For nonprofit newsrooms, content distribution is both harder and more important to success than ever. AI is slashing search traffic as social platforms grow less reliable. Audiences are fragmented and traditional journalism is increasingly irrelevant to their consumption habits – especially for younger segments.
On Oct. 10, the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) gathered 80 newsroom leaders, audience strategists, technologists and journalism supporters at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. The motivating question: How can INN newsrooms harness the power of the 500-member nonprofit network to meet this moment of distribution volatility?
It was a day of sharpies, sticky notes and scrawled ideas.
Out of the hundreds of new concepts generated, clear themes emerged:
- Stark power imbalances exist between small newsrooms and the platforms and larger partners they rely on to reach audiences. Working as a collective evens the playing field.
- Nonprofit newsrooms lack consensus on how to measure the impact of their reporting. The industry needs to establish sector-wide metrics, norms and values to answer this question.
- Research and development is down, yet nonprofit news needs experimentation now more than ever. A coordinated network can provide spaces (like the Audience Studio) for engagement staff to identify the new ideas that will establish resilience.
The conference heard from panelists who helped explain the larger forces at play: Jennifer Allen, assistant professor at NYU Stern; Aman Sethi, editor in chief at Open Democracy; and Thomas Brennan, founder of The War Horse.
Audiences are generally consuming less news and increasingly consuming it in fragmented, private domains, the speakers said. This poses fundamental challenges for news organizations aiming to establish public access to information and public consensus on facts.
“For so long, we on the nonprofit side have been told to meet audiences where they are. But that’s not how you build a business. You build a business by bringing audiences where you are.”
Aman Sethi, Editor in Chief, Open Democracy
Panelists urged newsrooms to reorient their distribution strategy to prioritize owned audience. Sethi encouraged editors to “build a moat” around their content.
“For so long, we on the nonprofit side have been told to meet audiences where they are. But that’s not how you build a business. You build a business by bringing audiences where you are,” said Sethi.
In the second half of the day, the conference broke into small groups to think about the most common audience challenges INN newsrooms face. Groups worked to define a specific engagement problem facing a fictional employee at a fictional INN newsroom and then developed network resources to help that employee with their challenge.
Newsroom leaders described how audience work is often siloed, underdefined and undervalued. Working groups consistently came up against ambiguous audience strategy and a lack of clear metrics. While groups discussed the need for improved engagement tactics and data skillsets, they also reiterated the importance of a culture shift in nonprofit news. Organizations need clear, measurable audience goals that win over buy-in from editorial teams.
When it came time to start problem-solving, there were real limits to what each fictional news organization could accomplish on its own. However, when groups were asked to design a solution that drew on the resources and coordinated action of the whole INN Network, they started making real progress.
Where do newsrooms go from here? The Institute for Nonprofit News will follow through on the best ideas surfaced in the small groups, keeping INN’s audience work laser-focused on the products, tools and resources that will move newsrooms toward coordinated solutions and shared standards.
