Washington Post super-serves both political junkies and casually engaged citizens
Newsroom Transformation Initiative Blog | 31 July 2024
The Washington Post’s political coverage serves two key audiences:
- Inside the Beltway political junkies who are hungry to read every development and micro-scoop.
- Casually engaged citizens who may dip in and out of content to catch up or understand the latest.
“What makes The Post a differentiator, I think, is our ability to code-switch. We can write for the political junkies — they know us, they love us, they come to us on our platforms. We have experts and exclusive reporting on the election that brings them to us,” said Candace Mitchell, assignment editor for SEO and the audience lead for elections coverage.
“I also think our reporters have the ability to make our content extremely accessible. They understand it at a high level and can explain it at a level for people who may not be coming to us all the time.”
Different products also are designed for different audiences. For instance, Mitchell said, The Post has newsletters for both of those audience segments.
The Campaign Moment, which recently launched, has analysis and deeper dives for political junkies. Its author also has a podcast. At the other end of the spectrum is The 5-Minute Fix, intentionally named that for casually engaged readers who aren’t going to invest a lot of time in reading political coverage but like the newsletter’s casual tone and approach to explaining the latest. Its author has more content and explainers on platforms like TikTok.
“We try to make sure our product suit reflects the different audiences we’re targeting,” Mitchell said.
What metrics is The Post watching?
Pageviews (where they came from and who they are).
By platform.
Engagement time.
New registrations.
Subscription starts.
“We look at a lot of signals along the way,” Mitchell said. “We don’t look at all metrics for all stories.”
The Post sees the election as a great opportunity to bring in a large audience of potential subscribers, Mitchell said: “They’re coming for the type of content we’re known for and we’re going to continue providing.”
With search, Mitchell said, it’s not simply about how many people came to a story — it’s more about where they went from that story and whether they engaged with more content: “Did we put them on a path where they became more familiar with us?”
For big tentpole events or big moments like President Biden’s announcement that he was dropping out of the race, Mitchell said planning and pre-writing content is key.
“I don’t just mean the story that he dropped out but all the stories we want for that day and the coming days. It’s often a journalistic instinct when something big happens to focus on what just happened and why it happened. What we often see from trends and from social is people want to know what happens next. Now what? We need to very quickly pivot to the future.”

In this case, it was: If not Biden, who’s next?
“And we need to predict what the audience needs will be,” she said. “If we just start to write that when we see interest, we’re too late.”
It’s fine and often preferable for the same information to appear in different ways and formats, Mitchell said. In other words, don’t worry if a story, a list, and a video feel somewhat repetitive because they can reach different audiences.
Durable content also is an important strategy for The Post. Mitchell cited the debate as a great example of a moment where The Post resurfaced articles in real time as people who were watching the debate were searching for topics like immigration.
A great piece of advice from Mitchell:
“Rarely are we as journalists or the newsroom our audience. Taking a step back is extremely important, and our audience editors play that role, especially for desks that are in the thick of this day in and day out. It’s really important to take a step back, take a walk around the block, and go online for fun to see what other folks are talking about because in the newsroom, we’re so into the detail of it that it can sometimes distract from what our readers need.”
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