Meet Feli Carrique: NPA’s new Executive Director
We are incredibly excited to introduce our new Executive Director, Feli Carrique!
Feli is an Argentinian journalist and product thinker working at the intersection of media, technology, and sustainability. In her previous role as the Innovation Director at SembraMedia, she worked with news organizations across Latin America to promote innovation and led product design and systems development for the organization.
As the lead analyst on the recent “Inflection Point” report published by SembraMedia, Feli analyzed the innovations, challenges and threats facing news entrepreneurs across three continents. And earlier this year she co-published Propulsorio’s Product Guide for Latin American media organizations, which she developed with the support of the International Center for Journalist’s 2020 Professional Fellowship and SembraMedia.
The NPA Board voted unanimously to select Feli and were deeply impressed by her vision for fostering a diverse and global community, breaking down barriers to learn the discipline of news product management and expanding training and resource offerings to spur further innovation and audience-driven development across the news industry.
“I felt embraced and welcomed by the NPA community from the very first meetings and encounters. I want to work to make sure other product thinkers feel the same way I did, so they are empowered to continue leading the transformation in their newsrooms and communities.” — Feli Carrique
Feli is also a Professor at Universidad Católica Argentina, where she co-created the first news product class in Latin America and has led workshops about news product management and journalism business models for several media support organizations.
A J-School graduate, Feli began her career as a business and tech reporter and worked on the Innovation team at Infobae, as a search-engine-optimized content creator for digital startups. Her work has been published in La Nación, The Verge, TechCrunch, El Economista, and other international media outlets.
Earlier this year, Tony Elkins interviewed Feli for the News Product Alliance’s “How I…” series.
Read the full interview, originally published on April 7, 2021:
This is Tony Elkins for the News Product Alliance, welcome to the latest edition of “Hi.”
I’m going to bring back some of that post-Summit high you all felt by diving deeper into how Feli Carrique, one of our keynote speakers from last week, got into news product.
Feli is Director of Innovation and manages product design and technology at Sembra Media, a non-profit helping independent digital media develop sustainable business models in Latin America.
Feli, how did your journey into news product start?
I actually went to J-school. I am a journalist by degree, but I kind of always knew I didn’t want to become a reporter. At my university, I started interning at a digital publication where I was a reporter. After that I had my first job at a major digital publication on their innovation team they had just started. That was the first step. I started thinking about journalism in a broader way. I began to understand that experience was just as important as the reporting — and that you need both. You need to think of that when you are creating digital experiences where people receive information.
Eventually that team shut down, so I started freelancing. I worked at a media startup where I learned a lot about SEO content and how to think in terms of SEO. I freelanced for a while for different startups that needed content for their blogs. I started getting into strategy and then came to work at Sembra Media, taking more of a tech role that was leaning into product.
During that time I studied web design and how to mark up a site . . . and a bit of javascript. I’m not a great coder. I’ve never been a great coder, but I do understand how it interacts. So it made it easier for me to understand how to juggle all these different things.
Do you think juggling all these roles is why product people tend to be the bridge between journalism, tech and business strategy?
I absolutely agree that these new product roles are kind of a bridge between different disciplines. When I was a reporter, I was either a business or a tech reporter, because I was always interested in tech. Having the opportunity to investigate the space around those topics gave me a lot of context for product-thinking. There’s a thing about product people that come from journalism. We have communications skills that are not a given for people who come from other backgrounds. I think that’s a plus we have as communicators, when we need to be translating between different areas.
Being product people, we are always focused on, “How do I say this in the best way for the other person to actually understand? How do I make this training so that the other person can grasp the concept in the best way?” This comes from a communications point of view — trying to understand and be understood. For me it’s the key for product roles because you have to work with all these different areas.
Regarding communication, the industry has been traditionally siloed. How do you approach this when you’re talking to newsrooms?
We are focused on sustainable business models for media, so in my own organization, these conversations and these boundaries have already been broken. We need to break these silos. We need to work with each other because teamwork makes the dream work.
But I have spoken to so many journalists and product roles in Latin America and there’s this ethical concern about mixing up with the business area. There’s also some resistance to “content and journalism” always being the most important thing in any newsroom. That ethic barrier is strong, at least in Latin America.
Can you tell me a little more about product in Latin America?
There are not so many official product roles in newsrooms throughout Latin America, but it’s starting to build up. On top of the complexities the product role already has intrinsically, we have a lot of layers and complications. There’s some things about doing product in Latin America we have to take into consideration that maybe you do not have when you’re working in the US, or the global North as a whole.
For instance, connectivity. Not only of the people who are going to consume your products, but also connectivity of your team to create them. In Argentina, for example, it’s hardware, infrastructure and being able to buy the products you need at a fair price because we have a lot of banned imports. So, whatever thing you need to do, it has like two or three levels of complexity that you need to sort. So you end up like being the go-to person to solve a lot of things that wouldn’t be called “product.”
What methods do you use to introduce the idea of product to newsrooms?
Start with the audience. You start with, “who are you trying to serve and how are you going to serve them with your journalism?” Second, I would start with some kind of way of making them be less scared of failure and testing. There’s something about the journalistic mentality, if we make a mistake, it’s the worst thing you can do. You’re putting out information that is incorrect — and that’s the worst thing you can do as a journalist. So, learning how to make mistakes and iterate is something new for journalism. Think about, “okay, we can try this and see what happens.” That’s iterating and testing. Those are the first steps. Then, you can move on to metrics, how to establish objectives and KPIs, how we are going to measure this and how are you going to structure experimentation.
Another thing is, there’s a little bit less space for experimentation in Latin America because of the really low budgets. There’s not a lot of money for experimentation and that’s fundamentally different.
Since I share your title, and innovation and product are closely tied to together, I would love to know what your definition of “innovation” is?
That’s a really hard question. But, for me, innovation is finding a better way to solve a problem for someone. And as you can see, there is no tech intrinsically correlated to my definition, which is on purpose. You don’t always need technology to make things better for others. Innovation for me is that. To make something better for someone else or to solve a problem in a more creative way. In a way that saves somebody’s time or increases their well-being. For me, product is a mindset. Product is a tool to solve problems or make something easier or better for someone. It’s more than just building something, it’s giving purpose to what you’re building.
What’s a day look like for you in your product role? What are some of your jobs to be done?
There’s something interesting about my role in that it’s focused on systems internally and their outcomes when they reach our communities. That’s my favorite challenge. For instance, we’re launching a new resource on our website, but that means our team also has to update it. I need to make this the best way for our audience to consume it, and be able to update it in five minutes and not take one hour of the team’s day. Those are my favorite challenges in my daily work.
There’s a lot of revisiting our own systems and our own workflows towards our goals. There’s a lot of documentation. I have to really state the importance of documentation and having everything written down. I do not have as many calls as other people do. I try to organize myself to have less Zooms. (Author’s note: jealous)
What are some of the tools you use to keep your projects on track, or suggest for people getting into product?
It really depends on the organization or whoever I’m talking to, but most of the time you can start with a spreadsheet. I am a confessed fan of Airtable. But, Airtable is just a sophisticated spreadsheet, and most of the tools are sophisticated spreadsheets. It’s about being less scared of using your spreadsheets.
What’s your advice for someone transitioning to product, or just entering their field at the beginning of their career?
Bring your curiosity. Bring your curiosity and apply it to journalism, information flows, the audience and how things work.
How do you see the future of news product unfolding in the short term.
I see it becoming more established like audience has become over the last couple of years. Now all the newsrooms have audience people and audience is an established role. I see product on the same path
What attracted you to this type of work?
When I was at J-school everything was about journalism being in crisis. “You’re never going to get a job. This is awful. Journalism’s not going to exist anymore. You are delusional.” That wasn’t a limitation for me, it became a challenge. I want to solve this. Why is it dying? This cannot die. This is really important. What are the ways in which we can save it? What can we do to make it not fail? What is it I can do to be a part of this world and support this work of journalists that I believe is so, so important. And I had the luck to have a professor who spoke about about technology and told me I should learn to do some of these things.
I started doing that. I followed through on my curiosity and started to observe what, what worked and what didn’t. That’s I think that’s what attracted me — the challenge of journalism as an industry.
If you’re interested in sharing your path to product I would love to talk to you. You can fill out this form or reach out to me on Twitter.
Talk to you soon,
Tony Elkins,
NPA Creative Director, Gannett Director of Innovation
