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.
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Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
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Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
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Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
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Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
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Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
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Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
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Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
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Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
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Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
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Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
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Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
james Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter