Journalism can thrive through design-driven innovation. We aim to prove it.
The Host HQ is a Chicago-based independent media outlet to help Airbnb hosts navigate rules and taxes, learn from each other, and optimize their business. Visit us at thehosthq.com and follow us on Medium to see what we’re doing behind the scenes.
With even well-funded journalistic outlets continuing to collapse, it’s clear we as an industry need to change our tack. We must use new methods for developing sustainable media products with models that are informed not from the top down, but from the bottom up.
There will never be one clear answer about how to make journalism sustainable. But we believe that through agile approaches made popular by the tech industry, media companies should also embrace the spirit of continuous adaptation and listening to our users to develop unique solutions for every content scenario.
Hello, world. We’re a team of seven reporting and product development graduate students at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism who want to explore an innovative, unconventional framework for ideating and developing new journalistic products.
We are:
- Elaine Ramirez (me), editor and project lead
- Danny Hwang, product manager
- Melissa Hovanes, tech lead
- Louis Oh, design lead
- Tyler Sonnemaker, reporter and audience development lead
- Jessica Qiao, reporter
- Cyan Zhong, reporter
Our advisers are:
- Rachel Davis Mersey, audience insight
- Joe Germuska, tech
- Richard Gordon, product
- Karen Springen, editorial
The framework of user-centered design is well practiced in Silicon Valley, yet newsrooms are often slow to catch on. We hope increased practice of audience-driven approaches in journalism will inspire more informed content that is motivated by what readers need, not what editors think they need.
In a 10-week self-managed course we call Innovation in Content Publishing, we are practicing user-centered design to drive our product development. Rather than search for an audience to fit the content we want to create or assume what the general masses should know, we focus on understanding our users and addressing their pain points to motivate our solution. By mid-June, we will deliver a content-rich prototype of a profit-oriented media product along with a range of insights from our market and user research, feedback and iterations.
We’re starting with the user
Our first task was to zero in on the audience we would study and serve. Between our diverse experiences and interests in business and technology journalism and media innovation and entrepreneurship, what excited all of us was the gig economy — a new economic order, powered by technology and sharing economy platforms, that has opened up opportunities for individuals worldwide to choose new ways to work and live.
With these opportunities have come nuanced tensions. The disruptive startups that brought us on-demand rides, shared homes, food delivery and more are now corporate tech giants, and the individual freelancers who brought them to power struggle for a fair living. Other workers are simply trying to navigate the evolving legal and logistical landscapes amid clashes between companies and governments.
We seek to investigate these opportunities and tensions. We chose Airbnb hosts in Chicago as a testbed to address users’ needs, with the aim of developing a solution with scalable potential across bigger audiences. Airbnb hosts have diverse motivations, from needing to make some extra cash to wanting to meet new people, and we are excited to learn more about what makes them tick. Plus, as a former Airbnb host who has dealt with many of the common pain points from budgeting to vague regulations, I personally look forward to exploring ways to make the hosting experience more profitable, enjoyable and transparent through journalism.
In the coming weeks, we will refine our product offering through user research and testing, audience development and business model exploration. You’ll hear from each of us on this blog about a different aspect of the project, what we’ve learned and where we’re going.
We look forward to sharing our progress with you.
Visit us at thehosthq.com.
