism makes complex topics accessible. Meeting people where they are means delivering information in clear, relatable ways that demonstrate its real-life impact, which fosters trust, engagement, and community connection. 

This does not just apply to journalism. This approach is also relevant to conversations with editorial leaders about balancing journalistic integrity and audience engagement. Again, we cannot assume they know as much as we do and must make our expectations and the tools and strategies available to execute on these expectations clear.

Editorial leaders face the dual challenge of maintaining its responsibility to inform while engaging audiences who demand greater transparency, accessibility, and relevance. Addressing this requires rethinking how stories are communicated to bridge divides by focusing on shared values rather than exacerbating polarization. Strong storytelling drives dialogue, encourage discussion, and help rebuild trust with audiences who feel divided or doubtful. 

Get to know (and grow) your audience 

To grow audiences and increase engagement, editorial leaders need to adapt strategies to match how people consume and trust information today. No, this doesn’t simply mean on mobile and social. “Finding audiences where they are” is not enough. You need to actually get to know your audience before you can effectively serve their needs.  Getting to know them is an essential piece of figuring out where information-gaps exist and how to fill them, for example.

Start by surveying audiences, conducting listening sessions, analyzing traffic patterns across onsite, organic, and social channels, and reviewing subscriber feedback to assess brand perception and visual identity. Use those insights to refine tone and language, showcase endorsements or visible metrics, update the “About Us” section, highlight journalist profiles, segment audiences for targeted communication, incorporate verifiable callouts, and maintain consistency in published content. 

Reflect your audience to build trust 

Growing audiences also requires addressing the structural causes behind audience disconnection. Ideological divides and algorithm-driven echo chambers make it harder to build trust and keep audiences engaged. To counter this, clearly communicate the value of your content by showing how your organization challenges the status quo, reinforces its mission, and provides direct solutions. Frame your message in a way that naturally encourages advocacy from like-minded audiences. Ensure representation reflects audience diversity, and tailor content delivery to match how people prefer to engage with information. 

Trust grows when actions align with the audience you serve, but first you must understand who they are and meet them where they are. Consistency builds credibility and strengthens brand identity, turning one-time visitors into loyal audiences. For news organizations, especially in their early years, this means committing to a clear identity shaped by audience insights and reflective of their needs. Affirm your strategy’s success through sustained engagement by measuring retention, conversion, and repeat traffic. Use these insights to determine whether your strategy is deepening loyalty, increasing audience investment, and driving long term growth. 

Data-informed insights & digital delivery 

Balancing data-informed strategies such as tracking which topics attract first-time readers versus repeat visitors, adjusting publishing cadence based on audience activity peaks, analyzing reader pathways to identify engagement drop-offs, and testing different story formats to improve retention drives audience growth. Understanding audience motivations through behavioral data matters as much as recognizing local societal dynamics and adapting to shifts in engagement patterns. These factors aren’t always consistent or easy to pinpoint, and responding to them requires time, testing, and iteration. 

No single strategy will engage everyone in your audience, and content will not always resonate with everyone all the time. Audience development is not an exact formula and some critical stories may miss the mark when they fail to reflect the priorities or lived experiences of the people they’re trying to serve. Sustainable audience growth depends on continuously improving approaches that attract, retain, and strengthen connections over time.  

A key question in growing audiences is whether to focus on serving your current audience or to tap into new demographics with new content opportunities. Expanding reach and strengthening existing relationships are both viable paths. Start by identifying your total addressable market and assessing how its behaviors, interests, and demographics compare to your current audience. Determine what percentage of that market is realistically interested in your coverage. Evaluating whether potential audiences already have media sources that meet their needs helps avoid targeting oversaturated spaces. 

It is equally important to understand conversion rates based on industry benchmarks. If a new audience segment fits a specific niche, analyzing how they consume content, their engagement habits, digital preferences, and preferred formats helps shape outreach strategies. In many cases, the available market is smaller than expected but also more precisely defined, making growth efforts more focused and effective. 

Mind the gaps and make connections 

At the same time, content gaps or overlooked opportunities may exist that were not initially on your radar but align with your existing approach. Identifying these unmet needs allows you to serve an audience that lacks a dedicated media outlet, providing coverage that fills an information gap. 

Bridging the gap for practical and effective audience growth is a distinct challenge and a responsibility that requires breaking from outdated assumptions. It means rejecting the idea that audiences share the same knowledge and context as those working in journalism. Industry insiders often take their expertise for granted, leading to content that fails to connect. Audiences bring different experiences, perspectives, and levels of understanding. Trust and engagement grow when news organizations listen, adapt, and present information in ways that reflect the realities of the people they serve. 

Audience development is about making journalism accessible through collaboration, research, a deep understanding of the reader base, and a thoughtful storytelling approach. Strong reporting bridges divides, challenges misinformation, and gives people something worth investing in.  

If we assume that others already know what we know in journalism, we fail to recognize the gaps in understanding that weaken trust and engagement. Our job is not just to inform but to bridge those gaps and meet audiences where they are – to help get them where they want to be.  

Covering the actions of state legislatures has long been viewed as the journalistic equivalent of forcing people to eat broccoli. Such political news may be part of a citizen’s “healthy” diet, helping them stay involved in the democratic process. However, it has long been assumed that most people find such offerings unappealing.

But what if this perspective is wrong? What if audiences are not intrinsically disinterested in state government reporting and might respond favorably to editorial efforts that make this coverage relevant to people’s lives?

That’s the theory held by a series of new digital ventures that have placed coverage of state politics at the center of their editorial missions. While they vary in important ways, all share a belief that audiences can be persuaded to pay attention to state government reporting.

Whether this theory will prove economically viable in the long term is uncertain. However, their efforts provide broader lessons that can be valuable for news managers thinking about political audience engagement – and audience engagement initiatives more generally.

My analysis is based on research conducted with colleagues at the University of Washington’s Center for Journalism, Media and Democracy, where I serve as co-director. For two years, we’ve interviewed the journalists involved in these new digital ventures and tracked their editorial offerings. Our findings highlight several lessons of audience engagement.

Know your audience

One thing that all the digital news organizations we studied share is a clear understanding of who their audiences are – or should be.

For some, the audience is a restricted group of political insiders. Paul Queary, who runs a Substack newsletter on politics in Washington state, targets lobbyists and their clients, as well as government officials – roughly 500 or so people, he estimates.

“You’re letting go of the mass audience,” he explained, in favor of a “much smaller audience” that is willing to pay for news that directly impacts their professional lives.

Similarly, Reid Wilson, who founded Pluribus News, a site dedicated to covering policymaking in all 50 states, sees his “core audience” as “12 to 15,000 legislators and staffers” who work in statehouses around the country.

For others, the audience is urban professionals who are not necessarily interested in state politics. Axios Local, which now operates in 30 cities, is premised on the idea that people will pay attention – as long as the news is presented in a brief, compact manner and made relevant to their lives.

Others aim wider. States Newsroom, a non-profit that now operates newsrooms dedicated in all 50 states, conceives itself as being a “paper of record” for issues pertaining to state legislatures, according to its publisher and CEO Chris Fitzsimon.

“Even though we’re a digital publication,” he explained, “our stories are reprinted…by a lot of small rural papers who don’t have state government coverage.”

This audience is made possible, he noted, because so many of these newspapers have had to give up their subscriptions to wire services like the Associated Press due to cost concerns.

Add value by anticipating audience needs

The audiences these organizations have–or desire–in turn shapes the editorial strategies they pursue to engage audiences. For those building an audience of political insiders, they need to provide added value for audiences already deeply knowledgeable about politics.

Queary of the Washington Observer, for example, explained that he doesn’t “write about what the governor said” or whether a particular bill passed. Instead, “I try to focus on stuff that’s original to us” and that highlights “the influence being applied [on the policymaking process] and who’s behind it.”

That, he said, is what political insiders are keen to learn – and, crucially, what they can’t know by reading other news coverage. This strategy differs substantially from news organizations that seek audiences outside the circle of political insiders. For them, they don’t try to “cover every turn of the screw” as bills make their way through the legislature, as Fitzsimon from States Newsroom put it.

Such news, he said, is of little interest to most readers as it demands regular attention to policymaking processes that are opaque and often abstract. Instead, Fitzsimon says, they “try to explain how decisions are made and most importantly, what effect they have on people’s lives.”

Exploring the impact of policy on the lives of audiences – that is the key theory of audience engagement behind outlets like States Newsroom and others. Audiences, in this view, care about the effects of policy rather than the game of politics. Favoring the former over the latter means asking, as one long-time reporter put it, “why anyone outside the state capitol should care” about events within it.

Will these efforts to engage audiences work?

Both strategies face hurdles.

It’s not clear whether sufficient numbers of political insiders will subscribe to newsletters and whether advertisers will see value in reaching these audiences. Similarly, it remains uncertain whether efforts to emphasize policy impact will draw audiences towards a form of political news coverage that they have long ignored.

These approaches do highlight the importance of defining an audience clearly, and developing editorial offerings that add value by anticipating that audience’s needs. And that’s an insight, regardless of success or failure in this case, worth thinking about when dealing with issues of audience engagement more generally.