According to Picasso, “When art critics get together, they talk about form and structure and meaning. When artists get together, they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.” As our members face new obstacles to reaching news audiences, INN has built a place for audience editors to come together and talk turpentine. The INN Audience Studio is one piece of INN’s work to prioritize audience experimentation, which we believe is vital to the future of our field.
On Tuesday, May 20, the Studio met for the first time. Small groups of audience staff from different INN newsrooms began to design short experiments on three topics they deemed critical to their work: vertical video, newsletter growth and improved audience metrics.
The Studio will be run by INN staff together with Fabienne Meijer and Gracie McKenzie, seasoned audience professionals with broad experience facilitating group learning. Groups will meet monthly to iterate on their projects, compare results and receive relevant support from INN. At the end of three months, we hope to share learnings from these proto-experiments with the whole INN Network.
Audience work is key to addressing the core challenges of nonprofit journalism today: diversifying revenue, adapting to changing news consumption trends, reaching people underrepresented by or skeptical of the news. Despite growing industry consensus on the importance of audience engagement, the last few years have presented new obstacles to audience staff. The decay of social media as a referral source, shifts in news consumer habits, and volatility in the platforms newsrooms rely on to distribute content have left many audience editors in a state of whiplash.
“The landscape of social media is shifting constantly, platforms and algorithms evolve by the minute, and we’re no longer seeing the same levels of engagement we once did,” Matt Adams, director of audience growth and engagement at The Texas Tribune, told INN. “To connect with future audiences, we’ll need to explore more innovative approaches, including community-building strategies and in-person engagement.”
Member audience teams have told INN that they face significant challenges in setting long-term distribution strategy, and the current slate of support resources has not expanded to address those challenges. Many audience editors feel trapped in a reactive posture. They recognize the flaws of the conventional distribution playbook and they know this moment requires experimentation to reach audiences. But they lack the space, support and resources to innovate.
In designing the Studio, INN spoke to audience personnel from across the sector. Sunny Sone, senior editor for audience and engagement at The Trace, told INN, “I would love a group where I’m working with peers who are grappling with the same types of problems I am, where I can message someone and say, ‘We’re seeing this big shift in traffic, are you seeing that?’ and then workshop that together in a structured way.”
Audience editors want just a little more breathing room to try new strategies and a community of audience personnel from other newsrooms share results with. The Studio is a direct response to these concerns, a place where audience staff can harness the power of the INN network to design new solutions that will meet the uncertainty of this moment.
INN’s audience work is premised on the idea that the creativity we need to unlock audience solutions already exists within our newsrooms. What audience editors lack is space to think long-term, bandwidth to take risks and community to learn alongside.
“The goal is to be in a place where we are not getting jerked around by each new change, but where we have a long-term strategy that we are testing through regular experimentation, whether that’s on video or partnering with influencers or newsletters,” said Rachel Holliday Smith, managing editor at The City.
The absence of owned distribution models may be the number one source of gloom in audience work. On Tuesday, editors took on that issue with a different attitude—filling up digital whiteboards with ideas, buzzing excitedly with each other about newsletter welcome templates. Many INN newsrooms have just one full-time audience staff. Some of those editors commented that the Studio was their only chance to discuss these topics with audience peers.
The Studio is part of INN’s larger work to provide newsrooms the space and security to take risks. While the volatility we are seeing in distribution has made audience strategy harder, it has also increased the upside of bold, long-term vision. Precisely because newsrooms are so hungry for stable, direct connection to their audiences, the strategies we unearth today will shape the future of public service journalism.
For questions about the INN Audience Studio, please contact Manager of Distribution and Audience Growth Sam Cholke.
