Whatever you do in 2021, make sure you’re building your media business around something valuable enough to pay for.
It might seem unoriginal to say this in a prediction of trends, but 2021 will be like the past ten years in media: a constant battle for attention. Media continues to compete with every single app on your phone. 2021 will require you to go deeper in building a direct relationship — with not just your users or audiences, but with your true believers. Unless you’re able to capture attention and build a relationship, you can’t monetize, and therefore, you don’t have a business.
We really mean believer, because these people are often buying into a mission they believe in, not just a subscription to a media product.
Who are your media company’s true believers? It’s in the data, but you probably already know many by their first names. It’s the person who types your URL into their browser — or has had your website open in a tab for months. She shows up at almost every single online event you run. His newsletter open rate is hovering around 84 percent. She’s liking every other one of your tweets.
Your work in media needs to be dictated by how you serve your 100 truest believers. We need their voices to inform our decisions about how we run our businesses, how we think about finding, processing, and publishing media — both in the form of quantitative, structured information and in subjective, anecdotal conversations.
Yes, actual conversations. As privacy regulations encroach, you’ll have to resort to more traditional ways of understanding your believer; you may actually have to talk to them.
These aren’t just conversations about what she thinks about your podcast — these are conversations about who she is. What does she do for work? What problems does she live with? What does she do when she’s bored?
You’ll probably realize a lot of things quite quickly. What is at the core of your media business? What can you do to address her problems — maybe even solve them? What are your operating principles? And who is your competition?
Here’s another realization that will likely follow quickly: Your competition isn’t limited to other organizations that also do news. Your competition is what your true believer spends her time doing instead of reading your Very Important Article. Often, it’s Netflix. Or Fortnite. Or, as Netflix themselves once put it, sleep.
Another realization will come around the amount of content you produce. In those conversations with your believers, ask them whether they really wake up every morning looking for the day’s breaking news. Chances are she isn’t really thinking about your news cycle. So do you really need to be publishing 25 stories a day? Or are you shouting into that existential void of publishing: If nobody’s reading your stories then do they really exist? Fewer, more relevant stories are the way forward.
A great deal of how she consumes media is in her social feeds. This is an incredible opportunity to break yourself out of that ever-churning cycle and own your own conversation with her. All the tools to do this exist on your phone, and they’re mostly free or cheap: email newsletters, podcasts, and good old-fashioned chats over a coffee (or, these days, the friendly neighborhood video platform of your choice). If you don’t ask, how will you know?
Remember the marketing funnel? Awareness, interest, desire, action, loyalty. There’s another important stage at the end of this: advocacy. Someone who will stand up and tell everyone else how useful (and valuable!) you are to them. After all, that’s one reason they’re a believer in the first place.
They probably believe in your principles. They probably believe in your work. They also probably believe in you, because you’ve demonstrated that you see them and validate them and respect their opinions. But more than anything, they probably find what you do useful and relevant to their lives.
Your believers are your best advocates. How many people do you have in your Mailchimp mailing list who would do that for you? Having a 10,000-strong mailing list doesn’t matter if none of them will vouch for you. Having 300,000 likes won’t matter if they’re drive-by likers.
Your relationships with these believers are profoundly valuable; they’re making an investment in you. Don’t blow it.
Rishad Patel is a product designer and co-founder of Splice.
Whatever you do in 2021, make sure you’re building your media business around something valuable enough to pay for.
It might seem unoriginal to say this in a prediction of trends, but 2021 will be like the past ten years in media: a constant battle for attention. Media continues to compete with every single app on your phone. 2021 will require you to go deeper in building a direct relationship — with not just your users or audiences, but with your true believers. Unless you’re able to capture attention and build a relationship, you can’t monetize, and therefore, you don’t have a business.
We really mean believer, because these people are often buying into a mission they believe in, not just a subscription to a media product.
Who are your media company’s true believers? It’s in the data, but you probably already know many by their first names. It’s the person who types your URL into their browser — or has had your website open in a tab for months. She shows up at almost every single online event you run. His newsletter open rate is hovering around 84 percent. She’s liking every other one of your tweets.
Your work in media needs to be dictated by how you serve your 100 truest believers. We need their voices to inform our decisions about how we run our businesses, how we think about finding, processing, and publishing media — both in the form of quantitative, structured information and in subjective, anecdotal conversations.
Yes, actual conversations. As privacy regulations encroach, you’ll have to resort to more traditional ways of understanding your believer; you may actually have to talk to them.
These aren’t just conversations about what she thinks about your podcast — these are conversations about who she is. What does she do for work? What problems does she live with? What does she do when she’s bored?
You’ll probably realize a lot of things quite quickly. What is at the core of your media business? What can you do to address her problems — maybe even solve them? What are your operating principles? And who is your competition?
Here’s another realization that will likely follow quickly: Your competition isn’t limited to other organizations that also do news. Your competition is what your true believer spends her time doing instead of reading your Very Important Article. Often, it’s Netflix. Or Fortnite. Or, as Netflix themselves once put it, sleep.
Another realization will come around the amount of content you produce. In those conversations with your believers, ask them whether they really wake up every morning looking for the day’s breaking news. Chances are she isn’t really thinking about your news cycle. So do you really need to be publishing 25 stories a day? Or are you shouting into that existential void of publishing: If nobody’s reading your stories then do they really exist? Fewer, more relevant stories are the way forward.
A great deal of how she consumes media is in her social feeds. This is an incredible opportunity to break yourself out of that ever-churning cycle and own your own conversation with her. All the tools to do this exist on your phone, and they’re mostly free or cheap: email newsletters, podcasts, and good old-fashioned chats over a coffee (or, these days, the friendly neighborhood video platform of your choice). If you don’t ask, how will you know?
Remember the marketing funnel? Awareness, interest, desire, action, loyalty. There’s another important stage at the end of this: advocacy. Someone who will stand up and tell everyone else how useful (and valuable!) you are to them. After all, that’s one reason they’re a believer in the first place.
They probably believe in your principles. They probably believe in your work. They also probably believe in you, because you’ve demonstrated that you see them and validate them and respect their opinions. But more than anything, they probably find what you do useful and relevant to their lives.
Your believers are your best advocates. How many people do you have in your Mailchimp mailing list who would do that for you? Having a 10,000-strong mailing list doesn’t matter if none of them will vouch for you. Having 300,000 likes won’t matter if they’re drive-by likers.
Your relationships with these believers are profoundly valuable; they’re making an investment in you. Don’t blow it.
Rishad Patel is a product designer and co-founder of Splice.
Marie Shanahan Journalism schools stop perpetuating the status quo
Bo Hee Kim Newsrooms create an intentional and collaborative culture
M. Scott Havens Traditional pay TV will embrace the disruption
Hossein Derakhshan Mass personalization of truth
An Xiao Mina 2020 isn’t a black swan — it’s a yellow canary
Cindy Royal J-school grads maintain their optimism and adaptability
Talmon Joseph Smith The media rejects deficit hawkery
Stefanie Murray and Anthony Advincula Expect to see more translations and non-English content
Delia Cai Subscriptions start working for the middle
Cherian George Enter the lamb warriors
Nisha Chittal The year we stop pivoting
Michael W. Wagner Fractured democracy, fractured journalism
Kate Myers My son will join every Zoom call in our industry
Ashton Lattimore Remote work helps level the playing field in an insular industry
Marissa Evans Putting community trauma into context
A.J. Bauer The year of MAGAcal thinking
Mike Caulfield 2021’s misinformation will look a lot like 2020’s (and 2019’s, and…)
Annie Rudd Newsrooms grow less comfortable with the “view from above”
Doris Truong Indigenous issues get long-overdue mainstream coverage
Tanya Cordrey Declining trust forces publishers to claim (or disclaim) values
Anna Nirmala Local news orgs grasp the urgency of community roots
Kristen Muller Engaged journalism scales
Joshua P. Darr Legislatures will tackle the local news crisis
Candis Callison Calling it a crisis isn’t enough (if it ever was)
Hadjar Benmiloud Get representative, or die trying
Sam Ford We’ll find better ways to archive our work
Sarah Marshall The year audiences need extra cheer
Nico Gendron Ask your readers to help build your products
Rachel Glickhouse Journalists will be kinder to each other — and to themselves
Andrew Ramsammy Stop being polite and start getting real
Taylor Lorenz Journalists will learn influencing isn’t easy
Matt Skibinski Misinformation won’t stop unless we stop it
Amara Aguilar Journalism schools emphasize listening
Sonali Prasad Making disaster journalism that cuts through the noise
Burt Herman Journalists build post-Facebook digital communities
Jacqué Palmer The rise of the plain-text email newsletter
Jeremy Gilbert Human-centered journalism
Kevin D. Grant Parachute journalism goes away for good
Megan McCarthy Readers embrace a low-information diet
Sara M. Watson Return of the RSS reader
Eric Nuzum Podcasting dodged a bullet in 2020, but 2021 will be harder
Jesse Holcomb Genre erosion in nonprofit journalism
Sumi Aggarwal News literacy programs aren’t child’s play
Ben Collins We need to learn how to talk to (and about) accidental conspiracists
Raney Aronson-Rath To get past information divides, we need to understand them first
John Saroff Covid sparks the growth of independent local news sites
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen Stop pretending publishers are a united front
David Chavern Local video finally gets momentum
Meredith D. Clark The year journalism starts paying reparations
Janet Haven and Sam Hinds Is this an AI newsroom?
J. Siguru Wahutu Journalists still wrongly think the U.S. is different
Ray Soto The news gets spatial
Gonzalo del Peon Collaborations expand from newsrooms to the business side
Kerri Hoffman Protecting podcasting’s open ecosystem
Celeste Headlee The rise of radical newsroom transparency
Ernie Smith Entrepreneurship on rails
Julia B. Chan and Kim Bui Millennials are ready to run things
Beena Raghavendran Journalism gets fused with art
Bill Adair The future of fact-checking is all about structured data
Whitney Phillips Facts are an insufficient response to falsehoods
Renée Kaplan Falling in love with your subscription
Rodney Gibbs Zooming beyond talking heads
Jennifer Choi What have we done for you lately?
Pablo Boczkowski Audiences have revolted. Will newsrooms adapt?
Zainab Khan From understanding to feeling
Mark Stenberg The rise of the journalist-influencer
Pia Frey Building growth through tastemakers and their communities
Rick Berke Virtual events are here to stay
Masuma Ahuja We’ll remember how interconnected our world is
Rishad Patel From direct-to-consumer to direct-to-believers
Rachel Schallom The rise of nonprofit journalism continues
Richard Tofel Less on politics, more on how government works (or doesn’t)
Sue Cross A global consensus around the kind of news we need to save
Alyssa Zeisler Holistic medicine for journalism
Victor Pickard The commercial era for local journalism is over
John Davidow Reflect and repent
Jody Brannon People won’t renew
Juleyka Lantigua The download, podcasting’s metric king, gets dethroned
Ariane Bernard Going solo is still only a path for the few
María Sánchez Díez Traffic will plummet — and it’ll be ok
Samantha Ragland The year of journalists taking initiative
Ben Werdmuller The web blooms again
John Ketchum More journalists of color become newsroom founders
Charo Henríquez A new path to leadership
Catalina Albeanu Publish less, listen more
Parker Molloy The press will risk elevating a Shadow President Trump
Imaeyen Ibanga Journalism gets unmasked
Tauhid Chappell and Mike Rispoli Defund the crime beat
Mike Ananny Toward better tech journalism
Francesca Tripodi Don’t expect breaking up Google and Facebook to solve our information woes
Nabiha Syed Newsrooms quit their toxic relationships
Benjamin Toff Beltway reporting gets normal again, for better and for worse
Heidi Tworek A year of news mocktails
Danielle C. Belton A decimated media rededicates itself to truth
Chase Davis The year we look beyond The Story
John Garrett A surprisingly good year
C.W. Anderson Journalism changed under Trump — will it keep changing under Biden?
Tim Carmody Spotify will make big waves in video
Natalie Meade Journalism enters rehab
Brian Moritz The year sports journalism changes for good
Cory Bergman The year after a thousand earthquakes
Matt DeRienzo Citizen truth brigades steer us back toward reality
Robert Hernandez Data and shame
Brandy Zadrozny Misinformation fatigue sets in
Tamar Charney Public radio has a midlife crisis
Kawandeep Virdee Goodbye, doomscroll
Ariel Zirulnick Local newsrooms question their paywalls
Sarah Stonbely Videoconferencing brings more geographic diversity
Julia Angwin Show your (computational) work
Jim Friedlich A newspaper renaissance reached by stopping the presses
Ryan Kellett The bundle gets bundled
Edward Roussel Tech companies get aggressive in local
David Skok A pandemic-prompted wave of consolidation
Jean Friedman-Rudovsky and Cassie Haynes A shift from conversation to action
Jennifer Brandel A sneak peak at power mapping, 2073’s top innovation
Anthony Nadler Journalism struggles to find a new model of legitimacy
Alfred Hermida and Oscar Westlund The virus ups data journalism’s game
Alicia Bell and Simon Galperin Media reparations now
Marcus Mabry News orgs adapt to a post-Trump world (with Trump still in it)
Nicholas Jackson Blogging is back, but better
Ståle Grut Network analysis enters the journalism toolbox
Zizi Papacharissi The year we rebuild the infrastructure of truth
Mandy Jenkins You build trust by helping your readers
Nikki Usher Don’t expect an antitrust dividend for the media
Colleen Shalby The definition of good journalism shifts
Gabe Schneider Another year of empty promises on diversity
Chicas Poderosas More voices mean better information
Laura E. Davis The focus turns to newsroom leaders for lasting change
Andrew Donohue The rise of the democracy beat
Don Day Business first, journalism second
Jer Thorp Fewer pixels, more cardboard
Astead W. Herndon The Trump-sized window of the media caring about race closes again
Steve Henn Has independent podcasting peaked?
Tonya Mosley True equity means ownership
Jonas Kaiser Toward a wehrhafte journalism
Moreno Cruz Osório In Brazil, a push for pluralism
Patrick Butler Covid-19 reporting has prepared us for cross-border collaboration
Joanne McNeil Newsrooms push back against Ivy League cronyism
Christoph Mergerson Black Americans will demand more from journalism
Logan Jaffe History as a reporting tool
Aaron Foley Diversity gains haven’t shown up in local news
Jessica Clark News becomes plural
Francesco Zaffarano The year we ask the audience what it needs
Errin Haines Let’s normalize women’s leadership
Loretta Chao Open up the profession
Linda Solomon Wood Canada steps up for journalism
Shaydanay Urbani and Nancy Watzman Local collaboration is key to slowing misinformation
Joni Deutsch Local arts and music make journalism more joyous
Gordon Crovitz Common law will finally apply to the Internet
Garance Franke-Ruta Rebundling content, rebuilding connections
Nonny de la Pena News reaches the third dimension
Mariano Blejman It’s time to challenge autocompleted journalism