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High and his team accomplished the change using lessons from the University of North Carolina's Knight-Temple Table Stakes program, which was a joint creation of the Lenfest Institute for Journalism and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The program, launched in 2015, first worked with The News Reporter and seven other North Carolina newspapers to try mobile and digital news practices, then kept honing the techniques as it expanded in subsequent years. The project has identified seven major "stakes" that can help newsrooms improve their digital footprint. Here's a sampling of what The News Reporter did and it related to the Table Stakes lessons.
The News Reporter was founded in 1896 and has been owned by the same family since 1938. Like many other newspapers, it saw a decline in print circulation and advertising revenue for years before trying its digital overhaul, Jenny Clore reports for Better News (Clore is The News Reporter's director of marketing). Shifting to a digital-first strategy allowed the publication to tick the boxes on the first four stakes: Serve targeted audiences with targeted content, Publish on platforms used by your targeted audience, Produce and publish continuously to meet audience needs, and Funnel occasional users to habitual and paying/valuable loyalists.
Before making the change, Penny Abernathy from the UNC Hussman School of Media and Journalism encouraged High and his team to gather data to make sure they were taking the right steps. They did this with a survey and focus groups, Clore reports.
The publication posted more and sooner on social media and the website. Before, their policy had been to withhold stories from online until after they appeared in print. But this resulted in low engagement since the stories were old news by the time they appeared online, Clore reports. They also made video posts a bigger priority, since those get a lot of hits. And, the publication examined its analytics to see what kind of stories readers were looking at, and launched weekly newsletters based on that data.
The changes weren't just online. They switched from Monday/Thursday print publication dates to Tuesday/Friday, which meant reporters who were posting online all the time got to take Sunday off. They also started delivering the paper by mail instead of by newspaper carrier, which saved money, Clore reports.
Eight months after the new website had launched and readers were accustomed to looking for news on their website, they launched the metered paywall. A longtime donor sponsored digital subscriptions for every student and teacher at the local high school, which The News Reporter hopes will increase civic engagement among students. They also recently began offering corporate subscriptions, which employers can buy at a slight discount and offer to employees as a benefit.
Read more here for comments on what did work and other advice to publishers who want to make the same kinds of changes.
from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2n8I2k3 How a rural N.C. paper transformed itself to a 24/7 digital-first publication and raised subscription revenue 493% - Entrepreneur Generations
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