LMA Staff Pick Biggest Opportunities to Reinvent Business Models in 2020

Accelerate Local, intensely focused on reinventing business models for news, launched six projects with more than 50 media organizations over the last year. During this process our team witnessed true innovation as well as serious dysfunction, and everything in between.

We're starting to see the most promising models emerge as well as the structures that must support them. There's lots of opinions on our team. We decided on a staff call to have each member share what excites them the most heading into 2020. We hope you will take a read and weigh in with your thoughts.

When it comes to reinventing business models for news, what excites you the most for 2020?

Philanthropy journalism

I am encouraged by the massive amount of funding that is being earmarked to support local journalism. I think 2020 will be a huge year to tap into this opportunity area. It’s a major area of focus for Accelerate Local. Our NewsFuel platform is now being developed to help match funders with journalism opportunities. We’ll be contracting with a fundraising/grant writing expert to help local media companies identify and successfully secure these opportunities. We also plan to launch a North American local journalism fund. It’s time for all local media companies to make this an important area of focus.

— Nancy Lane, chief executive officer

Customer experience (CX) is the new black

It turns out local media's "special sauce" isn't content, or sales channel, or product, or data insights. Well, actually, it's none of them by themselves, but it's all of them rolled together. As much of a system shock as this may be, I firmly believe that local media won't win (at least not boldly) on unique content alone, or simply having a more efficient sales mousetrap, or putting stronger emphasis on improved products. Rather, triumph comes in bridging all of these together through a customer-obsessed mindset that poses these vital questions: "What are the wants, needs, attitudes & values of our customers (advertisers and consumers)? How do we know? How can we satisfy them?" This intelligence should feed every aspect of a media operation, and every department must candidly ask itself how it can change its mindset and improve its processes to delight its most important customers? From there, content, marketing, product, and sales strategies can truly align around a shared customer experience framework. We may have to get over ourselves a little. Yes, our content is good, but we're not the only ones. Our technology may be improving, but it isn't novel. Our sales approach is becoming more streamlined, but we don't have a patent on that. But customer success (and all that fuels it)...that can be a true differentiator.

— Jed Williams, chief strategy officer

Focusing on "product," and defining the term more broadly

So much of the energy in local media goes to refining business processes and the nature of customer relationships – from advertising and marketing services to digital subscriptions and consumer memberships. I think it’s time to revisit what local media product can and should mean, what it should look like, and how it should work for information consumers and our business clients. And I don’t think the definition of product begins and ends with news and the craft of journalism. The first newspaper businesses didn’t grow around journalism, they developed as outcrops of printing operations, and journalism as we know it today evolved from that environment. Broadcast news organizations emerged as a small part of radio and then TV entities that included news in the mix with all kinds of other programming. By the way, that’s still largely true today. It’s tempting in what will be a contentious, soundbite-filled political year to focus on covering that as our collective raison d’etre. But I think the marketplace has already told us: News is important but not enough for the sustainable future of local media businesses. It’s time to develop capabilities for other kinds of useful, or dare I say entertaining, content and services in our communities.

— Jay Small, chief innovation officer

Branded content for all

2020 is the year that content as a marketing strategy explodes and becomes a more significant part of publishers’ revenue streams. We’ll see massive growth from those already in the branded content swimming pool and more players jumping into the deep end. As consumers continue to avoid ad interruption, positioning your advertisers as relevant, educational, or entertaining content will be crucial to getting their message heard and their brand in front of more engaged audiences. As the platform and distribution possibilities grow from OTT to podcasting to social channels and, of course, traditional media, the opportunities for branded content as an advertising strategy get increasingly exciting and effective.

— Julia Campbell, Branded Content Project manager

Experimentation and the rise of chief marketing officers 

Now more than ever, I am excited to see all the experimentation taking place in the industry. Rather than continuing to make incremental tweaks, local media companies truly seem to be embracing the transformation required in new products, services, and business models. Along with the this, the rise of chief marketing officers that are tasked with understanding consumption patterns, competitive news sources, and the need to focus on loyalty and engagement is a game-changer. Applying consumer marketing disciplines to the news industry is what I believe will ultimately create, or re-create, strong local news brands.

— Jack Zavoral, director of member development

Technology that bolsters loyalty and engagement 

I am excited to see more news organizations focus on loyalty and retention over chasing the metrics of the last decade. New and emerging tools and surfaces are helping journalists cultivate two-way relationships with news consumers digitally and in-person — from sharing personal narratives through ephemeral platforms like Instagram Stories, to getting into text conversations with reporters, to embedded feedback opportunities, plus live events that mingle pedestrians with local experts and journalists. A future with consumer revenue as a core revenue stream depends on news organizations' ability to robustly enhance audience trust in a time when it has been sorely diminished. This year local media will be evoking more thoughtfulness and empathy to really hear the audience and address their questions and interests — especially by leveraging social technologies.

— Emilie Lutostanski, director of the Local News Resource Center

Now it's your turn. What excites you the most for 2020 when it comes to reinventing business models for news?