Final version of a presentation delivered to the New York Press Association on 4/5/19 in Albany, NY.

1. Local Journalism for Local Readers
The Pivot to Community
Damon Kiesow
Knight Chair in Digital Editing and Producing
Missouri School of Journalism
@dkiesow
New York Press Association
April 5, 2019
Albany, NY

2. Scale is Dead

3. • Collect and use the right data
• Improve your marketing skills
• Align departments around one revenue goal
• Apply data-driven insights
• Build a culture focused on readers
https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/reader-revenue/what-it-really-means-to-shift-to-reader-revenue/

4. Local Media are the Keystone Species in the
Journalism Ecosystem

5. NPS Photo / Ken Conger

6. Trophic
Cascade
Adapted from Wikipedia user Ccarroll17

7. Fewer Local Journalists
Less Coverage of Municipal and State Government
Increased Costs & Corruption
Degradation of Local and National Discourse
Loss of Trust in Media and Institutions

8. Fewer Local Newspapers
https://www.usnewsdeserts.com/reports/expanding-news-desert/download-a-pdf-of-the-report/

9. Fewer Local Journalists
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/07/30/newsroom-employment-dropped-nearly-a-quarter-in-less-than-10-years-with-greatest-decline-at-newspapers/

10. Fewer Community Connections
“During the height of family newspaper ownership, in the
early 20th century, newspaper owners ….were likely to
bump into readers at the grocery store or serve alongside
them on the boards of local civic organizations.”
Madison and DeJarnette (2017) via Nikki Usher
https://medium.com/@nikkiusher/audiences-relationships-to-the-places-of-news-and-power-have-changed-3a90948f9646

11. Less Visibility of Local Journalists
https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/reports/survey-research/personal-experience-with-news/

12. Less Government Coverage
*2014 Data
https://www.journalism.org/2014/07/10/americas-shifting-statehouse-press/

13. Increased Municipal Costs
“Following a newspaper closure, municipal borrowing costs
increase by 5 to 11 basis points, costing the municipality an
additional $650 thousand per issue. This effect is causal
and not driven by underlying economic conditions.”
Financing Dies in Darkness? The Impact of Newspaper Closures on Public Finance
Gao, Lee & Murphy (2018)
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/WP44.pdf

14. Polarized National Discourse
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/02/21/republicans-would-least-like-their-kids-marry-transgender-person-democrats-republican/

15. Polarized Voting Patterns
“We discern a significant effect—a decline of split-ticket
voting across votes for the presidency and the Senate—
from the loss of any local newspaper.”
Newspaper Closures Polarize Voting Behavior (Darr, Hitt & Dunaway 2018)
https://joshuadarr.weebly.com/uploads/5/1/8/1/51819147/darr_et_al._-_newspaper_closures_jcomm__as_accepted_.pdf

16. Loss of Trust
https://www.knightfoundation.org/reports/indicators-of-news-media-trust

17. How Did We Get Here?
• Chasing audience scale - Facebook, Google, Apple
• Chasing digital advertising scale
• Chasing ‘pivots’
• Chasing efficiencies & centralization
• Not engaging our communities

18. “To what degree does that sense of community connection
relate to (media) job approval? Quite a bit, it turns out.”
For Local News, Americans Embrace Digital but Still Want Strong Community Connection - Pew
Your Community is an Asset
https://www.journalism.org/2019/03/26/for-local-news-americans-embrace-digital-but-still-want-strong-community-connection/

19. Community Drives Trust
https://www.journalism.org/2019/03/26/characteristics-of-communities-show-some-effect-on-local-news-habits/

20. Inclusion Builds Community
“Organizations which design systems are constrained to
produce designs which are copies of the communication
structures of these organizations.”
-Melvin Conway
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law

21. Voices not present in a discussion will be disadvantaged in
the outcome.
Shorter Conway’s Law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law

22. “When corporate-wide decisions are made at a distance
from local readers, those decisions are by definition
distorting local needs — either by omission or commission.”
- Me
Local Control, Local Voices
https://medium.com/media-stack/local-ownership-or-local-control-83ae9d992984

23. “National and local journalism are not the same business.
The New York Times can chase scale for profit, The Centre
Daily Times can’t. Because what the New York Times has is
an audience. In State College, they have a community.”
-Me
Journalism’s Dunbar Number
https://medium.com/media-stack/journalisms-dunbar-number-934f60027927

25. Community Doesn’t Scale
• Programmatic advertising needs scale
• Local journalism has specific geographic constraints
• Chasing a scaled business model but a local editorial
mission is a fundamental conflict
• Local journalism requires a local community engaged at
all levels

26. Google, Facebook, Amazon = 68.1% of Digital Ads
https://www.emarketer.com/content/us-digital-ad-spending-will-surpass-traditional-in-2019

27. • Average page-load times are far too high
• Ad takeovers and abusive redirects drive daily complaints
• Click-bait, attention-gap headlines, promoted links…
• Opportunity cost spent on platform plays
• Pushing out-of-state stories over social to go viral
• A focus on page views as the key metric
The Consequences of Scale

28. Do What?
• If we believe these things to be true
• What actions do we take
• How do we structure our organizations
• How do we make a difference

29. Banish These Metrics
• Page views
• Unique Visitors
• Visits

30. Use Better Metrics
• Local Page Views
• New Visitors
• Visits with Conversions
• Churn & Retention Rates
• Lifetime Value

31. Align Your Goals
A challenge for many local media companies:
• The tension between Advertising and Audience revenue
teams
• Conflicting goals and incentives across departments
• Siloed skills, data, tools and insights

32. Nothing Worth Doing Can Be Done in a Silo
• A marketing campaign targeting a specific audience
onsite and offsite
• A proposal to launch a new paid sports vertical
• Design of a personalization feature to drive onsite
engagement
• A research study to create an ad-free experience for your
subscribers

33. Nothing Worth Doing Can Be Done in a Silo
• A marketing campaign targeting a specific audience
onsite and offsite
• A proposal to launch a new paid sports vertical
• Design of a personalization feature to drive onsite
engagement
• A research study to create an ad-free experience for your
subscribers
Marketing & Analytics & Social & Audience
Editorial & Advertising & Audience & Product
UX & Product & Development & Audience & Editorial
Audience & Advertising & Analytics & Product

34. • What is your annual revenue per user?
• What is your annual revenue per subscriber?
• Does that calculation include advertising as well as print
or digital subscriptions revenues?
• How many people must be consulted to gather these
answers?
• How long does it take to collect that data?
Make Data-Informed Decisions

35. • Fix page performance
• Understand what drives engagement
• Customize entry points into the funnel
• Target readers based on propensity to pay
Improve Your (on-site) Marketing

36. Study Propensity to Pay
6 Points
Very Likely
4 Points
Possibly
1 Point
Unlikely

37. Develop Profiles of Likely Subscribers
Matt Skibinski, Lenfest https://centerforcooperativemedia.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2018/04/Skibinski-Lenfest-MSU-Presentation.pdf

38. Work the Funnel
Implicit recognition of
brand, or explicit visit.
Interest
Engagement
Choice
$
Awareness
Return visit with intent
not just a blind referral
Critical point of intervention
for publishers
Decision to buy or other
longer-term relationship
Subscription or other
commitment.

39. Critical point of intervention
for publishers
Find out What is Engaging
Implicit recognition of
brand, or explicit visit.
Interest
Engagement
Choice
$
Awareness
Decision to buy or other
longer-term relationship
Subscription or other
commitment.
• Related stories
• Specific topics
• Newsletters
• Mobile Apps
• Coupons
• Video
Return visit with intent
not just a blind referral

40. What Winning Looks Like
• Local voices are heard and valued
• Organizational changes encourage collaboration
• UX and design improvements are strategic assets
• Teams prioritize positive not negative digital interactions
• Newsroom goals prioritize reader loyalty
• The business model aligns with the editorial mission