Want to earn readers’ attention? Reward them for it

Introducing DigInThere, a free audience engagement tool for news publishers to recognize and reward their audiences for genuine effort and, ultimately, thoughtful consumption. 

There’s an ever-increasing volume of online content out there vying for audiences’ finite attention spans. In simple economic terms, supply (online content) keeps growing while demand (human attention) stays fixed.

Collectively, our attention spans have been steadily declining for years. The advent of social media (and even dating apps) helped spawn a culture of skimming; one swipe and it’s on to the next one. The rising tide of AI-generated content has only piled onto an already overwhelming supply of information. 

With a tsunami of information at everyone’s fingertips, newsrooms can no longer afford to rely on their usual strategies to command a readership. They need to, they must do more. More importantly, they need to do things differently.

DigInThere enables newsrooms to create a comprehension quiz for any of their articles published online. Taking the quiz allows audience members to test and prove their understanding of the content through a gamified experience. The number of readers who can pass the short quiz becomes a verified metric of meaningful consumption and opens up opportunities for engagement. 

The two most impactful features of DigInThere:

• Perk giveaways: Opportunities to earn rewards (e.g. tickets to events or merch) for audience members in exchange for passing a quiz. In receiving something for their efforts, newsrooms are able to build trust and loyalty.

• Community gateways: Readers can earn access to join and participate in a private community (e.g. Discord forum, closed Facebook group, Slack channel) by passing the quiz. A private space for similarly engaged (and hopefully more civil) readers is our approach to curbing hate speech without encroaching on free speech. The hope is that readers in conversation with each other will be inspired to be more engaged with news online and offline. The idea is to transform readers into doers in their communities.

How DigInThere works

Our project’s success is directly tied to newsrooms’ uptake of DigInThere. Our goal is to help outlets garner a focused, more deliberate kind of attention on their articles.

You own your content, and the tool is designed to keep readers on your site.

DigInThere does not host any of the original content, so all articles stay on the news organization’s site, and they retain all the traffic. For now, readers can take quizzes on their newsroom’s page on DigInThere that features all their quizzes.

The next iteration of DigInThere will enable publishers to embed quizzes directly on their article pages so readers don’t need to leave the news sites at all. We anticipate that more time spent on the website will translate to more readers who want to find and take more quizzes to earn rewards. In turn, elevated levels of engagement may result in increased loyalty, and even newsroom sustainability.

Design grounded in ease-of-use

DigInThere works with any content management system (CMS). As long as the content has a URL, it can be generated into a quiz. There is no need for outlets to change their publishing workflow, backend or tech stack. 

We minimize the time and effort that it takes them to set up and run a quiz campaign on an article. DigInThere automates most of the work for news outlets, so they can focus on the news.

How to set up your quiz on DigInThere 

1. Paste the URL of the article into DigInThere. With one click, metadata from the article is pulled out for the quiz template (headline, author, thumbnail image). 

2. From here, AI gets to work. (We use GPT-4 through API calls.) Processing the article, 10 questions (the number of questions can be edited by publishers) are generated. Publishers can edit or delete questions, or even add their own manually. 

3. Review questions for accuracy and make any desired corrections or changes.

4. Add the start and end dates the quiz is available for readers to earn perks. The quiz can stay active beyond this time period, but this is the finite window in which perks can be earned. When the quiz “ends,” the answers will be made available to quiztakers. (The idea here is to curb sharing answers with others and cheating to win perks.)

5. Add perks that readers can earn for passing quizzes. As perks are added, they are added to an inventory of all perks that can be reused on other future quizzes with just a few button clicks.

6. Choose a redemption period, or how long readers have to claim any perk(s) they’ve won after the quiz results go live.

7. You’re done. The quiz will be listed as “Pending results” on the publisher’s admin dashboard (quizzes that have ended will be shown under the “Published” tab).

After the quiz campaign is live, it becomes available to readers. DigInThere administers a randomized, bot-resistant version of the quiz to each reader, evaluates their answers, tracks the time spent on the quiz, and finally, selects a random winner for perks. All of these tasks are automated.

Note: Not every person who passes a quiz will win a perk. You win a chance to win the perks you selected with each quiz taken and passed.

Administrative tasks

Each publisher has an admin dashboard that only newsroom users have access to. There, they can track what actions need to be taken to deliver perks to successful quiztakers.

These might include:

• Providing a shipping address or pickup location for merch
• Providing a link to claim the reward (e.g. download event tickets)
• An invite and instructions to access your outlet’s closed community for readers who passed the threshold of quizzes required

Readers are also notified as to any actions necessary on their part, such as providing a shipping address.

A news publisher’s admin dashboard displays metrics how well their quizzes have been performing.

• The number of people who have passed the quiz
• The number of people who failed
• The number of people who timed out, or didn’t finish the quiz within the allotted time. 

What’s next for DigInThere

At the time of this publication, the app is a beta release, and, as such, it will be improved in the coming months. 

Our next update is completing the infrastructure to embed quizzes directly on article pages with an iframe embed that can be copied and pasted, as well as links to individual quizzes. (Presently, readers must go to a publisher’s page on DigInThere to take quizzes.)

Our approach to audience engagement is a decidedly experimental one. We began this fellowship with a narrow use case for DigInThere, for news publishers on news content. As we’ve gathered feedback from beta test newsrooms and others, alternative use cases and other potential audiences have emerged:

• Learning tool as part of curricula for students
• Civic education
• Connecting with Gen Z as news consumers
• More content types for quizzes (audio, video)

Read more in-depth about other use cases and audiences to DigInThere

There are likely other use cases and implementations we haven’t even considered and that haven’t surfaced in feedback from others yet. DigInThere is about community and engagement. 

Join our efforts:

• Become a beta test newsroom: We help you set up DigInThere and work with you to explore implementation wins and areas for improvement as part of a case study on DigInThere’s impact. There is a minimal time commitment around your schedule and/or time zone (we’ve had international interest, and welcome more). And, you receive one-on-one help every step of the way. 

• Participate in an informational interview: Help us understand what’s working and what’s not so we can make adjustments and improvements germane to how people actually use DigInThere. You’ll be asked a series of questions about the tool, and asked to try out a demo. 

• Schedule a demo session: You’re not quite ready to implement DigInThere, and just want to learn more? Schedule a Zoom demo with us here.

Do you have questions, or want to work with us in another capacity? Email info@diginthere.com to connect.

We are grateful for every person who has helped contribute to our success, and continues to support us, including (in no particular order):

• Wajiha Moin: UI/UX best practices and initial frontend design
• Bella Doughty: Branding and wireframes designer
• Mizzou School of Journalism AdZou spring 2025 class
• Ryan Restivo: YESEO app creator and former RJI Fellow

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Cite this article

Csernatony, Zoli; and Amihere, Dana (2024, March 3). Introducing DigInThere. Reynolds Journalism Institute. Retrieved from: https://rjionline.org/news/introducing-diginthere/