INMA’s World Congress of News Media was a week-long whirlwind: a two-day study tour to eight media companies, two days of plenary sessions featuring some of the foremost experts in our industry, and a seminar on user needs.

There are so many insights to unpack, and I absorbed it all through the lens of newsroom transformation. We heard many of the same themes during the visits and presentations — organisations working to deepen relationships with their audiences, innovating in the products they offer, and thinking more about how to use AI.

Read on for some of my key takeaways and email me yours: amalie.nash@inma.org. 

Amalie

P.S.: My newest report is now out: Beyond the Dashboard: 14 Case Studies in Newsroom Metrics. It details how 14 global news media organisations have evolved their use of data to strengthen journalism, grow audience relationships, and drive business results. Download your copy today!

Sometimes your audience needs an escape  

The most-viewed video for the BBC in April? It was not about the death of Pope Francis. It didn’t relate to the Trump administration. It wasn’t about Gaza or Ukraine. It wasn’t the federal election in Canada or any big breaking news. 

Instead, it was this three-minute video: Watch rare Gobi bear's reaction to finding water. It’s a beautifully shot and narrated video, but why did it rise to the top amid a month packed with so much news?

Perhaps that’s precisely the point: As news overwhelms, people are looking for something different. And user needs help us find the right context mix. 

That video fell under the BBC’s user need of “give me escape,” said Ben Goldberger, general manager and executive editorial director at BBC Studios. 

“We want to give visitors an enriching diversion,” he said during our visit to BBC Studios in New York as part of the INMA World Congress study tour. “Audiences yearn for this content with curiosity and intrigue instead of all the negative news. We see a tremendous opportunity in giving people a little bit of wonder.”

It was a great lesson and was also a precursor to our Newsroom Transformation Seminar dedicated to user needs. I was joined by an impressive contingent of user needs evangelists to tell their stories: Dmitry Shishkin, CEO, Ringier Media International, Switzerland; Nicole Stockdale, executive editor, The News & Observer and Herald-Sun, United States; Patrick Rademacher, chief strategy and innovation officer, Ringier Media, Switzerland; and Lars Anderson, head of innovation, DPG Media, Netherlands.

Here’s what they had to say:

What will change in your audience’s lives if you were to disappear tomorrow? Why do you exist in the market? What are your audience’s user needs?

Shishkin challenged the audience: “Your ‘why’ and your audiences’ ‘why’ should be the same.

“Creating content while appreciating audience needs makes you more effective, more connected and more successful on digital platforms,” he said.

The examples that followed his presentation proved the point. 

At McClatchy, the U.S.-based media company where Stockdale works, a six-week user needs sprint in 17 newsrooms led to a 12% pageview lift over the average.

She provided a strong example of how user needs changed the content approach at the Sacramento Bee in California.

During the sprint, the newsroom aimed to apply the user needs model to its transportation coverage to grow subscriber engagement. The goal was to produce at least four stories a week as a team — and each story pitch needed to have a clearly defined audience and user need before it was approved.

“By intentionally seeking out all user needs, we found stories we never would have covered otherwise, like this one on roadside attractions,” she said, pointing to a picture of hay bales dressed as minions. It was a top story and continues to generate interest, she said.

At Beobachter, a legal magazine in Switzerland, user needs helped the newsroom discover what topics led to more subscription conversions — and they weren’t the topics the newsroom was writing the most about, Rademacher said.

For instance, many stories fell under the category of “help me,” but conversions did not pace article volume, whereas stories under the categories of “touch and entertain me,” “investigate,” and “speak up about it” had fewer stories but more conversions per article.

“Analytics helped us identify new topics,” Rademacher said, noting that tailoring the user needs framework to your publication is key.

And at DPG Media, user needs have been factored into AI-powered tools and editorial dashboards, closely connecting daily work to the audiences’ needs. The user needs model provides for a common language for the news organisation — it’s data in words, Anderson said.

I also loved this chart Anderson showed because it’s an important reminder of how critical it is that our content be relevant to our audiences:

If you were registered for World Congress, you can access all of the user needs presentations here. 

What else would you like to hear or learn about user needs? E-mail me: amalie.nash@inma.org. 

5 quick takeaways from INMA’s New York study tour

We traversed the New York City media scene during a two-day study tour (one of two INMA organised) prior to World Congress, getting an inside look at the strategies and thinking at some of the city’s premier news brands.

What I love about study tours is the ability to get behind the scenes and dig deeper to understand what’s working and why.

My bite-sized takeaways from a few of the visits:

• Advance Local: Last year, Advance rolled out a new user-friendly analytics tool aimed at pinpointing topics with high growth potential. Where this tool excels: It visually shows the topic in three important ways: volume of stories, programmatic revenue (from pageviews), and reader revenue (from subscriptions). Finding the topics that hit in the sweet spot of both revenue buckets is key. And for Advance, those topics include high school sports. This quadrant is updated monthly and leads to quarterly meetings with editors, where they discuss where to invest more firepower.

• The Wall Street Journal: They have prioritised the article page with a focus on simplicity over choice. They don’t want readers to have too many things to do because it takes away from the user experience and hasn’t proven successful. A lot of media organisations could take note of this approach — we often weigh down a story with all kinds of calls to action: Subscribe! Sign up for a newsletter! Follow us on social! Forward this to a friend! Read this next! It all leads to a cluttered and frustrating experience, and the Journal believes keeping it simple gleans better results.

• The Atlantic: Among the great lessons here was a newsletter prototype of The Drop, which will feature a single story daily and be sent to non-subscribers as an acquisition strategy. Set to launch soon, people will have 24 hours to read the story daily. Like the Journal, the focus is on the user experience and on keeping it clean and direct. Instead of a ton of links and round-ups, they hope spotlighting one strong story — on any topic — will better hook the audience.

• Business Insider: We’re all familiar with the move from print to digital, and we’re now in the era of online to AI and personalisation, their leaders said. Among the ways they’re using AI — editing submitted photos instead of using photo editors for that work. By using AI to find efficiencies, they’ve freed up reporter time. Although this wasn’t discussed in the visit, Business Insider revealed — in a memo about workforce reductions — that over 70% of its employees are already using its enterprise ChatGPT product regularly. 

• Yahoo News: Yahoo has an interesting business model for its news product: Most of its stories and multimedia come through content partnerships and affiliations. Yahoo News attracts a massive 190M uniques a month, with the majority logged in since they’re using the mail product, but they have work to do on brand recognition and deepening engagement, its leaders said. Original reporting, such as live blogs, have helped to bolster the brand’s engagement with readers.

Tell me what you think of these takeaways: amalie.nash@inma.org.

Mark your calendars

Upcoming INMA events that shouldn’t be missed:

• June 4: “Unlocking AI Content Licensing: Strategies from Dow Jones & The Guardian,” an INMA Webinar presented by Traci Mabrey, general manager/Factiva at Dow Jones, Robert Hahn, director of business affairs and licensing at The Guardian. Part of INMA’s Product & Tech Initiative. Register now.

• June 11: “AI for Automating Print Production,” an INMA Webinar presented by Gregor Zoller, director of IT at Medienholding Süd, and Benjamin Peetre, senior business developer/print at Bonnier News. Part of INMA’s GenAI Initiative. Register now.

• June 18: “How Village Media Has Aggressively Grown by Focusing on its Digital Playbook,” an INMA Webinar presented by Jeff Elgie, CEO of Village Media. Part of INMA’s Newsroom Transformation Initiative. Register now.

• July 7-10: South Asia News Media Festival, Mumbai. I’ll be at the festival, too, and would love to connect there. Register now. 

About this newsletter

Today’s newsletter is written by Amalie Nash, based in Denver, Colorado, United States, and lead for the INMA Newsroom Transformation Initiative. Amalie will share research, case studies, and thought leadership on the topic of bringing newsrooms into the business of news.

This newsletter is a public face of the Newsroom Transformation Initiative by INMA, outlined here. E-mail Amalie at amalie.nash@inma.org or connect with her on INMA’s Slack channel with thoughts, suggestions, and questions.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .