#15 - User Needs in Perspective

#15 - User Needs in Perspective

Inspire me, entertain me, give me perspective…. If these words ring a bell than you might already be working with ‘user needs’ in your newsroom. A first batch of Mediahuis titles is adding them in the newsroom to get a better understanding of how what they make matches the needs of the readers. The concept itself started in 2016 at the BBC. Now, more than 5 years later, there is also proof that it works. Metrics from today, put together by Dmitry Shishkin, show how BBC cut down the total number of published stories by 60%, all while average metrics per story per user need category grew, and the overall audience tripled.

This and more in this week’s Wayfinder,?

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IN FOCUS

Google has signed deals to pay more than 300 publishers in Germany, France and four other EU countries for their news and will roll out a tool to make it easier for others to sign up too. The move follows the adoption of landmark EU copyright rules three years ago that require Google and other online platforms to pay news publishers and journalists for using their work.

Meta on the other hand is considering reducing the money it gives news organizations as it reevaluates the partnerships it struck over the past few years. The reassessment comes as Meta looks to cut costs broadly and rethinks the value of including news in its flagship Facebook app.

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DATA

Analytics company Chartbeat has done a multi-year analysis of traffic trends and engagement trends from the last three year trying to understand the ways in which reader behavior flows through discovery, engagement, and eventually, loyalty. In the last part they look at the types of devices involved, and the differences in behavior from new, returning, and loyal visitors.

Oh and here are their stats for the first quarter of 2022.

At the INMA World Congress of News Media, four news media companies presented how they are making data a foundation of their companies. News UK creates a 5-pillar data strategy, The Economist looks at gaps and silos, Gannett invests in its four core data pillars, Nine takes a holistic approach to data.

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NEWS & PRODUCT

Search is an audience insight tool that can help reporters understand what their readers are thinking. At Quartz the newsroom gets daily roundups of trending stories and they also have so-called SEO dossiers?where they keep track of the topics that people search for and how reporters could match this information gap.

Famous newspaper designer Mario Garcia is nowadays focused on designing for mobile. Each year his students at the Columbia Journalism School get an assignment to craft a linear mobile story where the narrative and the visual assets are made fit for the smartphone. Here’s what they came up with.

Digiday writes about how publishers are experimenting with more homepage personalisation sections. And the Guardian is betting big on newsletters.

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REVENUE

Has the paywall story done well. Can it do better? Are there topics people prefer to read more than others? Should we commission more stories on those topics? Director of News products from the Times of India reveals?how they built a new method to track story performance for paywalled stories.

People working in media like to talk in absolutes: either you optimize for subscriptions or you do it for advertising. But the reality is that nearly every publisher or media company does both, because ultimately it’s in the best interest of their business. So to stir things a bit up here’s an article about the benefits of combining advertising and subscriptions.

And Tavid Tvdron takes a look at how Bild subscription offer evolved. Thanks to testing they found 'keeping it simple' brings more customers and drives more revenue.


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SOCIAL

TikTok is adding 650000 users every single day and increasingly longer-form analysis is engaging audiences alongside the dancing and lip-syncing. Is it time for publishers to take the platform serious? It may become too big to ignore according to WNIP.

Investigative journalism group Bellingcat has created a TikTok Analysis Tool that allows researchers to collect a dataset of TikToks associated with specific hashtags over lengthier periods. How's that useful? Here's a guide on how to start investigating TikTok like a pro.

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SHORT

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LEARN

On May 24th, the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies' Futures presents futures scenarios on the Metaverse?and how it may impact our lives and the way we work.

Applications are open for the JournalismAI Academy for Small Newsrooms a free online programme, that offers a deep dive into the potential of artificial intelligence to journalists and media professionals from news organisations with fewer than 50 employees.

Spotify now has a form for editorial submission. It’s currently only available in the US but it’s worth knowing what shows they’re looking for.

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INNOVATION

At this year’s Google I/O conference, the company revealed an AI assistant that can have conversations and glasses that instantly translate any major language spoken out loud. It’s all part of Google’s push to create an “ambient computing” network in which devices fade into the background and AI takes control.

NFT's have crashed but we shouldn't discard the potential. Peter Yang of the Creator Economy explains how NFT's could become the subscriptions of the future.

And I was invited by JournalismAI to join news media executives from around the world in a private seminar at the?International Journalism Festival?to discuss the future of journalism and the role of AI. Here’s a flavour of what was told in that meeting.

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Wayfinder is back next week. Like it? Share it!

Ezra.

Dmitry Shishkin

Chief Executive Officer, Ringier Media International, Switzerland

2 年

Thank you for including that piece, Ezra! Looking forward to you guys running with your models too!

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