Revenue strategies
Automating calendars for small newsrooms
The less time journalists spend on rote tasks like data entry, the better. In this project we automated collecting event information for St. Louis Magazine’s website’s event calendar.
Journalism’s broken talent pipeline
It’s impossible to address what journalists do and why we exist without understanding how and who becomes a journalist today.
Eight ways smaller newsrooms can make audio pay
As advertising reliance becomes an increasingly redundant, risky and outdated strategy, it is incumbent on publishers large and small to implement strategies which generate revenue from multiple sources.
Business, journalism competition offers real-world industry solutions to Hearken, AP
A University of Missouri team tasked with finding solutions to help Hearken, an engagement consulting startup, expand the business’s target market and make it more sustainable, won the 12th annual Center for the Digital Globe (CDIG) media symposium.
9 ways newsrooms can incorporate more audio in their work
The ability to hear stories is essential for visually impaired audiences — and anyone who wants to consume content on the move.
What newsrooms can learn from creator culture and monetization strategies
Like the music and movie industry before us, it’s time for journalism to rethink the way things are done.
How should publishers change their messaging when paywalls aren’t one size fits all?
Optimizing content limits on a user-by-user basis Should publishers communicate content limits to their audiences? The question becomes more pressing as the products that manage paywalls become sophisticated enough to make predictions about who likely subscribers are. We decided to test this idea with the Reynolds Journalism Institute this year in a partnership project where … Continued
From Next City to Next Journalism: Oscar Perry Abello is redefining accountability journalism
Oscar Perry Abello is a New York City-based journalist and senior economics correspondent for Next City, where he covers responses to economic injustice for the non-profit online magazine devoted to inspiring greater economic, environmental, and social justice in cities. I spoke with Abello as part of RJI’s Inclusive Media and Economies project that examines the … Continued
How an idea about local obits became a newsletter
Take that thing you’ve been thinking about doing for awhile now and make it real. A few years ago, I had this idea. I wondered if local, reported obituaries could help local newsrooms build subscribers, and therefore help support the business itself while connecting them with their communities. I talked it out in hallways and … Continued
Saving democracy is a slogan not a strategy
In the past four years, I’ve seen increasingly fervent articles, studies and op-eds declaring journalism’s essential role in a healthy democracy. As we’ve heard many times before, local news is critical to informing communities and promoting civic engagement. The very presence of a local news organization revives democracy, underpins democracy, sustains democracy, and yet these proclamations have been strikingly disconnected from reality.