In this era of systemic transformation across the news media landscape, there is one overarching theme driving transformation within newsrooms: It’s all about the audience.

News companies and even individual content creators are repositioning their efforts completely around their audiences’ preferences, often leveraging data to understand where they are succeeding and where there are opportunities for improvement.

At the Newsroom Transformation Town Hall, presented as part of the Newsroom Transformation Initiative, media leaders from RBS Group, Ringier Media, and Project C shared how they are pivoting around their audiences.

Special teams drive growth, conversion, and retention at RBS Group

In December 2024, Brazil’s RBS Group began a deep newsroom transformation across its newspaper, TV, and radio outlets.

Rodrigo Muzell, digital journalism executive manager, said the company has spent this year trying to better understand opportunities for growth and advancement in the digital space.

In a massive newsroom overhaul, the company assembled two new teams around more specific goals: draw new users, and more deeply engage the ones they have. This new audience-focused structure makes it easier to act on data with a clear purpose, Muzell said.

“So now we are able to have data for a digital-first mindset for reporting, editor, planning,” Muzell said. “We could put more and more data driving the decisions and for the assignments and distributions.”

The goal of the broad audiences team is to gain new readers. In terms of content, they focus on breaking news, trends, liveblogging, and manage social media, home and front pages, and push notifications.

The loyal audiences team is composed of 40 journalists focused on the content that meets the needs of loyal users and subscribers.

“Less is more” is the mantra for this team. They published 50% less content than the broad audiences team, but that content is more in-depth. They are also given KPIs to pursue that are linked to the subscriber journey.

The team has recognised there is significant traffic from subscribers and logged-in users, especially after 9 p.m. They love quizzes, and they love longer stories. The loyal audiences team has also been mapping specific subjects subscribers care about.

“We make sure that this team cares about learning more and more what keeps people with us,” Muzell said.

Ringier Media leverages the user needs model

As the media industry races toward an AI-driven, multi-modal future, Dmitry Shishkin, strategic editorial advisor at Ringier Media in Switzerland, believes one principle remains non-negotiable: serving user needs.

Shishkin is widely recognized as one of the foremost champions of the user-needs model for journalism. He made a compelling case that centering newsroom strategy on user needs is not just a useful framework — it is the foundation of sustainable, relevant journalism as the industry moves toward 2026.

For those starting or scaling their user-needs implementation, Shishkin identified three essentials: creativity, consistency, and strategy.

• “Firstly, you need to do it creatively, because we are still creative organisations,” he said. “If you are asked to come up with two or three treatments of stories according to a particular use, drop the first two or three ideas because they are the laziest ones — you really need to be creative and push yourself.”
• Second, consistency: “It’s not enough to just say: I have done it for a month, have done it for two months, three months. You need to do it for longer to really see the impact.”
• And finally, strategy: “You need to connect your output with your strategy and why you exist in the market.”

Shishkin also argued that audience-engagement leads should be considered for editor-in-chief roles — a suggestion that sparked debate online.

“There’s nothing controversial here,” he said. “People are completely misunderstanding what audience engagement leads are.”

Creator-model journalists offer a more casual content approach

Liz Kelly, founder of Project C in the United States, and those within the creator-model space define a creator-model journalist as an individual who combines elements of journalism with content creation techniques to produce news, stories, or informational content for digital platforms.

Kelly outlined three types of approaches for creator-model journalism:

1. Investigators: Reveal new information from their own reporting of primary sources, fieldwork, or publicly available information. Examples include Cleo Abram, No Lab Coat Required, and Howtown.
2. Commentators: React and add opinions, perspective and personal commentary based on coverage from existing sources. Examples include The Rest is Politics, The Young Turks, and Adeola Fayehun.
3. Explainers: Reformat and simplify news to make it easier to consume and to engage with. This model relies on existing sources or reporting. Examples include The Daily Aus, Tangle News and Under the Desk News.

Based on research by Ben Reininga, conducted while at Harvard University as Nieman-Berman Klein Fellow on audience studies in recent years, consumers find traditional news sources too pretentious, difficult to understand, unrelated to their lives and other negative feedback.

In contrast, creator-model journalists develop a more relaxed, even parasocial relationship with their followers.

“They talk in words that feel simple and colloquial, right? They aren’t assuming that you have a level of knowledge already about economic policy or climate change,” Kelly said. “They’re actually talking to you in real talk that you as a layperson can understand.”

News creators build their own credibility for their audiences because they often are transparent about their viewpoints. There’s less to have a hidden agenda or to conceal it. This approach is a stark difference with journalists working within or for traditional newsrooms.

Kelly also mentioned their playfulness and lightheartedness with their delivery as well as their diversity and relatability.

“Many audiences feel left behind by traditional mainstream outlets who think they share one dominant cultural point of view,” Kelly said. “And so, they are looking for multiple points of view and for people who they feel some relationship with.”

Banner photo: Adobe Stock Suphakant.

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