Wall Street Journal will focus on quality audiences
Newsroom Transformation Initiative Blog | 28 January 2025
News organisations are braced for many challenges this year.
“Changes to search, in particular, will become a major grievance for a news industry that has already lost social traffic and fears a further decline in visibility as AI interfaces start to generate ‘story like’ answers to news queries,” according to the Reuters Institute.
How should news leaders respond? Where should they dedicate resources?
I posted those questions to Tess Jeffers, The Wall Street Journal’s director of audience analytics. Jeffers leads a team of data scientists and data analysts responsible for content, product, and audience insights.
Here’s what she had to say:
Q: Where do you think audience editors should put their focus in 2025?
A: Focus on your audience! Audience editors are in a prime position to identify what audiences need and how your newsroom can best serve them.
Q: With search and social declining, should audience teams still spend a lot of time on those efforts? What social platforms do you think have the most potential right now?
A: “Success” on search and social media won't look the same in 2025 as it did in 2021. Publishers might have had massive reach, but meaningful engagement was low and unsustainable, so I’d argue things weren’t quite as rosy as they appeared in the traffic report.
In 2025, I believe search and social are still excellent platforms for reaching audiences, especially when you focus on quality audiences — those with an affinity for your brand and likely to become long-term subscribers. Any platform where we can find and engage with audiences interested in money, business, and power hold potential, including LinkedIn, Reddit, WhatsApp, or TikTok.
Q: Where does AI fit into the audience conversation?
A: Talking about AI is essential. Two things are happening at the same time: No. 1, readers are overwhelmed (increasing numbers of readers identify as “news avoiders”) and No. 2, “content” is getting cheaper and easier to create, thanks to generative AI (pejoratively nicknamed “AI slop”).
I’m bullish on how this plays out in the long term for trusted brands like The Wall Street Journal. Readers will need trusted, fair, and balanced brands and will seek out truly exclusive and distinctive journalism that they can’t get anywhere else.
Q: How important do you think direct traffic is? What is your best advice for cultivating more direct relationships with readers?
A: GenAI threatens to further disintermediate news publishers and their audiences. But our customer survey data tells us that readers come to us for our editorial judgment and authority. That’s our direct audience.
One way we’re cultivating our direct relationship with readers is by upping the interest and appeal on our homepage and apps. Readers who come to us directly should always find something they want to engage with and come back for.
Q: What are the key metrics you’re monitoring this year and why?
A: We’re focusing on the quality of our traffic, in addition to quantity. Key metrics for us include subscriber engagement and new subscriber conversion rates.
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