It was right in front of us all along — it just wasn’t pageviews.
It’s almost 2018, we’re older and wiser, and we now yearn for some real commitment from the people we make journalism for. We’ve come to realize that one-time visitors — effectively the one-night stands of the media world — provide little more than the cheap thrills of banner-ad dollars. And chasing comScore uniques isn’t very fulfilling. But a meaningful connection with our audience? That’s #relationshipgoals. It has the potential to unlock a more stable business model.
So what does that connection look like? How do you measure it? Which metrics are better indicators of what’s working to cultivate and retain folks? What behaviors can show us who is the most loyal among our audience? And ultimately, how can we serve them better? That’s what we’re going to home in on next year.
In 2018, newsrooms across the country will be re-examining their analytics reports and searching for patterns that look beyond scale. Pageviews never should’ve been what we coveted most in the first place — look at the trust issues we’ve brought on in part because we chased those clicks. But we can change. Strategies that’ve been built around traffic are being dismantled.
This year, we’ve seen newsrooms make moves toward more mixed-revenue diets and launch nonprofit ventures. And while pageviews are still a top priority at metro newspapers that rely heavily on digital display advertising, editors like Irene McKisson at the Arizona Daily Star are experimenting with micro-niches.
McKisson launched an off-platform vertical for women, This is Tucson, which allows her team to sell sponsorships. Here she tracks users, their sessions, bounce rate, time on site, and compares new users to returning ones. The brand lives across platforms and because of that “social analytics are also way more important, because we aren’t as concerned with whether a user reached the website,” she explains.
To McKisson, a loyal reader is someone who visits “two or more pages per session with a bounce rate of less than 50 percent.” Other big indicators: downloading the app, signing up for push alerts through Facebook Messenger, attending an event, and “putting our sticker on a water bottle 😂,” she tells me over Slack.
Similarly, we watched The Washington Post launch The Lily, a publication that is able to tailor its journalism — and advertising — to a very specific group: millennial women. Both This Is Tucson and The Lily are casting a way smaller net by deciding to serve only a specific slice of the population. It’s interesting to see these newsrooms experiment with demography-oriented products — and we’ll be keeping a close eye on these projects for insights on audience growth and loyalty.
And here at Mother Jones, we’ve identified data projects that will hopefully set us on the path to identifying and serving our most loyal readers. We’re running experiments with new calls-to-action around our stickiest products: magazine subscription, newsletter signup, and membership. We’re defining what we consider to be high-value actions and looking to see if there are any measurable user behaviors that correlate to reveal a pattern we can harness.
Media currently doesn’t have super sophisticated ways to segment users and serve them different experiences — but we’re working on it. Imagine visiting a news site for the first time and rather than have it ask you for something right away, it waits until you get to know it a little better. Or, on the other end of spectrum, long-time readers and subscribers are spared the usual barrage of asks. This future isn’t far off.
But for now, let’s focus on figuring out what loyalty metrics for media are. How readers interact with our journalism is one major way audiences are telling us what they want.
We shouldn’t expect loyalty — we should earn it.
Julia B. Chan is director of audience for Mother Jones.
Carrie Brown-Smith Transparency finally takes off
Mike Caulfield Refactoring media literacy for the networked age
Sam Sanders Shine the light on ourselves
Kathleen McElroy Building a news video experience native to mobile
Jamie Mottram From pageviews to t-shirts
Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán The editorial meeting of the future
C.W. Anderson The social media apocalypse
Andrew Ramsammy The year ownership mattered
Joanne Lipman Journalists inventing revenue streams
Justin Kosslyn The year journalists become digital security experts
Kristen Muller The year of the voter
Marie Gilot No assholes allowed
Caitlin Thompson Podcasting models mature and diversify
Aron Pilhofer We can’t leave the business to the business side any more
Jarrod Dicker Honesty in advertising
Gordon Crovitz Serving readers over advertisers
Jesse Holcomb Information disorder, coming to a congressional district near you
Rick Berke Value is the watchword
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer Skepticism and narcissism
Pete Brown Push alerts, personalized
Zizi Papacharissi Women come back
Charo Henríquez Training is an investment, not an expense
Jacqui Cheng Retailers move into content
Kim Fox Audience teams diversify their approach
Amy Webb Listen to weak signals
Nicholas Diakopoulos Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity
José Zamora Revenue-first journalism
Mary Meehan Real lives are at stake in rural areas
Michelle Ferrier The year of the great reckoning
Jennifer Choi Standing up for us and for each other
Steve Grove The midterms are an opportunity
Jim Brady With the people, not just of the people
Francesco Marconi The year of machine-to-machine journalism
Mario García Storytelling finally adapts to mobile
Mariana Moura Santos Think local, act global
Ray Soto VR reaches the next level
Kawandeep Virdee Zines had it right all along
Monika Bauerlein The firehose of falsehood
Andrew Haeg The year journalists become relationship builders
Tanzina Vega It’s time for media companies to #PassTheMic
Mandy Velez texting is lit rn, fam
Sarah Marshall Loyalty as the key performance indicator
Damon Krukowski Reviving the alt-weekly soul
Eric Ulken The year local publishers get smart(er) about change
Borja Echevarría TV goes digital, digital goes TV
Jared Newman Venture funding and digital news don’t mix
Michelle Garcia Navigating journalistic transparency
Miguel Castro The arrival of the impact producer
Matt Carlson Attacks on the press will get worse
Dan Shanoff You down with OTT? (Yeah, DTC)
Julia Beizer A longer view on the pivot
Pia Frey Address users as individuals
Matt Thompson Here come the attention managers
Eric Nuzum Beyond the narrative arc
Umbreen Bhatti The trust problem isn’t new
Kyle Ellis Let’s build our way out of this
Tanya Cordrey Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention
Doris Truong Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes
P. Kim Bui The reckoning is only beginning
Rodney Gibbs Tech workers turn to journalism
Molly de Aguiar Good journalism won’t be enough
Mariano Blejman News games rule
Alice Antheaume Are you fluent in AI?
Will Sommer The year local media gets conservative
Bill Keller A growing turn to philanthropy
Vanessa K. DeLuca Women’s voices take center stage
Monique Judge Letting black women tell their own stories
Richard Tofel The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention
Mira Lowe The year of the local watchdog
Basile Simon We need better career paths for news nerds
Kinsey Wilson Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up
Helen Havlak Keywords, not publishers, power the world’s biggest feeds
Ståle Grut Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks
Marcela Donini and Thiago Herdy Collaboration is the way forward for Brazilian journalism
Daniel Trielli The rich get richer, the poor scramble
Emma Carew Grovum Newsroom culture becomes a priority
Pablo Boczkowski The rise of skeptical reading
Hannah Cassius The year of the echo-chamber escapists
Federica Cherubini The rise of bridge roles in news organizations
Sara M. Watson Feeds will open up to new user-determined filters
Cristina Wilson The year of the Instagram Story
Cindy Royal Your journalism curriculum is obsolete
Jim Moroney Newspapers have to be good enough for readers to pay for
Taylor Lorenz Social and media will split
Amie Ferris-Rotman More female reporters abroad (please)
Nicholas Quah Stop talking trash about young people
Heather Bryant Building the ecosystems for collaboration
Tracie Powell The muting of underserved voices
Lanre Akinola Making noise is not a strategy
Susie Banikarim R.I.P. Pivot to Video (2017–2017)
Hossein Derakhshan Television has won
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The Snapchat scenario and the risk of more closed platforms
Mary Walter-Brown Show a little vulnerability
Felix Salmon Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin
Lam Thuy Vo Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest
Ruth Palmer Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities
Sam Ford The year of investing in processes
S. Mitra Kalita The arc of news and audience
Caitria O'Neill The new court of public opinion
Cory Haik Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact
Michael Kuntz The only pivot that might work
Errin Haines At the ballot, it’s time to count black women
Joanne McNeil Gatekeeping the gatekeepers
Laura E. Davis Writing answers before you know the question
Amy King Let’s amplify visual voice
Frédéric Filloux External forces
Christopher Meighan Passive partnership is in the rearview
Matt Boggie The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea
Alan Soon The rise of start of psychographic, micro-targeted media
Craig Newmark Working together toward sustainable solutions
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Seeking trust in fragmented spaces
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Publishing less to give readers more
Debra Adams Simmons And a woman shall lead them
Corey Ford The empire strikes back
Niketa Patel Live journalism comes of age
Juliette De Maeyer A responsible press criticism
Raju Narisetti Mirror, mirror on the wall
Elizabeth Jensen Show your work
Nushin Rashidian Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives
Alexios Mantzarlis Moving fake news research out of the lab
Carlos Martínez de la Serna The new journalism commons
Dheerja Kaur Fun with subscription products
Vivian Schiller Pivot to tomorrow
Rachel Schallom Better design helps differentiate opinion and news
Juleyka Lantigua Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time
Claire Wardle Disinformation gets worse
Millie Tran and Stine Bauer Dahlberg (Hint: It’s about your brand)
Jennifer Coogan The future is female
Matt DeRienzo A recession, then a collapse
Evie Nagy Pivot to mobile video frustration
Adam Thomas Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor
Jessica Parker Gilbert Design connects storytelling and strategy
Feli Sánchez The year for guerrilla user research
Manoush Zomorodi Self-help as a publishing strategy
Alfred Hermida Going beyond mobile-first
Lucas Graves From algorithms to institutions
Emily Goligoski Looking beyond news for inspiration
Raney Aronson-Rath Transparency is the antidote to fake news
David Skok Finding an information-life balance
Renée Kaplan The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)
Joyce Barnathan It will be harder to bury the news
Tim Carmody Watch out for Spotify
Sally Lehrman Trust comes first
Corey Johnson The pro-fact resistance
Mi-Ai Parrish Blockchain and trust
Julia B. Chan Looking for loyalty in all the right places
Yvonne Leow The rise of video messaging
Sydette Harry Listen to your corner and watch for the hook
Trushar Barot The Jio-fication of India
Edward Roussel Eyes, ears, and brains
Rodney Benson Better, less read, and less trusted
Imaeyen Ibanga Longform video leads the way
Andrew Losowsky The year of resilience
Nikki Usher The year of The Washington Post
An Xiao Mina Memes and visuals come to the fore
Rachel Davis Mersey AI, with real smarts
Brian Lam Sketchy ethics around product reviews
Rubina Madan Fillion Unlocking the potential of AI
Alastair Coote The year of self-improvement
Tamar Charney We get serious about algorithms