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Illustration by Lukas Kouwets, Momkai
The focus of newsroom business model innovation has largely shifted from advertisers to audience members. Heather Bryant looks at what it will take for newsrooms to create pathways to membership for low and no income audiences: people who have been historically excluded from mutually beneficial relationships with newsrooms.
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Illustration by Lukas Kouwets, Momkai
“Low-income people do spend money. If they're not spending money on your product, that is about your product. It's not about them,” said Sarah Alvarez of Outlier Media. Read on about why we need stronger collaborations between news organizations and community members to redefine what is and isn’t considered “newsworthy,” learn what makes for exploitive or respectful depictions, and do damage control.
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Illustration by Lukas Kouwets, Momkai
We’re launching a global fund to help identify and share best practices for supporting and sustaining independent journalism in the 21st century. If you and your members have insights to uncover about participation path design, inclusion and equity, organizational listening, membership tools and tech, and related themes, we hope you’ll indicate your interest.
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Illustration by Lukas Kouwets, Momkai
Media organisations the world over consider engagement a central tenet of their work — but what that looks like varies widely. We examine the continuum of practices aiming to promote deeply participatory levels of engagement, and the challenges of inviting members into collaborative decision-making and co-production.
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Illustration by Lukas Kouwets, Momkai
When the National Geographic Society was founded in 1888 as an exclusive, member-nominated community of scientific scholars, it had practically every element of what today’s news organizations and supporters are seeking in their own membership initiatives. But the Society lost its grip on membership, seeing a sustained decline that offers lessons about the difficult challenges of transitioning from a niche to a generalist audience in a rapidly transitioning digital landscape.
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Illustrations by Lukas Kouwets & Leon Postma
We’re looking for a full-time operations manager who can join our team in New York City. If you’re detail-oriented and fascinated by news engagement and revenue models, we hope to hear from you.
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Illustrations by Leon Postma & Lukas Kouwets, Momkai
In this project’s first year we hosted two groups, one for audience development staff and one for beat reporters, who want to work more closely with their sites’ audience members. Here we share what we’ve learned about how in demand these staffers and their skills are, why “impact” (like “community”) needs to be more clearly defined, and more that you can use with your own communities of practice.
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Illustrations by Lukas Kouwets, Momkai
As Spotify and other streaming services “consumerize” subscription models for media, cash-strapped news organizations are thinking of “Spotify for news” as a logical progression in the shift to reader revenue. Yet, this makes the faulty assumption that two identical business models — Spotify and many digital magazines charge $10 a month — deliver the same value to the end user. The reality is not so clear-cut.
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Illustrations by Leon Postma, De Correspondent
Polls show that people trust journalists less than other professionals. But what do we really mean when we talk about “public trust” in news media? It will benefit us to highlight three ingredients: the accessibility of our sites and journalists; our journalists’ relatability (the “just like us” factor); and a sense of professional “selflessness” among journalists to protect the public interest over other interests.
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Illustrations by Leon Postma, De Correspondent
Supporters of independent news tell us that sites worth their time, ideas, expertise, and money exemplify a consistent set of design principles. Hear about how inclusivity, humanity, humility, and other characteristics make some sites stand out in ways that encourage inexhaustible participation.
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