Hi there.

I’m having such interesting conversations about a whole host of things right now. Thanks to those who have spent time taking me through their thinking and work. It’s fascinating to hear what you are up to, and it helps inform me as to which questions I should be asking others.  

Over the next couple of months I’ll be going deep on all things audio, so if you have something to share, please drop me a note at Jodie.hopperton@INMA.org.

Hope to connect with you on some platform some time.

Best, Jodie

Scrollytelling and other reusable templates 

I recently had the opportunity to talk to the FT about how they think about productising new formats by building reusable templates. They spoke about raising the floor — making it easier for everyone to create visuals — as well as raising the ceiling on what is possible. And they do this through a specific model they call 80/15/5.

Since that session, I have spoken with a couple of other publishers about the same thing and the TLDR is this: As you build, continuously think about what can be incorporated into your CMS or tech stack that journalists can use while simultaneously recognising you will need resources to push the boundaries and try things you won’t instantaneously use again. 

Side note: Erik Bursch, senior vice president of consumer product and engineering at the USA Today network, told us on a recent Webinar that some MVPs are deliberately made of “papier mache” as their purpose is to test hypotheses, not to architect for the main tech stack. 

This post is very much focused on visual formats even though someone at The New York Times recently pointed out to me that there is still a lot of innovation around text, too. He’s right, of course. Just think about live blogs, AI- or human-generated summaries, maybe even bionic reading (one of my new favourite things).  

We all know visuals are important, sometimes to illustrate or enhance a story. The FT has a number of stats to show that visuals are important for engaging and retaining subscribers. In addition to this, some visuals such as charts aren’t enhancing or decorative. They are the story. Charts actually outperform images on the FT’s Instagram.  

So allowing journalists to have the means to think about how data is represented at the start of a story is vitally important. Alan Smith, head of visual and data journalism and author of How Charts Work: Understand and explain data with confidence, shared the FT’s visual vocabulary of charts. It’s an encyclopedia of charts you can use now to build for your newsrooms to use over and over. 

The FT creates everything using their in-house CMS Spark. They generally prefer in-house tools as they have more control, can mold the road map to their needs, and find it easier to integrate into workflows. That said, they also use Flourish, as they are able to integrate through an API. Other newsrooms I have spoken to rave about Datawrapper, although I believe this is usually used standalone and there are fewer integration options.

What is scrollytelling’s role in the user experience?

“Scrollytelling” — telling longform stories with audio, video, and animation that is activated by scrolling — has become a popular format in line with mobile growth (and is my new favourite phrase) and is a format that I assumed works better on certain mediums than others. However when I asked product leaders about designing for small or large screens, they told me everything they do is responsive.

I actually searched through New York Times interactive graphics to find some that work better on one or the other. Needless to say despite my conviction this must be the case, I couldn’t find any examples. For you, this may seem obvious. But the output looks very different on each screen, and I was surprised at the degree of automation. Most CMSes seem to make all formats responsive as part of workflow.  

Another interesting note is around metadata and visuals. While metadata can be attached to visuals, it’s not always built into the system. And without metadata, it’s hard for people to find through search. It’s exceptionally important to think about this.

Brian Rifkin, CEO of JW Player, was quick to point out to me that although the algorithm is a black box, Google has good resources on their search criteria (especially for video) and it’s essential to stay up to date. (If you want to dive into SEO, I highly recommend this recent report on succeeding in Google search from my colleague Peter Bale, head of the INMA Newsroom Initiative.) 

So what exactly is the FT’s 80/15/5 philosophy? 

• 80% of articles containing visual or interactive content are built by journalists using in-house tools (aka, raising the floor for creation).
• At the other end of the spectrum, the 5%, a dedicated team, builds new formats that push the boundaries on what is possible. These are often big stories and are testing specific things. They’re unlikely to be productised in the near future.
• And the 15% is that middle spot, creation that requires some input from product or engineering teams but that is likely to be built into the CMS sometime soon as a repeatable format. 

These percentages are loose and more used for demonstrative purposes than actual % of content. It’s an excellent philosophy for product teams that are serious about bringing innovations into the newsroom on a consistent basis. 

Debbie McMahon will be presenting more about 80/15/5 framework at the upcoming Product Innovation master class on innovative content formats.

Date for the diary: April 28, early bird deadline for my next master class

I’ll admit I have packed the agenda for my Product Innovation master class in May. There are so many amazing examples and case studies on structuring for innovative content formats, approaching Gen Z, audio, and personalisation that we’ll be covering a LOT. 

For the first time, you can sign up to individual modules or the whole thing. Hope to see you there. 

Getting out of the JTBD mentality 

Speaking to Jason Jedlinski and Erik Bursch on a recent Webinar, I realised that to get really good at product, we need to get out of the JTBD (jobs to be done) mentality. Don’t get me wrong, there is a time for it because we need to get things done. But that simply can’t be the status quo to be effective. 

If we work in isolation we build bricks, not a house. 

It’s one of the subtle nuances between project management and product management. Project is about delivering on a specific goal. Product is about pulling the pieces together for an overall outcome. 

Sometimes I have knowingly pulled a pin on a proverbial grenade and thrown it over the wall to another team. Not out of spite. I see something wrong and flag it, but it’s simply not in my purview (our Earl jokes that I permanently have my hand raised on Zoom).

This isn’t a tag race. Teams have to work together. So how do we work together? 

• Cross-functional teams: Squads, pods, triads — there are many different names for bringing cross-discipline teams together to solve specific issues. Some organisations such as The New York Times are entirely organised in this way. Others do it to solve specific issues, such as a Norwegian publisher ring fencing a team to look at reducing churn. 

• Lunch and learn: This is one of my favourites and something Jason also bought up. When I was at The New York Times, I often asked people to come in and speak to our team. It’s fascinating, creates links with other teams, and gives everyone exposure.  

• Speaking to different people/departments: You can meet without specific structure. Set yourself a goal of meeting someone new every week or month. Grab a coffee, maybe even lunch. You’ll be amazed what you can learn about someone else’s role/frustrations/opportunities in a 30 to 60 minutes of free-flowing conversation. If this kind of thing makes you nervous, prepare yourself with open-ended questions and find someone you both respect and find interesting.  

• Ask questions: This is something a good product manager is always doing: Why are we doing this? Who will it affect? What impact will it have on other parts of the product/company? Jason also pointed out that to foster working relations, we may not want to fire questions at people but create unity by asking “how might we?” to look at solving issues together. 

• Understand the organisation/department goals: The single most important indicator of a product team’s success is whether people can articulate the overall goals and how their individual work ladders up to that. 

Leaders need to be comfortable with the idea that there will be some skills overlap: If jobs specs are siloed, then the individuals and teams also will be. A leader may be uncomfortable when people overlap — is that wasted resource?? — but they have to get comfortable with these grey areas because that’s where the magic happens.  

Anything you want to tell me or ask me? Send me an e-mail or book time with me.   

About this newsletter 

Today’s newsletter is written by Jodie Hopperton, based in Los Angeles and lead for the INMA Product Initiative. Jodie will share research, case studies, and thought leadership on the topic of global news media product.

This newsletter is a public face of the Product Initiative by INMA, outlined here. E-mail Jodie at jodie.hopperton@inma.org with thoughts, suggestions, and questions. Sign up to our Slack channel.

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