The internet has been around long enough for audiences to expect a personal connection with the media they interact with. Many columnists and news personalities have quickly adapted to these new expectations. But news organizations have struggled to adequately capture and incorporate audience feedback at scale. Consider how readers, viewers, and listeners have historically had limited avenues for sharing their feedback through inbound methods like letters to the editor, customer support calls and @ replies.
Now more news brands like the BBC, BuzzFeed, and ProPublica are being proactive in learning about audiences’ experiences and unmet needs through user research experiments. Product and business people at companies like Facebook and Spotify are already finding major value in these audience insights approaches, and it will benefit more publishers to do the same.
User research is about becoming fascinated with your audiences, through tools including interviews, surveys, observation, usability testing, and co-design techniques. As a consumer subscription-first business, engaged regular readership is critical for The New York Times. We use user research to understand our audience members’ lives and what we can best offer them: news, analysis, entertainment, and even offerings that haven’t previously existed.
It’s helped us empathize with and design for people who want to get caught up on a breaking-news event 36 hours in; travelers who want to access recommendations for a city when they’re offline abroad; and presidential voters who want quick context on topics mid-debate. My colleagues also use these approaches for new product and international projects, among others.
My prediction — indeed, my hope — is that improvements informed by user insights can help offer financial stability for media organizations. How? Existing audiences who feel that their experiences are seriously considered are more likely to remain engaged and, where relevant, pay to subscribe. Second, digital and print story experiences that put users at the center have more deeply engaged audiences and are shared more often.
Imagine a near future in which editors across organizations will improve news experiences and story presentations by pairing qualitative intel with data analytics. This intelligence currently mostly informs tactical changes (such as specific stories and forms), but soon I think it will be used as background for more strategic changes (what areas to cover and how).
Listening to your audiences can start small. When Monica Guzman was a reporter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, she held a regular call for readers to join her after work at a local coffeeshop to tell her what was on their minds and to learn about their news interactions. The effort was less about soliciting story ideas and more about really hearing from and connecting with readers. This inquisitiveness coupled with research best practices is a powerful pair — and one that journalism and design are uniquely well positioned to pull off with some resource investment.
Know that the opportunity to understand consumers’ behaviors and attitudes isn’t intended to override editorial judgment or dictate choices to appease upset readers. Instead, it offers powerful guidance that can inform designs and decision-making, next year and beyond.
I remain optimistic for the journalism business. As more people around the world get internet access, the need for high quality, trustworthy, without-fear-or-favor style journalism will grow. And it’s on us to understand how to provide that journalism in the best ways possible.
Emily Goligoski is a user experience research lead for The New York Times newsroom.
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Carrie Brown-Smith We won’t do enough
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
An Xiao Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
Andy Rossback The year of the user
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
David Weigel A test for online speech
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues