Print and online publications find new ways to engage readers
Publications have always cared about their audiences, whether that is to attract advertisers, gain critical prestige or be a catalyst for change. While the traditional subscription model of getting a paper delivered on the doorstep every morning is becoming more and more obsolete, the Super J in NYC Trip taught me that publications are finding new ways to build sustainable business models and in some ways, audiences are more engaged than ever before.
Many traditionally print publications including The New Yorker and The New York Times are embracing digital engagement to build their audiences while staying true to their brands. When it comes to digital native publications, some like the Huffington Post and BuzzFeed are experimenting with new ways to grow their audiences to be financially sustainable organizations. Other outlets like the Marshall Project are focusing less on reaching a large audience and instead targeting their engagement to reach the right audience, even if it is relatively small. Some publications like ProPublica and The Marshall Project are using social media to make their readers active content creators.
One of the first stops of our trip was to The New Yorker, where we met with Senior Web Manager Michael Guerriero. Guerriero stressed that from the start of The New Yorker’s website, they did not simply want to make it an online version of the 91-year-old publication. While he said they do not use their web presence to break news, they strive to provide context for the news by “telling more” and providing “not the first world, but the first best word.”
As the only Condé Nast publication with a paywall, The New Yorker has been able to gain both a new audience and bring print readers online by releasing curated selections of articles from its extensive archive. This effort has been successful: in 2015, the online subscriber base grew 61 percent, mostly from readers age 18–34. Editor David Remnick said the publication is focusing on growing its Millennial readership. Conversely, the publication is still an innovator in print. The May 16, 2016 edition featured a cover by Christoph Niemann that through the Uncovr app, becomes a three-dimensional image.
The New York Times is also embracing new technology to draw readers to its website. Executive Director of Technology for News Products Brian Hamman explained that the publication has had to deal with the significant increase in readers coming to the website from various social media platforms instead of directly typing in the homepage address. To test audience reactions to changes on the homepage, Hamman and his team use provocations or “bad ads” that provide insight into how readers view the publication fitting into their everyday news consumption. Two changes they have made are highlighting different content on the mobile and computer homepages and exploring active and passive ways users can customize their New York Times experience.
Through its blogging community, the Huffington Post has also worked to create a collaborative media environment and break down the divide between content creators and consumers. A recent example is the #SleepRevolution campaign that is part of Editor-in-Chief Arianna Huffington’s new book, which explores the issue of widespread sleep deprivation. As the Director of College Outreach, Abby Williams has helped bring the project to over 200 universities and organize students to write blog posts and share their sleep experiences on social media platforms. I myself have blogged as part of the #SleepRevolution and wrote about the effects of living with a chronic illness and being in college on my sleep patterns.
While Williams and other members of the staff admitted that their outreach extends mostly to the publication’s largely Millennial audience, this is not a limitation. They are able to devote resources to new forms of engagement, including Facebook Live videos. The Huffington Post also recently acquired RYOT, a virtual reality studio. In addition, they said that by writing posts they know will get substantial page views — such as those on certain celebrities or cultural phenomena — they have the space and support to write about the issues they care about, be that sexual assault on college campuses, independent movies or international issues.
Similar to the Huffington Post, BuzzFeed also has a relatively young audience base and an active community that contributes to the site’s popular listicles and other aggregative pieces. BuzzFeed, though, has worked to expand to older demographics and gain credibility as a journalism outlet through its increased focus on news content. Conversely, the digital native’s most viral, and consequently profitable, content often airs on the lighter side, such the Facebook Live video of a watermelon explosion.
Deputy News Director for BuzzFeed News Tom Namak believes that new technology, particularly live video, can function as a way to bring together different audiences. He said, though, that it can be difficult to guess which social platforms will prove to be long-lasting and which will prove to be just fads. Conversely, he argued that BuzzFeed has been able to grow its audience largely through experimentation. For example, last year, CEO Jonah Peretti revealed that 21 percent of BuzzFeed’s traffic comes through Snapchat (it joined the social media platform’s Discover feature less than three months before that statistic came out.)
Other digital native platforms including ProPublica have proved that more traditional forms of investigative journalism can also flourish and find audiences online. According to Director of Public Relations Minhee Cho, the publication has been able to amplify its readership by collaborating with over 125 publications. These include The New York Times, the Guardian, The Chicago Tribune and The Boston Globe as well as smaller, regional publications like the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Nashville Tennessean that provide a local perspective on national issues. Many of these collaborations have come from “Dollars for Docs,” a series of articles that explored how drug companies are paying doctors around the country. A large part of this project is a database of over 680,000 doctors that allows users to see if their doctor is taking money from drug companies, presumably to persuade patients to use certain pharmaceutical drugs.
ProPublica has also relied on its Facebook community to reveal other safety issues in the healthcare system, particularly related to patient harm. Currently, over 3,700 Facebook users are part of the ProPublica Patient Safety Community Public Group that also draws journalists from other publications. Instead of as an outlet to steal stories from ProPublica, Assistant Social Editor Adam Harris sees this group as a way to help publications learn how to do journalism that draws from community stories. “We’re very much about giving these resources to other people,” Harris said. “We want good journalism to happen.” Cho agrees, adding that the “idea is essentially to democratize journalism.” While Harris said this can have ethical considerations when the publication crosses the line between journalism and advocacy, they monitor the Facebook group to create a safe space in which people feel comfortable sharing issues of injustice.
The Marshall Project is another nonprofit organization that focuses on uncovering injustices, particularly in the criminal justice system, but does so through a journalistic lens. For example, the Next to Die tracker, uses data from around the country to produce updates on who is next to be executed on death row. While this could arguably be seen as a critique of the criminal justice system, Director of Technology Ivar Vong said that they also have readers in favor of the death penalty who share the tracker’s updates. “We are trying to humanize what is often an inhumane process,” said Vong. This is a big challenge according to Managing Editor Gabriel Dance.
“It’s hard to get people to care and empathize because the people we cover have at sometime done something that wasn’t lawful…” he said. “So we are dealing with people who nobody wants to look at, who nobody wants to help, who don’t have much of a voice… So a lot of it is finding the human element that people do connect with.” One challenge the Marshall Project does not have is relying on a large audience to attract advertisers as it is entirely funded by individual donors and organizations. Consequently, they measure success through metrics like a retweet from a Congressman, being a catalyst for more criminal justice journalism and even influencing legislative change.
“We try to assign stories if they’re good and not whether they will get clicks…” said Vong. “Our stories are not designed for a million people. They are designed for the right amount of people and the right kind of people.”
While funding models in journalism have changed drastically, what was clear from all these publications is that for each outlet, there is a different audience and consequently, a different strategy to make them engaged news consumers. When media outlets are willing to experiment with how they interact with their audiences, they are able to measure engagement not only in terms of page views, but in how people use the publication to make changes in their lives and communities.
