To build engagement with readers, Gazeta Wyborcza changed not only how it thought about its journalism, but how much it provided to readers. During the recent INMA Webinar, Less is more: The transformation of Gazeta Wyborcza’s local newsroom, members heard how the company began focusing on quality over quantity to reduce its low-impact content.  

 CEO Mikolaj Chrzan was joined by Jan Latala, managing editor of Gazeta Wyborcza’s local newsrooms, and Paula Skalnicka, head of Gazeta Wyborcza’s local newsrooms, to share how and why they transformed their coverage.

As the first independent daily newspaper in Poland, Gazeta Wyborcza was founded in 1989 after the fall of communism. Since its inception, Chrzan explained, local news has been a key part of the company’s DNA: “Local newsrooms are part of our history, our great treasures,” he said. In the ‘90s, driven by advertising success, its local network expanded to more than 30 cities and the company printed “several hundred local pages a day.”

But as digital began disrupting the industry, local news faced greater challenges. As advertising diminished, the company closed some of its smaller newsrooms and reduced both staff and print editions. Introducing a paywall in 2014 helped, but Chrzan said they soon identified a new, unexpected challenge: “It was much more difficult to make money from local content than from national issues. It was something like five times harder, with five times worse conversation.”

By the early 2020s, Gazeta Wyborcza had become a leader at selling subscriptions in Poland, but it still couldn’t close the gap between local and national news.

“There was frustration growing among us local editors and journalists,” Latala recalled. “It was like, ‘Why are we writing so much and doing so poorly?’ So we took a look at the results of our work.”

Looking for answers

The newspaper began tracking which articles were selling subscriptions and attracting pageviews, then looked at the common characteristics of those stories. The poorest performing articles, they learned were those with information the readers didn’t need or could get from other sources. Most of them were short, but longer-form articles also were being passed by: “That was a big problem, but we successfully identified it, and that’s the first step.”

This led to “asking ourselves why we were writing articles that no one wants to read or buy.” They identified what was working with readers and what could be found — for free — elsewhere. As a premium service, he said, it didn’t make sense to compete with free sources, whether that meant traffic and weather apps or social media.

A new approach “wouldn’t be just a matter of telling local editors, ‘Don’t publish unnecessary content.’ It was about changing people’s minds and habits,” Latala noted. When their findings were reported at a meeting of local editors-in-chief in 2022, “it was a clash between data and our habits and imaginations.”

That began the process of editors asking journalists how to approach information and how to better attract audiences.

Communication is key

Despite the initial hesitation, Latala said the process of change was smooth and fast.

“One of the key factors of the successful change was the sincere and honest way we communicate the change. I think it was the most important thing. And of course, it was supported by data.”

As newsrooms saw what was working, the effects snowballed: “Once journalists realised that topics are engaging and the articles are engaging gaining audience, they quickly turned to the new approach.”

Now, Gazeta Wyborcza focuses on investigative stories. Reporters dig deeper into breaking news stories: “Many of them are highlighted on TV or in other media, but our journalists try to explain them to our readers,” Latala noted.

Human interest stories also fare well, because “they are the basics of journalism” and appeal to readers.

When news doesn’t break

One habit the newsrooms had to break was the constant creation of content. Editors felt they had to publish new local stories regularly, and journalists were often writing short, non-engaging stories to fill the void.

“We had to review our operations and check how many real breaking news stories happened, and then calculate how many people we should have had on board to report them,” Latala said. That led to creating a four-person department to cover breaking local news, freeing up other journalists to work on other stories and develop exclusive content.

The pivot dramatically changed the company’s numbers; it dropped the number of published articles from 85,739 in 2022 to 36,899 in 2024. For the first half of 2025, it has published 14,421 articles. The length of articles has increased, as has the pageview time. And, significantly, the number of subscriptions sold per article has more than quadrupled, going from 100 in 2022 to 409 in 2025. That shows, Latala said, that “thoughtful, well-planned actions based on data lead to great results.”

Despite its digital success, Gazeta Wyborcza still recognises the value of paper editions. But, like digital, print has changed. It has reduced the number of daily edition versions from 11 to just three, with local pages only for the larger cities. Instead of 20 local weekly editions, it now publishes eight.

“Again, it’s not about cutting the whole process,” he said. “All editorial operations have evolved throughout the last few years.”

Less coverage, not less work

Although Gazeta Wyborcza is moving forward with the mantra, “Less is more,” that doesn’t mean they have less work, Skalnicka pointed out.

“It doesn’t mean we simply write fewer articles and go home earlier,” she said. In fact, this work is more demanding because it requires more attention, more focus, and thoughtful planning.

“It is about seeking real, authentic journalism that explains the world and doesn’t just report events,” she said.

Choosing what to cut and what to keep must be done consciously, with an eye toward “investing time in [stories] that have the potential to succeed.” And it also requires changing habits and mindsets.

“It is the art of showing the greatest satisfaction comes from writing pieces that are interesting to readers, provoke reactions and comments, that make a difference and have impact on reality,” Skalnicka said. 

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