Day 2

The membership struggle

Membership is a new way of working, and every newsroom faces internal challenges when making the shift. Plus, in countries where most don’t have the money to give to journalism, or press freedoms are still lacking, the membership puzzle looks a lot different.

How 444 and Volume Africa prepared their staff for membership

Membership is a cross-discipline strategy that requires new skills and new modes of operating in order to succeed. It’s inevitable that internal challenges will come up. Moderated by Membership Puzzle Project coach Jessica Best. Gábor Kardos of Hungarian national investigative outlet 444.hu shared how they developed an internal communications plan to build buy-in across a newsroom that was skeptical of membership. Paul McNally and Andisiwe May of South African podcasting company Volume Africa’s shared how they shifted from being client focused to listener focused, built time into the team schedule for creativity, and developed the capacity to test, learn, and discard ideas that didn’t work.

Making membership work in environments that are hostile to the press 

Being attacked by the government can be a huge driver of member support, but operating a membership program and engaging with your audience in a hostile environment gets complicated, fast. Reuters Institute for Journalism Fellow Peter Erdelyi shared seven lessons he learned while from studying 19 newsrooms in 16 countries where the press is under attack, including the risks of fighting back when the government challenges your newsroom. Peter then interviewed Carloa Salamanca of El Salvador’s El Faro and Premesh Chandran of Malaysia’s Malaysiakini. Both of their newsrooms have had to thrive under significant government pressure. They shared what it takes to build sustainability through reader revenue when under duress.

Peter then interviewed Carloa Salamanca of El Salvador’s El Faro and Premesh Chandran of Malaysia’s Malaysiakini. Both of their newsrooms have had to thrive under significant government pressure. They shared what it takes to build sustainability through reader revenue when under duress.

• Research: “Audience Revenue in Central and Eastern Europe and the Global South”

Focus on Ukraine – Developing membership in a young and fragile democracy

Ukraine’s media market was born only 30 years ago, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the first independent online media appeared only 20 years ago. There are no newspapers in Ukraine that have been read from generation to generation, and audience revenue is still in its infancy. The coronavirus pandemic left many Ukrainian publishers without advertising revenue or the support of owners, who instead were focused on their core businesses outside of media. The pandemic put the sustainability challenge squarely in front of the Ukrainian media: either they find new financing models and diversify their sources of income, or they cease to exist.

As a result, many Ukrainian newsrooms launched membership programs for the first time in 2020, or redoubled stalled membership efforts. Jakub Parusinski of The Fix interviewed media sustainability researcher Andrii Ianitskyi of the Kyiv School of Economics and Sevhil Musaieva of Ukrayinska Pravda, which launched a membership program in 2020, about how newsrooms in Ukraine are making it work.

• Report: Reader’s Clubs and Friends: The state of membership models in Ukrainian media

• Resource: Sevhil’s slides

• Presentation, #MediaRevolutions conference: Ukrayinska Pravda’s membership program

Day 3

Twists in your membership journey

Not everything goes according to plan. That's when you have to adapt and try out-of-the-box membership tactics.

What to do when you get it wrong 

We all make assumptions about our audiences and our members, even though we know better. This session is about what happens when you get it wrong, and how you can recover.

Patricia Mercado Sánchez of Mexico’s Conexión Migrante shared share how they overhauled their editorial strategy after realizing that they were failing to meet the information needs of their readers, mostly Mexican migrants in the U.S. Rico Grimm of Germany’s Krautreporter shared why they lost more than half of their founding members and how they recovered from that mistake. Yvette Dimiri of Stears Nigeria moderated.  

• Case study: How Conexión Migrante became a switchboard for Latino immigrants

• Case study: How Krautreporter approaches retention after losing more than half its members

Pandemic pivots that are here to stay

The pandemic threw plans into disarray in newsrooms around the world – but some responded so successfully that their “pandemic pivots” are likely to become part of their work indefinitely. 

Fran Beighton and Nicole Williamson of South Africa’s Daily Maverick shared how they shifted from in-person events – a cornerstone of their membership offering – to webinars at the outset of the pandemic, and what they’ve learned after hosting more than 120 of them since March 2020.

Stacey Peters of VTDigger in the U.S. shared how they turned a spring 2020 membership drive into a moment to bring the community together in support of essential workers – and exceeded their goal for the membership drive as a result. Aldana Vales of IJNet moderated.

• Case study: How cloth masks powered VTDigger’s spring 2020 membership drive

What happened at The Correspondent

The Dutch news organization De Correspondent funds 20+ full time reporters through membership. But its attempt to expand to English language publishing with The Correspondent did not work, despite a high-profile crowdfunding campaign that met its targets. It shut down in January 2021. Jennifer Brandel of Hearken in the U.S. interviewed De Correspondent/The Correspondent co-founder Rob Wijnberg and MPP Project Director and Correspondent ambassador Jay Rosen about what went wrong, and what can be learned.

Day 4

OK, you’ve got members now. What next?

After you prove that people are willing to join your cause, what do you do with them?

How Black Ballad leveraged deep understanding of its members to launch new revenue streams

Membership can contribute more than membership fees. Bola Awoniyi, co-founder of Black Ballad in the U.K., shared how they developed strong feedback loops with their members, becoming the media company that reaches, serves, and knows the 25 to 45-year-old British Black professional woman better than anyone else in British media. That position has helped launch several other revenue streams since 2019. Moderated by Federica Cherubini of Reuters Institute for Journalism.

• Case study: How Black Ballad turned member surveys into new revenue streams

How three newsrooms turned their members into ambassadors

Digital marketing is an important component of your membership growth strategy, but many newsrooms focus on that and completely forget about one of the most powerful tools they have: their most loyal members. But membership is, among many things, a way to identify your strongest supporters and incorporate them in your quest for sustainability. Few initiatives embody that more clearly than when newsrooms turn their members into ambassadors.

Jakob Moll of Zetland in Denmark, Cristian Lupsa of Decât o Revistă (DoR) in Romania, and Claudia Urquieta of CIPER in Chile shared how they leveraged this tactic to grow more quickly than they could have on their own, reach potential members they wouldn’t otherwise reach, and give their members a meaningful role to play in their survival. Moderated by Federica Cherubini of the Reuters Institute for Journalism.

• Case study: How Zetland turns its members into ambassadors

• Case study: How DoR doubled its membership in six weeks, helped by members and influencers

How three newsrooms are experimenting with ways to scale engagement 

If you’re successful at building a community around your journalism, eventually that community could get too big to manage on your existing team, with your existing processes. But can you scale your engagement work without losing the connection and authenticity that drew audience members to you in the first place? In this session, three newsrooms show ways that you can.

Caitlin Hernández and Kristen Muller shared how KPCC/LAist in the U.S. managed more than 7,000 questions about coronavirus since March 2020 by implementing new workflows, and how they think AI can support the process going forward. Rico Grimm of Krautreporter in Germany shared how they made surveys a part of the ideation and reporting process across the whole newsroom, including hiring a survey editor and standardizing the way they use surveys across the newsroom. Carolina Guerrero of Radio Ambulante shared how they trained loyal listeners to host podcast listening clubs, extending the Radio Ambulante community across the world. Moderated by Gonzalo del Peon of American Journalism Project.

• Medium: Engagement at KPCC

• Case study: How Radio Ambulante made community building routine

• Resource: How to host your own Listening Club

• Case study: How Krautreporter uses surveys to engage, co-design, and grow

• Resource: Krautreporter’s Engaged Journalism Playbook

Day 5

The questions we haven’t answered yet

What are the new frontiers? Where does membership have to go next? Which areas are ripe for experimentation?

Making membership part of the solution

The “Crisitunity” framework guides organizations through the process of identifying the problem in the world that they’re working to fix and inviting people to become part of the solution by becoming members. Michael Sherrard of The Intercept and Kate Myers, formerly of The Intercept, shared how they used the framework to make timely, high-impact membership pitches.

Maintaining engagement beyond the crisis 

Newsrooms around the world experienced a surge in audience and member support during the pandemic. As we to emerge from the crisis, how can we maintain our relevance and connection with these readers and listeners? Shirish Kulkarni of the Bureau Local/The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Vanessa Maria Graber of FreePress News Voices, and Shazia Ali of Ethnic Minorities and Youth Support Team Wales discussed what journalists can learn from community organizing about maintaining engagement and support between the crises that drive surges in support and attention.

The new frontiers of membership

We’ve learned a lot in the last four years about how membership works in different contexts and what best practices are. However, there are myriad membership opportunities still to be explored. In this session, Ariel Zirulnick of Membership Puzzle Project introduces you to three ways that three different newsrooms are creating new membership opportunities.

The News Minute in South India has a membership tier for members living in India and a membership tier for Non-Resident Indians (an official designation for Indians living abroad). Navin Sigamany shared how The News Minute first realized it had an opportunity to tap the Indian diaspora for membership, how they designed a membership experience that met their needs, and what they learned about readers in the diaspora along the way.

Thirty percent of Zetland’s 25,000+ members are under the age of 30. But the Danish startup wasn’t trying to appeal to younger readers specifically. It attracted them because of its focus on solutions journalism and breaking down the “why,” as well as its interest in helping members develop a healthier relationship with technology. Jakob Moll shared what they learned along the way about building trust among younger readers and how that translates into membership growth.

With more than 61,000 members, elDiario.es in Spain is one of the world’s great membership success stories. Earlier this year they paired up with a team of Argentinean journalists to launch elDiarioAR. Javier Borelli, head of membership and community for elDiarioAR, shared how they’re adapting El Diario.ES’s membership strategy for a different context.

It’s your turn.

The Membership Puzzle Project team closed the summit with a reflection on what they learned this week, why now is the right time for MPP to end, and how newsrooms can maintain this global community of practice beyond MPP’s end date.