Nine Ways Newspapers Can Reconnect with Readers

It’s no secret the media is in trouble.

Newspapers, in particular, are really on the ropes.

The main reason is the loss of advertising revenue. For decades, newspapers built their business model on businesses buying ads.

Circulation was still important, especially since it helped establish the price of ads. The more subscribers you had, the more you could charge for advertising.

But circulation wasn’t enough to pay the bills.

As the old adage put it, circulation paid for the paper and ink, but ads paid for the journalism.

When its business model fell apart, newspapers were in trouble.

Faced with the loss of advertising revenue, newspapers turned to the other source of dollars—readers.

But circulation was in decline, too.

At the very time newspapers needed readers to help them survive, they found many of them were gone.

Now they want to get them back, and attract new ones.

But how?

A new book out of Denmark offers some suggestions.

Titled The Journalistic Connection, the book is the result of year-long research in Europe and the U.S.

The authors visited 54 media companies pioneering new ways to connect with their audiences and communities and came up with nine suggestions for ways forward.

1. From neutrality to identity.

In order for people to relate and identity with the media, they must show “what you stand for,” the researchers say.

“Show them who you are, and from which perspective — geographically, socio-demographically, or politically — you view the world.”

2. From omnibus to niche.

 

“Apart from a very few media with global reach, all media can be considered niche operations. However, many broad-reaching legacy media hesitate to openly show and communicate which niche audience they seek to engage.”

 

Targeted niche media show it “is possible to create both quality journalism of high public value and cater to targeted audiences at the same time.”

 

3. From flock to club.

 

“Gathering people around the news media, in clearly defined communities — clubs — is a strategy gaining momentum on both sides of the Atlantic. This implies transforming what were formerly known as subscribers, users, or readers into members, that must either register or pay to join the inner circles of the crowd around the news media.”

 

4. From ink to sweat.

 

“Many media companies are pursuing new ways to create physical journalism in the form of public meetings, festivals, events, and stage plays. Live and engaging. And yes, they consider it journalism.”

(The Winnipeg Free Press experimented with something like this, with its cafe, as in the photo above.)

 

5. From speaking to listening.

 

“The legacy media business often has the character of a walled fortress more than of an open and accessible house. But both in the U.S. and Europe, news organizations are increasingly opening up — physically and mentally — in order to be more accessible to the citizens they serve.”

 

More than anything, “this means listening to citizens and creating more transparency in editorial matters. This can be done through direct personal dialogue, through physical presence in communities, or through the systematic use of small and big data.”

 

6. From arm’s length to cooperation.

 

“In order to maintain independence and neutrality, modern journalism has kept its distance, holding everyone outside the newsroom at arm’s length: citizens, interest groups, public institutions, private corporations, decision makers.”

 

However, “this pattern is clearly changing. More and more newsrooms are involving citizens directly throughout the journalistic process: from ideation to research to delivery of independent content to the subsequent debate of published stories.”

 

Without giving up editorial gate keeping, a number of media are working with local groups, NGOs and public institutions “as a way to create a both substantially deeper and more engaging journalism.”

 

7. From own to other platforms.

 

The consensus in the media today is that it “weakens business opportunities of the news media and their journalistic control when they put their content on social media.”

 

And “using social media is a double-edged sword. [B]ut handled in the right way — maybe more as a way to cooperate than distribute — social network technologies have big potential to enhance and deepen engagement, while at the same time creating stronger journalism.”

 

8. From problem to solution.

 

“Even the most hardcore investigative journalists have discovered they gain greater impact if they add a solution-oriented level to their work.”

 

Also known as solutions journalism, constructive journalism “creates more engagement among readers, users, viewers. They read more, they are more likely to share content, and they express more interest in knowing more about the issue when the piece has a constructive angle.”

 

9. From observers to activists.

 

Several news outlets are testing “whether they can create a new relevance to their readers, users, and viewers through activist campaigns or journalistic advocacy. This move is particularly controversial for many journalists.”

 

Conclusion

The researchers conclude that the media which are most successful at creating and maintaining ties with their readers, users, listeners and viewers “will increasingly be media that dare challenge some of the journalist dogmas of the last century: the dogma of arm’s length; the dogma of neutrality; the dogma of objectivity; the belief that journalists have a special ability to find and choose what is important for citizens.”

For journalism to be relevant for citizens in the future, they go on to say, “it will to a large extent need to challenge these deeply rooted professional dogmas, thus creating a media landscape that is more varied, more lively, more organically open to the citizens and much more diverse than the news industry we have seen for a hundred years.”

Challenging words. What do you think?