Loyalty goes two ways for news organizations. Readers show them loyalty, but increasingly news organizations are learning how important it is to be loyal to their readers. In the next year, the most successful media companies will be the ones that focus on readers who are core to their audience and reward them for their readership.
Gone are the days of aggregation by small and medium-sized brands. Gone are the days of chasing traffic. Gone are the days of one-size-fits all splashy marketing campaigns. Today we are learning how to build targeted relationships with readers. That means finding new ways to reach them — and to keep them coming back.
At Stat, a site devoted to health, medicine and science, we are relentlessly focused on our audience. We publish both free content and paywalled content. For subscribers, we offer exclusive content and access to webinars and events, among other benefits.
But regardless we are determined to make sure readers know we are delivering them value. Every day, we’re thinking not only of what stories to write but a more fundamental question: are readers getting their money’s worth? Every day, we’re thinking of ways to remind readers of the value we’re giving them — not only through the journalism itself but through targeted emails.
Just as critical in attracting a loyal subscriber base is keeping our existing ones loyal. We pride ourselves on doing whatever we can to keep cancellations to a minimum.
The encouraging news is that quality watchdog journalism is fundamental to building loyalty. One running story that has brought Stat more subscribers than we imagined has been our pieces about how the Watson supercomputer wasn’t living up to the lofty expectations that IBM created for its health initiative. Not a story that people need to know for a specific business purpose, but wanted to pay for because of the larger issues it raises about new technology — and hype.
As we all look for sustainable journalism models, we’re finding a solution in our efforts to deliver quality content and build subscriber bases, and I think we’ll see that even more in 2019.
Rick Berke is the executive editor of Stat.
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
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Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice