Guidance for overloaded leaders of news organizations

Dorian heads Teeming Media, a thought leadership communication consultancy focused on media technology, as well as The Verticals Collective group of media company founders and operators. He teaches media business at Columbia University’s J-school and the Zicklin School of Business at CUNY/Baruch.

Managing a small news organization can seem like drinking from multiple fire hoses at once. You need to cover this event, that breaking news story, then edit some interview. And, meanwhile, fix the CMS, talk to a funder, and call an advertiser. And and and.

How, while managing it all, can you rationally figure out what to focus on to make your operation more effective? The CEO of a successful nonprofit local news organization I asked recently replied: “revenue, revenue, revenue.”

I agree that you need to keep the lights on. But there’s more than money to grapple with. Here’s a way to get your arms around the process and channel your energy productively.

How do you measure your mission?

First, I suggest you look at your mission and choose metrics that will help you measure progress toward fulfilling it. That’s not as daunting as it might seem. Nabiha Syed, then-CEO of the not-for-profit tech publication The Markup, told me that one of the main goals was “impact.”

They measured some typical metrics such as pageviews, audience engagement, social sharing, and so on. But to really understand their impact, they would measure factors such as how many times an investigative piece they ran was mentioned by a legislative or regulatory body. They tracked where their work spurred action — regulations, legal filings, protests, or letter writing campaigns, to mention a few. They noted when their work was cited by major news organizations or influential researchers.

You, too, can define your mission in trackable metrics. Make them numerical and meaningful, as The Markup does. Measure not just pageviews or uniques but also whether they’re centered in the communities you’re working to inform.

Once you’ve defined metrics, make sure you have the necessary tools to measure them well. Can you tell how many in your target community you are reaching, and whether the proportion is increasing?

The tools might include Google Analytics, Parse.ly, an application attached to one of your technology providers, or some combination of those and others. Panel measurement services such as Similar Web might help, but know that their statistical models can break down for smaller media operations.

“What?!” you may be thinking. “I’m already overloaded and now you want me to add measurement to my tasks?” Do what you can. Pick something that will at least give you directional information, an indication of what you can do to get closer to your aims. Most measurement tools can email you key data at a cadence you choose — weekly, monthly, etc. Even getting a couple of basics in an email every week can be a help. If you’re measuring something like impact, you’ll probably hear if your work hits pay dirt in ways noted above. And if you miss a report on occasion, don’t fret. It’s usually the trend over time that matters, not hair-trigger reactions to momentary spikes or dips.

Next: The value chain

Once you’ve got the tracking and measurement discipline down — you’ve defined the key metrics and have the tools to measure them — then figure out what’s working and what can be shorn up.

Looking at your operation as a system can help. One way is to use a Digital Content Value Chain framework, such as this one that my company has adopted and adapted:

Conceptually the framework is straightforward. I’ll quickly explain its steps, in order:

• First you have to create or acquire content, the stuff your audience will consume!
• Then you must manage it, such as via a content management system (CMS).
• Next, you have to distribute it, make the content available through servers or a third party such as Substack or Facebook in a way that people can access it.
• Then, you’ll try to make people aware of and engaging with what you’ve created, again through social sharing platforms and other means.
• Ultimately, you usually have to “monetize” — make money. Sometimes, you must prove to funders that you’re reaching goals you’ve agreed upon.

Apply your smarts

Metrics help you discern what is and isn’t working. By measuring your audience and what engages them, you’ll find out what seems to do best  — what topics, lengths, formats, and so on. You can then devote resources to doing more of those things.

You may have to dig a little, and you’ll certainly have to apply your smarts. If readers tend to abandon pages in the middle of articles, is that because of the writing, or perhaps some issue with page design? What can you fix — either in the content or the technology? And keep measuring!

Lets say a particular method of generating awareness works well, such as sharing on Bluesky, or Reddit, or your newsletter. You may want to devote more resources to packaging content for the right platforms. Or, if a particular format gets more uptake (short videos on iPhones?) maybe you enhance your workflows, content management, and production to optimize for that.

You know best

Whatever the metrics, you are the one who will know how best to interpret them. You understand your community and its habits in ways no tool can. What does very well for one group might bomb with another. If you’re serving high school students in a rural area, they’ll have quite different media consumption habits than Wall Street stock brokers. Their devices and telecommunication networks will also diverge — and hence your work.

Of course, you can start by following the advice of the CEO I cited up top and look first at revenue. If money measurements show that you need to show more ads, well, create more ad inventory, perhaps by working to increase pageviews, listens, or video views. If you need to sell subscriptions, measure and hone customer acquisition and retention. Again, the digital content value chain will help.

I’ve seen publishers use the DCVC framework to identify the most important issues, then address them one-by-one. You, likewise, can move among the different parts of the chain as each needs the most urgent attention. Focus on making each better in turn. If and as you grow, you can assign specific elements to experts you bring in. Your job remains to understand and oversee it all.

It’s a continual and iterative process. By working through it, you’ll get better, and, I believe, achieve success.

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Cite this article

Benkoil, Dorian (2024, Feb. 18). How to focus on what matters in building your news operation. Reynolds Journalism Institute. Retrieved from: https://rjionline.org/news/how-to-focus-on-what-matters-in-building-your-news-operation/