During my session at the 2025 INMA Latin American Conference, I was joined by two newsroom leaders who shared lessons on building loyalty and engaging with readers.

Rodrigo Müzell, digital journalism manager at Grupo RBS in Brazil, and Hiroshi Takahashi, director of El Sol de México/OEM Group, agreed it’s important to meet readers where they are and to experiment. 

“I don’t care what platform someone uses — we need to be everywhere,” Takahashi said. “We need to focus on quality and try everything.”

Grupo RBS offered a fascinating case study on its newsroom reorganisation, which was designed to cultivate more loyal audiences. 

In December, the newsroom was divided into distinct teams — broad audiences (Massivo) and loyal audiences (Fidelização). The broad audiences team is responsible for breaking news, trends, live blogging, social, front pages, and push notifications. The loyal audiences team focuses on exclusive content, beat reporting, features, investigations, quizzes, and newsletters.

The loyal audiences team consists of 40 journalists focused on content for loyal users and subscribers to increase readership, engagement, and loyalty, Müzell said.

“Our KPIs are connected to the teams,” Müzell said. “This team doesn’t care about reaching broad audiences and pageviews. They closely look at subscriber pageviews and time spent.”

This team publishes 50% fewer stories than the broad audiences team, aiming to create richer, deeper content. The team meets weekly to discuss what it learned from the audience: best formats, subjects, and distribution channels, Müzell said.

“We’re learning a lot with this closer look,” Müzell said. “Our journalists feel more confident now with what they have to do.”

What they’ve learned about their loyal audience: They often come back to the app’s front page after 9 p.m., looking for stories that summarise and explain the main topics of the day or for lifestyle/health features; they love quizzes, longer stories, and following news and sports on live blogs; and they closely follow news about small businesses, talk of the town, and football.

The results are impressive:

“Transformation is about having the right focus and narrow and specific goals,” Müzell said.

OEM Grou focuses on technology and tools to improve audience habitual behaviour. Takahashi also said the newsroom leans heavily into exclusive content and liquid content to cultivate and serve loyal audiences. Time spent is an important metric for OEM, he said.

“We get to know what readers value,” Takahashi said. “Meeting their needs is essential.”

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