Khalil is an advocate for audiences-driven approaches in the media industry. He consults, advises, and mentors teams and individuals at media organisations worldwide, helping them shape stronger, more connected societies, focusing mainly on user needs, product work and AI. 

In this article, Khalil summarises his session at The Audiencers' Festival London 2025 where he interviewed Oliver Kemp on his work on user needs at TBIJ.

The key insight here is: serving people’s needs. Today’s successful media operations understand that addressing the needs of audiences underpins everything. And many achieve this by integrating the user needs model into their operations.

One media operation that has implemented the user needs model successfully is The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) in the UK. For TBIJ, it’s not about clicks – it has no shareholder to please – it’s about depth and transparency. Its mission is to hold power to account.

Oliver Kemp, TBIJ’s Audience Editor, led the model’s newsroom implementation. When I interviewed him at The Audiencers’ Festival in London, he shared valuable insights about the journey and critical factors for successfully rolling out user needs in a newsroom.

> Here’s a step-by-step guide to implementing user needs in a newsroom of any size.

TBIJ’s unique set of user needs

Integrating user needs opened new pathways for TBIJ to provide value to people. While its core journalism seeks to show abuses of power, talking directly to its audiences convinced Oliver and team that there are opportunities to provide more value by serving more needs.

This led them to create their own user needs model – one deeply representative of their audiences’ needs and fully aligned with TBIJ’s mission.

Creating a unique model helps bring a newsroom closer to its audiences. Beyond exposing abuses of power, TBIJ now aims to help people discover and learn about complex topics (often related to their investigations); involve people by being transparent about their journalistic process; and spark people into realising the good journalism can do by showing the real-world impact of their work.

A unique model can also win over more ambivalent colleagues for two reasons:

• Collectivity: creating the unique model offers an opportunity to bring colleagues along in the process. Oliver highlighted how he addressed scepticism and fostered stronger ownership of the final model.
• Relatability: the unique user needs tend to align closely with the operation’s mission, making them more relatable to colleagues and improving acceptance.

“The first step is to talk directly to your audience … These conversations can take many forms – surveys, interviews, focus groups, or even informal chats – but the goal is the same: to hear in their own words what they value, what they struggle to find elsewhere, and how your journalism can serve them better. This insight becomes the foundation for tailoring the model to fit your unique context.”

Creating a unique model requires considerable work and initial good faith from decision-makers, as results don’t typically appear in the short-term. This is why most media operations aren’t best-placed to create a unique model when beginning to implement user needs. For most operations, allocating resources is a constant battle, and the need to show results quickly is essential for future investment.

Using the plug-and-play user needs model is a perfect starting point for most operations, with creating a unique model more feasible when they are ready to double down on user needs.

Acting on the user needs

With the model in place, it’s time to identify how well (or not!) the newsroom is currently serving the user needs. The aims are to create a reference for gauging the impact of user needs-informed journalism, and to understand which user needs to prioritise (and deprioritise).

For most media operations, TBIJ included, the content audit forms the bulk of this work. The audit involves tagging hundreds of recently-published content with the user need each serves. 

Once the tagging is completed, the charts that change everything can be generated. These charts are the artefacts that will convince colleagues to take action. They showcase:

• The reference: how a media operation’s content currently serves user needs.
• The actions to take: where mismatches exist between content production and serving user needs.

Note: the chart is for illustrative purposes only, but it mirrors findings from many media operations that conduct content audits.

As you can see, doing the content audit, and subsequent analysis, can be a painstaking process. But it is of utmost importance. The insights from the audit forms the basis of every downstream decision.

User needs at the basis of strategy

Oliver shared how user needs now informs TBIJ’s content and engagement strategies, leading to even better journalism and growing audiences.

• More needs, better served: TBIJ tracks the volume of content it produces for each user need and identifies those that may be under-served. This informs content strategy, enabling them to act strategically to rebalance content production with user needs.
• Increase exposure of their investigations: certain themes and user needs are more accessible to specific target audiences than others. Reframing some investigative work around these creates more accessible entry points for more people.
• Increase engagement with their journalism: while certain user needs make good entry points, others suit deeper engagement or conversions. Understanding the user funnel through user needs, using tools like Poool’s Engage element, opens up possibilities for better-optimised user experiences.

User needs also became the basis for identifying both missed and new opportunities at TBIJ.

The “spark” user need has untapped potential, according to Oliver. To better inspire audiences about the impact good journalism can have, reframing this need so it more clearly guides TBIJ’s work may be on the cards.

This illustrates the evolving nature of user needs. It’s necessary to frequently revisit the model and iterate to remain close to audiences and aligned with the media operation’s purpose. Audiences’ needs, interests, behaviours, and the problems they face all change over time. And sometimes, it may be worth adjusting certain user needs to make them more actionable within newsrooms. The point is we must continually adapt to remain valuable.

Oliver also revealed that a fifth user need may be in the works at TBIJ – one that would be explicitly action-oriented. This speaks to extensive research showing that people seek information that helps them do something about what’s happening. There may well be an opportunity to serve this need by engaging people more directly with investigations, whether through participation or advocacy.

When user needs leads to culture change

Culture change can seem impossible – it’s hard and takes time. But at some point, it becomes inevitable.

Oliver knew TBIJ had reached this point when reporters started pitching ideas with user needs already in mind. No longer was user needs something they ticked off at the end of the process. Now, user needs directly shaped their journalism. Reporters were thinking about the “why” (need to serve) and “who” (target audience) of a story from conception.

“[Reporters] identified whether [their stories] would meet a need to inform, explain, inspire, or provoke action, and tailoring their approach accordingly. This not only produced stronger, more focused ideas, but also fostered a more collaborative editorial culture, where conversations about audience and impact became part of the creative process rather than an afterthought.”

This is the culmination of a user needs-first newsroom – where the virtuous cycle of value, quality, trust, and connection is fully activated to provide journalism that is genuinely valuable to people.

> Download all slides from Khalil & Oliver’s session here

Over the course of four sessions, more than 50 journalists and editors from Clarín explored how to apply artificial intelligence in their workflows, experimenting with new formats and designing practical solutions for daily use, with sessions built around 3 frameworks: 
- A user-needs-driven approach
- An analysis of shifting consumption habits
- A strategic approach to AI as a cross-functional technology

This piece by Stefan ten Teije of smartocto is structured in three parts:
> Fresh research showing that articles with a clear user needs perspective consistently perform better
> An inspiring use case from Nederlands Dagblad, demonstrating the power of growth hack experiments rooted in user needs
> Practical tips for anyone ready to implement this approach in their own newsroom.

We recently found that proof in a collaboration with Dmitry Shishkin at Ringier Media International, who also partnered with us during his time as an independent consultant.

We analysed a large dataset: 16,021 articles across Ringier Media International’s brands, categorised as either:

• User need-focused articles
• Non-focused articles

Of those, 4,445 articles scored at least 60% on one of the model’s four drivers: know, understand, feel and do. These were then compared with articles showing a weaker focus.

The results were striking. User need-focused articles performed 31% better on engagement, were read 55% more often by loyal visitors, and those visitors returned 40% more frequently. They also read deeper into each article and explored more pages (+9% on both). Across every metric, articles with a clear user needs focus came out ahead.

> To read next: Adapting user needs to your audience: what are other publishers doing?

First a baseline, then experiments

This confirmed what we had already seen in newsrooms adopting the approach: improved performance across the board.

Take the User Needs Labs programme, which we’ve now run with 20 media brands, most recently with FT Strategies. It always starts with a baseline report. That’s our top recommendation for any media outlet looking to begin: get a clear view of their current strengths and weaknesses.

A baseline report is a user needs mirror. It shows which needs your content meets, and which types of stories your audience values most.

In the example below, based on smartocto client Nederlands Dagblad, the newsroom produced a large amount of ‘Update me’ and ‘Educate me’ content. Yet, stories aligned with five other user needs generated higher median pageviews and stronger engagement.

Additionally, engagement was higher for needs other than the most commonly produced ones.

The best-performing publishers serve the audience with a variety of user needs. Therefore, in this case, the conclusions about the strengths and weaknesses were as follows:

1. The newsroom produces too many ‘Update me’ and ‘Educate me’ stories.
2. The newsroom produces too few ‘Give me perspective’, ‘Connect me’, and ‘Inspire me’ stories, although this particular brand refers to the latter as ‘Move me’.

That’s where growth hacks come in: small editorial changes that lead to measurable growth. They sound simple, but they work. In this case:

1. Reduce ‘Update me’ and ‘Educate me’ stories
2. Increase output for better-performing user needs

Have the growth hacks worked?

Yes. These were successful growth hacks for Nederlands Dagblad. The newsroom took action, and it paid off. You can see the results in the growth hack report:

Results:

1. Production of ‘Update me’ articles went down from 33% to 23%. ‘Educate me’ went down from 24% to 19%.
2. They created more ‘Give me perspective’, ‘Inspire me’ and ‘Connect me’ content. 

The median pageviews decreased for ‘Update me’, but for all user needs that attract more visitors, it appears that the overall reach does not decline when significantly more content is produced. This increases the overall reach.

Fortunately, something even more remarkable happened with this brand: engagement increased significantly across all user needs, with an average rise of 29 percent.

That said, results across the wider programme weren’t always as dramatic. In some cases, internal challenges held progress back. Newsrooms often struggle to prioritise editorial innovation over the demands of daily news production.

In an interview with Finnish newspaper Turun Sanomat, for example, cultural change within the newsroom took longer than expected. That’s normal. Change always takes time.

But let’s not overcomplicate things. This isn’t rocket science. The user needs approach is about editorial clarity and smarter choices. Here are some practical tips to get started:

Tips for the Growth Hack period

1. Focus on just one or two things. You need to have a clear view on the outcome and it needs to be feasible for the newsroom. Maybe even focus on one section.
2. Think about what metric you would like to improve. Is it CPI per user need? Is it pageviews or attention time? Think about what ‘success’ means for your organisation.
3. Make user needs part of every meeting you’ll have for planning content. 
4. Keep a finger on the pulse. Check weekly. If you wanted to create more emotion driven content, did youid achieve that goal? Why not? How will you reach that goal next week?.
5. Make sure the tagging is straight. This might be worth looking at weekly. Do editors tag correctly?
6. Make it fun. It shouldn’t be hard. The user needs approach is about having an editorial conversation about content. It’s about improving the quality of your work. Celebrate wins and losses. You’ll always learn!

Whilst you're here, if you're looking for more guidance on getting started with user needs, sign up to Khalil A. Cassimally's 6-week email course.

Lars K Jensen is a former journalist who has been working with digital development, analyses and journalism in the media industry for several years. He's currently in charge of Audience, Data and Journalism at Berlingske Media but also publishes content on his blog, Products in Publishing.

Cultural change in the newsroom

Culture eats strategy for breakfast, as the adage goes. And indeed, if you are not aware of culture and how to work with it, your beautifully thought through and well prepared project won’t succeed.

I’ve worked with and into newsroom for 15+ years and in this series I’ll share some of my experiences, learnings and tips plus share and think about what others have done and written.

This is the first article in the series. Enjoy 

Executive summary

• User needs are a set of defined needs – I recommend a more general set of needs which you can then break into smaller ones in a sub-layer during analysis, for instance.
• If you know someone working with user needs, don’t ask them what the data showed. Instead, ask them what they learned during analyzing and implementing user needs; what would they not do and what would they happily do all over again?
• Get support and buy-in from top management and find a narrative and stick with it. That’ll decrease the risk that your ideals or the vision of what you are trying to create will change.
• Remain curious and understand what success means to your colleagues. Talk with them as they were your users, find out what motivates them etc.
• Start small. A small, well defined analysis can get you far and will only enrich later conversations on user needs, journalism and user engagement.
• But think about what you want to measure. Pageviews are easy to measure – but easy to dismiss and can easily lead to speculation. Think of adding more qualitative measures and maybe there are some conversions or sign-ups you can add to the mix as well.
• Communicate, communicate, communicate. When executing strategy, communication and data (and access to them) are some of the vital parts. The same goes for driving change and working with culture. Consider doing an internal newsletter.
• Think about where to put the responsibility for user needs. It could be in a bridge role, as that can also decrease the amount of moving parts in the equation – and take some stress of a busy newsroom.
• Make sure that you know why you want to work with user needs.

User needs

If you haven’t really heard about or worked with user needs, it may seem like one of the most hyped parts of journalism right now – and if you’ve followed it since the first inception at the hands of Dmitry Shishkin at the BBC back in 2017 you may see it as one of the strongest and best-lasting trends in the industry.

Whoever you are and however you view user needs, it’s something you need to know about and be familiar with.

In short, user needs is a set of defined needs your users exhibit when consuming news and content. Some publishers use the more established models, like the original BBC model, the Wall Street Journal model (which I’m a fan of and have written about before starting at Berlingske Media) or the 2.0 model, developed by Shishkin and Smartocto, while others build their own – some of them quite specific.

Personally, I prefer to use a broader set of user needs and then have a sub-layer of analytics, where you combine, for instance, a given user need, topic, section and maybe even interaction (like subscriber reads, conversions etc.), and talk about why that specific user need in that specific content or topic either works or doesn’t.

But feel free to use whatever in the equation you want to.

In recent months, ever since I talked about bridge roles and user needs at The Audiencers’ festival in London, I have been asked quite a lot and given more than a few talks on user needs and how we work with them in Berlingske Media – especially Berlingske, the 275 year old newspaper we are named after.

I’ve given talks to publishers, students, management and organizations outside the media and publishing industry – emphasizing how we are going about implementing and continuously working with user needs since I figure that what’s most interesting to hear about.

> You’ll also enjoy: Breaking the silo: bridging editorial and commercial teams, the essentials for success

The right question

Now and then I get the question, “What were the major insights when you looked at the data?”, but to me that’s not the right question to ask. Because those are our insights, and besides not wanting to share our core learnings, every publisher and organization have to do their own analyses and learn their own insights.

It’s always been like that and logically user needs are no different.

Maybe another publisher’s content, audience, value proposition etc. differ from ours (and yours, for that matter), making it risky to copy user needs insights from someone else. I know very well that that hasn’t stopped publishers and news websites from copying each other in the past but it’s quite an important point to remember.

Also, when you copy a user needs model from someone else, you risk copying their way of thinking about journalism, audience, the world etc. (or parts of it), so make sure you think about that.

And always do your own tagging, research, analysis – and learnings.

A much more interesting question is what I – and all us involved in it, really – learned doing the analyzing and implementation processes. And I would say that it was learning how much implementing user needs into a newsroom (or any other organization) is change management which inevitably will see you working with cultural change.

Basically, once you stop “just” using user needs for analysis and actually start to work and publish according to what the insights show you, you are trying to get people to change the way of working they have been following day in, day out for years.

And you need to acknowledge that. And you have to appreciate and enjoy working with that kind of change and culture work, otherwise you probably won’t get very far.

The timeline I usually show when talking about our progress and work with user needs covers roughly a year:

A year of a lot of analysis, workshops and continuous conversations. But more than implementing a system for analysis and production, it’s about cultural change – so roll up your sleeves

That was also the topic when I talked with Journalism.co.uk’s Jacob Granger for an episode of their podcast.

In that talk I gave three examples of advice based on what I’ve learned:

1. Get support and buy-in from top management
2. Find a narrative and stick to it
3. Find out what success means to your colleagues

The first one is pretty basic, that’s change management 101. While talking to Jacob I mention how user needs at Berlingske nearly didn’t happen – if it hadn’t been for our two editors-in-chief.

Finding a narrative is really about storytelling and making sure that you have a common and shared story and look on user needs and how you want to use them to create change for the better. It’s not set in stone, but it’s definitely not something that should change every other week – so make sure it’s based on data and where the publisher and organization actually is headed and want to be.

The third one is probably the most important part of working with other people and trying to create change – whether you are in a bridge role across an organization or not. It also saw it mentioned in a Harvard Business Review article titled How to Lead Across a Siloed Organization, which I recommend you read.

Everyone is talking about our users and customers and how to get to know them in order to build/publish what gives them the most value. But for some reason a lot of us forget to apply that same logic when working with our coworkers.

They have pains, gains and Jobs To Be Done as well – and if you are aware what they are, how they fit into what you are trying to do and you can help them along as well, you are setting everyone up for success.

I recommend asking your colleagues on what motivates and drive them, when they feel they succeed, what they are striving to achieve and what problems they meet. You know, the same kind of question you would ask a user or customer.

When I shared the podcast episode on LinkedIn I added a fourth advice which follows along the same line as the third one above, but I think it’s still worth mentioning:

“Go and meet your colleagues. Don’t just sit on one floor and communicate through email, chat and boring meetings. Go to them, meet them on their home turf – and be honest with them.”

Start small

Another tip I always emphasize in my talks, including last week when I gave a talk to management and the board at a Danish publishing looking into getting started on user needs, is to start small.

Do a limited analysis on existing content; obviously enough to be representative but not so much that you’ll be doing nothing but analyzing for the first couple of weeks.

My first analysis for Berlingske was on three weeks of journalism, published behind their paywall. That was about 750 stories and it took me roughly 12 hours to do.

To me, being a former consultant, that’s a fair upfront investment and gave us clear insights – and actually showed us how Berlingske’s “DNA” looks when seen through user needs: Where are the stories, where are the readers, where are the subscribers, where are the sellers and where are the stories struggling?

Another publisher I spoke to a couple of weeks ago had done what I’ve heard many others do before them: They started out with a huge and lofty conversation on user needs. What is user needs, what are our user needs and how should our journalism change based on our conversations?

Don’t get me wrong, those are important conversations. But if you have them too early on in the process, you don’t actually know enough about your own content and audience to talk about what you want to change – and then you risk that it all fizzles out because it easily becomes a little too fuzzy.

Instead, I would advice you to be more entrepreneurial in your way of thinking. As I wrote in a LinkedIn post on the subject:

“Think like a consultant: You need to make a smaller sale which can both provide value to the customer and show what the tool can do.

After that you can talk bigger projects “

After that first analysis and set of insights you can start the important conversations on what user needs is, how you can use it – and something we spend a lot of the talking about: What is the desired outcome, what future state are you trying to create?

What will you measure?

One of the most important conversations or decisions you should spent at least a little time on before doing your first analysis is what you want to measure. And why you want to measure that in particular.

For instance, if you only measure pageviews, you can easily end up discussing what a pageview actually means, how reliable it really is – and you’ll leave plenty of space for speculation and gut feeling.

Instead, consider if there might be any conversions you can measure. Or more qualitative measure that has to do with actual consumption.

Remember, a pageview largely says something about how an article was marketed and presented – and very little about it’s actual content and performance. That’s why you need to add factors into the mix.

Consider if there are any conversions you can measure. Conversions are great, because they say something about both the content and the user’s intent to get access, sign up for more etc.

More qualitative measures are also a great indicator if the story is interesting to the user and something worth engaging with. A simple pageview measure will never tell you that.

Communicate, communicate, communicate

Sometime last year I read a very interesting Harvard Business Review article titled The Secrets to Successful Strategy Execution. The authors present four basic building blocks which are present when executing strategy in an organization.

But what might surprise you is that which are the most effective.

On a relative score from 0 to 100 the strength, based on other organizations’ experience, looks like this:

• Information (also called information flows): 54
• Decision rights (in Danish we talk a lot about mandate; same thing): 50
• Motivators: 26
• Structure (which you might think is the most important one…): 25

Information has a lot to do with data, and when working with user needs you need to share information about user needs as a model (again and again), data on performance – and repeat the story of where you are trying to go.

As you maybe noticed in the timeline image above, I started sending a weekly newsletter to the editors when we ran the workshops on user needs across Berlingske:

I did that for several reasons. Both to share the insights we gain every week with the most important people in the room.

But also to continuously remind the editors of user needs – and of me and my work and that I’m here to help, obviously .

And it’s been its own little success, actually. Every now and then a journalists emails me asking to be added to the list. They have either heard about my weekly email from their editor or a colleague.

And when busy people out of their own free will genuinely ask for something in their inbox, you know they expect some kind of value from it.

Use bridge roles

How you implement user needs actually has less to do with process and more to do with how you organize it.

Yeah, I know “Trust the process” and all the other mottos, but in my experience it’s much more important to get the right organization around your change, project etc. – and then the best possible process will most likely follow.

It’s very hard to do it the other way around. As I wrote in a previous post in this newsletter:

“The process gets a lot of attention in publisher innovation. It shouldn’t. Focus on culture and structure instead.”

So, how do you organize your user needs implementation? Should you give it to a editor or a select few members of the newsroom? Actually, I would argue that the ultimate (meaning “final” in this context) responsibility should should belong to someone who is slightly outside the newsroom.

Let me explain.

In March 2023, the aforementioned Jacob Granger published an excellent story on Journalism.co.uk on bridge roles in media companies and newsrooms especially; From problem solver to innovator: how bridge roles have evolved in newsrooms.

Having worked in development departments, editorial development teams, product teams and now a commercial department – but almost always into a newsroom – I know what life in a bridge role is like.

In Granger’s article, Dmitry Shishkin – who developed the original user needs model – recommends using bridge roles when implementing user needs in a newsroom:

“‘You need somebody who is good at listening and taking people with them on a journey’ […]

Implementing a user needs strategy often falls to already busy editors, digital editors or audience engagement editors. But having a bridge role dedicated to user needs makes a lot of sense because the strategy cuts right through the organisation: editorial, sales, marketing, data, product and so on.

Having someone skilled at project and change management, Shishkin says, is a must if you want to create a ‘head of user needs’ position.”

Stellar advice.

Having someone outside deeply involved in working with user needs also increases the chance (in my experience) that you will remain true to both your editorial and publicist ideals – and the ideals and future you defined prior to implementation.

This means that for instance the definition of the user needs remains the same and don’t morph during the implementation phases – which would put everything at risk, because your are changing the very foundation which both the analyses and the desired change rest upon.

But getting started on bridge roles isn’t something you just do – but as with other things, it’s not something that should take too long.

When Journalism.co.uk asked a number of people – me included – about their predictions for 2024, I talked about bridge roles and gave four questions, each organization thinking of having people in bridge roles should ask themselves (here in slightly edited form):

• Who and why do we need to connect across our organisation?
• How do we do it?
• Who can do it?
• Are those people in our organisation already?

Start by asking yourself and your colleagues these questions and if user needs are what you are diving into, at least part of the first question should be answered.

As long as you know why you are implementing user needs, right?

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That’s all from me this time. I hope you enjoyed reading this and look forward to the next article in this newsletter – and this series.

If you have any questions or ideas, email me at lars@larskjensen.dk.

Best regards, Lars

Understanding the root of this challenge

Work into cultural and structural change needs to start with understanding the context, the existing shared unconscious beliefs and how they play out against current priorities. Many skip this stage and jump straight into change places. But the better existing values are understood, the more focused change work can be, the more easily existing values can be used to leverage change and the better the outcomes. 

When it comes to bridging editorial and commercial teams, the study outlines concerns with journalism autonomy, a key tenet of the journalist’s identity and a way to safeguard the credibility of the information they produce. 

Journalists often employ the metaphor of the ‘wall’ of separation between editorial and business departments, staff and functions. As suggested by Coddington (2015), this metaphor evokes the separation of ‘church and state’ established in the US First Amendment, and journalists who use it tend to ‘characterize themselves as the church and the business side as the state’. Consequently, the newsroom turf is characterized as ‘sacred’, and breaches such as intrusions of business interests into news production processes are considered ‘heresies’ that damage the purity and integrity of the profession (Coddington, 2015: 73).”

In short, separation is traditionally a norm in journalism, an informal schema and assumption, often applied unconsciously. 

Other editorial norms include a commitment to accuracy, fact-based discourse, the practice of reporting, as well as, to different degrees in different countries and organizations, ideas of fairness, impartiality and/or objectivity. When discursively articulated, norms often take the form of ‘ought statements’, that is, morally potent prescriptions defining how individuals ought to behave to be consistent with shared values (Horne, 2001: 4).”

Breaking down the silo 

Despite this editorial norm, editorial–commercial integration processes have been accelerated in response to structural changes like the move to an increasingly digital media environment, greater competition for audience attention and advertisers’ expenditure, and the declining profitability of many newspaper organizations. 

I am convinced that, today, it is not possible to think of building a sustainable business model if the editorial component does not constantly talk to the business component. The traditional canonical separation between the state and the church has no raison d’être any longer, and this is because we no longer live in a time of separation between the state and the church. We are at a time when […] the business component, the management, needs to keep listening to the editorial component, […] and, at the same time, the editorial component cannot pretend that it does not have a sustainability model on its horizon, because otherwise I don’t think we are going anywhere. (Editor, newspaper, Italy, from study)”

Language is important, it reflects and elicits change

Whilst interviewees used building and spatial metaphors to represent the separation in the past (walls, silos, boundaries), current practices were described with phrases connoting a softer separation (blurred line, wall with holes) alongside ecological metaphors, linking this process to evolution and adaptation. 

“This alternative perspective posits that organisms must adapt to survive major environmental changes; likewise, it suggests that, faced with diminished profits and layoffs, news companies are ‘naturally’ responding to structural changes by pursuing higher integration between news and advertising. By adapting new metaphors, journalists legitimise new practices that clash with the traditional norm of separation (Artemas et al., 2016)”

The new norm of integration

Following the study, we can consider this new norm to be based on three main concepts – collaboration, adaptability and business thinking. 

Collaboration: cross-functional teams representing editorial, marketing, sales and tech departments need to be involved when new digital products are designed. Inter-departmental collaboration is thus normatively framed as a necessary condition to favor exchanges of ideas and innovation in a digital environment.

We had this expression here, for many years, ‘the Chinese Wall’ between the business side and the editorial side. Right now, [journalists] can see us every day, because we sit in the newsroom, and we are really interested in the work. We’re attending all the meetings. […] (Manager, newspaper, Poland, from the study)

The second concept, adaptability, is also framed as a key value. This is clearly illustrated, for instance, in the following quote from a manager of a French broadcaster:

I don’t know if tomorrow the job that we do today will be the same. Our business keeps changing every day. And, in fact, I think the key to success is adaptability. It is not easy if we do not have journalistic, marketing, and business teams that are able to adapt to changes. (Manager, TV, France, from the study)

Business thinking is the third concept that emerges as a central value in the norm-building process. Like the other key values, it exerts moral force. This is illustrated, for example, in the following quote from an editor of the previously mentioned French broadcaster, who normatively frames the development of business-thinking skills within editorial departments as a new essential requirement.

Now it’s clear, especially for a journalist, that it’s important to know if the content you’re producing can bring money in. A few years ago, this might have seemed crazy, but now we have to know, if we want to survive, whether what we produce can have economic [gains]. (Editor, TV, France, from the study)

A new role for journalists: subscription sellers

With these new norms, journalists should also develop new skills and adopt different approaches to their daily work to favor collaboration with editorial. Ultimately, in the digital world, journalists are expected to fulfill the new role of subscription sellers. 

My biggest [lesson] learned is: ‘Put the numbers on the table and then let the journalists be very creative and find their way to those numbers’. […] You need goals and parameters that you can follow every day […] in order to get people understanding the need for change […] [and] that their work actually affects the whole newspaper. […] They just need to be activated, not by saying what they need to do, but they must become both problem solvers and subscription sellers. (Editor, newspaper, Finland)

Key takeaway here: those working on these integration projects (often ‘bridge rolers’) should help journalists understand why they need to take on this role.

Balancing old and emerging norms 

Money cannot actually affect the news. […] You have to find the right balance between having the business side working with the editorial side and some sections [that] should be completely free.

The gradual move from old to emerging norms involves a difficult, ongoing negotiation. Cultural change doesn’t happen overnight, it’s not about revolution, but evolution, and understanding and dealing with this requires strong leadership. 

Buy-in from the top 

The leader is the single most powerful influence on an organization’s culture, and their signal in a certain direction will be the single most powerful lever for change (and the opposite if they don’t buy in). 

The uniform recommendation is fast, unilateral action: the longer you wait, the higher the price – strategy implementation is hesitant, big decisions are fudged, transformation is slower. 

Make use of data 

Although culture is the one thing that transcends all KPIs, they’re valuable for adding a layer of explicit accountability to middle management, turning journalists to focus on more business-oriented metrics. 

Reuters Institute gives the example of The Guardian who uses data to create nudges for the team.

One of the big reasons this has been so successful for us is because of structural changes three years ago when we required desks to be wholly accountable for their work and for their staff, so they couldn’t hand things off anymore, as with ‘I’m only responsible for like this one element’. Now it’s ‘No, you’re responsible for all of it’. … because of that, people had to start leading and managing their teams better because the buck stopped with them.

We added a field in the CMS… ‘the article should be this long’ … The action we wanted was, ‘just think about how long it should be’. … we did that not by telling them to do that but by putting in a small field, adding a tiny bit of friction

Data projects are about far more than the data. Data interventions can deliver cultural change and strategic change, provided there is clarity around what they need to deliver from the start:

The main thing is the specificity of the aim … start with something specific that you’re trying to change. If you’re able to change it using the data, then that leads you into very interesting places, and probably ensures that things go well. … I think that’s why loads of people who have tried to copy us sometimes fail, because they think what they’re doing is about data. … They think that it’s just important to have data in the newsroom … If your aim isn’t, ‘we need to improve this thing. And the data will help us do that’, then you’re on a hiding to nothing.

Training your new leaders

Reuters bring up the important question of leadership in this new domaine:

Leaders in the middle of the organization increasingly carry the burden of achieving OKRs and KPIs – and they need support and training to do this. Previously they didn’t need to be good leaders of people, now they do. But how to be a good leader needs to be learned. Few are naturally gifted, and management was not what they signed up for when many leaders chose journalism as a career. Investment in skill building here, especially in performance management, project management, feedback and mentoring, will pay huge dividends. Good leadership is learned, not innate.

For examples of bridge roles in action, working to bring editorial and commercial closer together, have a read of this article with cases from Berlingske Media, New Statesman Group and BBC.

Our first session at The Audiencers' Festival in London last week did not disappoint, with 145 digital publishing professionals the afternoon was filled with insightful conversations both on and off stage. To reflect this, we're publishing not just one, but a series of takeaway articles from the event! 

Kicking the day off: How bridge roles can be used to bring editorial, marketing and product together to increase ARPU

On the panel: 
- Martina Andretta, Head of Social at the New Statesman
- Lars K. Jensen, Audience, data & journalism at Berlingske Media
- Dmitry Shishkin, Independent Publishing Consultant

“Bridge role”, a concept that existed without a name for a long time but one that reflects the shift towards subscription as a revenue model. One where teams need to come together to put audiences first from every angle, representing and aligning interests across the company.

But how can publishers succeed in developing or improving a bridge role? Our 3 panelists share their perspectives on some of the essential models, stragies and structures needed for success.

1. Internal alignment

Martina is Head of Social at the NS, a role that developed into a bridge fairly organically as she works increasingly between editorial, and everyone who isn’t editorial – data, tech, product, and other brands in the NS Media Group. 

For Martina, one of the biggest challenges for those in a bridge role to tackle is internal alignment. Getting all teams working towards the same goals, speaking the same language and, in the case of subscriptions, understanding the value of their work in the same way (e.g. an article written for high page views vs high conversion rates).

Simply building a timeline of the title’s changes over the years proves why alignment is a challenge… With digital transformation and the shift from advertising to subscription-based revenue models people within the company have been required to make significant changes in their day-to-day work.

Thus came the realization that an audience team was essential for success in these subscription projects, ensuring teams talk to each other in a productive and regular way necessary to align and advance in projects. 

First steps in this role to ensure alignment: 

• Define your value proposition and North Star with senior management. Repeat this often during meetings to ensure everyone’s working towards the same goal
• Identify the customer by carrying out audience reviews
• Get everyone in the same room. Set regular catch-ups, get invited to meetings to understand other team’s mindset, review as regularly as possible 
• Get to know the team. In practice, listen! Other people’s frustrations can often offer the solution to the challenges you are facing 

A case study example of aligning teams

With the integration of paywalls and registration walls into articles came the need to ensure teams were working towards the same goal. For example, the audience team worked with editorial to define the KPIs for success, moving from a purely advertising (reach) focus, to also writing for conversions. I.e. ensure there’s a mutual relationship between the wall and article, rather than one being dependent on the other.

The project: a data-led approach to commissioning stories

The challenge: different teams were working on different goals, understanding what success looks like. 

The solution: long-tail analysis.

In practice: the team analyzed 844 articles published over 7 weeks (taking out any ‘huge hits’ that might skew the data) with the goal of looking at content that performed well in terms of both page views and conversions (note that the graph above only shows the page views analysis). 

For example, the above graph, looking at page views, revealed that most traffic was only coming from 25% of articles. I.e. 75% of articles were doing nothing for the NS business. 

After this analysis, on both PVs and conversions, articles were placed on a chart to discover which content performed well for both metrics: page views (visits) and conversions (subscriptions).  

For articles falling into the “Under performers” category, that’s where work needs to be done to ensure it supports to at least one business goal.

This analysis and chart was developed for every editorial category so the audience team could speak with every editor to have regular catch-ups, understanding what was and wasn’t working, trends, etc. 

For instance, the culture team took the advice on board, optimizing the performance of each article for these 2 goals. The result was that they ended up publishing fewer articles but with higher page-views and conversions. 

But, importantly, this success helped to get other teams on board. The culture team became brand ambassadors to prove that the analysis and changes made were working. They also organized regular meetings with editorial and data teams, as well as establishing lines of accountability – having some kind of backing from senior management. 

What needs more work? Clear roles and responsibilities (fairly hard in a small team, but this makes it all the more important to manage correctly), as well as moving away from legacy workflows, working towards a more circular model where data analysis and feedback informs the planning/commissioning (where everyone is involved) before the editing, design, etc. thus helping to better align teams.

Martina’s key takeaways: 

• If you are thinking of introducing a bridge role: look around the newsroom. Often people with the right skillset are already part of your organization, and may only need further training or support
• If you are in a bridge role: get to know people. Bridge roles can have levels of seniority, but being respected and listened to is key. 
• If you are in a bridge role: if there’s an area you know less of, get yourself invited to their regular catch-ups
• If you are starting out in a bridge role: bring concrete examples of how your work has made a difference and how it could make other people’s jobs easier

> To add to your reading list: The Audiencers’ Festival in Paris according to Marion: the ‘best ofs’ from our event

2. User needs at Berlingske Media

The audience team at Berlingske Media is made up of 3 people who together own the user facing features like paywalls, registration walls, user journeys, flows etc. and working with every part of Berlingske Media. 

Lars’ role specifically: 

“To work together with our newsrooms and editorial staff to ensure that we develop and present our journalism in a way that is relevant to our audience and generates value to us as publishers.”

User needs use case

The project: produce content with a user need in mind, understanding which user needs are best for achieving business goals such as subscriptions

The challenge: too many articles weren’t converting. 

The solution: a year of user needs projects! Helping teams to understand the different ‘needs’ and using it as a prism for analyzing stories with the goal of converting readers into subscribers (focus was therefore on the title, sub-heading and first 2 paragraphs).

Putting this model into practice has taken a year – starting with analysis and presentations, buy-in from editorial teams at each title and workshops with each department (for instance with exercises to understand the user need that each article falls under). It was also essential to use this time to develop a shared language on user needs and understanding audiences across titles. I.e. What is a connect me story? Does everyone agree on this definition?

The final step to put the changes and work into practice was to translate this to journalism.

This research revealed that some needs are very effective at converting, but are under-served (and vice versa). For example, whenever an “update me” story was published, the number of conversions also went up.   

What needs more work?

Cultural change – “It’s so very hard!”… but here are 3 tips to help success.

• Get buy-in from management: it will give you both leverage and confidence in what you are doing and trying to achieve
• Find a clear narrative and stick to it, don’t have 10-15 points on how user needs can improve journalism. Instead start with 2-3 and really make it concrete to editors, showing why and how it works. 
• Find out what success is for others and help them achieve it (the social aspect of jobs to be done) – when are your colleagues succeeding? How can you help them achieve that with the user needs project? 

What next? 

Strategy execution

4 important pillars for executing strategy:

Structure is actually not the most important, rather communication and information workflow – How are people talking to each other? Is the right data going in the right places? Where does one person’s work end and another’s begin?

Smarter collaboration

Bridge roles are also about designing how people can work better together, being the one who actually acts to put the bridges into practice, rethinking existing roles and structures.

“Yet our data suggest that publishers whose corporate structures house product and analytics functions in centralized parts of the organization, even while their newsrooms are decentralized, have difficulty fostering the kind of on-the-ground, close-to-the-reader collaboration between disciplines needed to make a reader revenue strategy really work.

[…]

So what can legacy publishers do to create structures that drive reader revenue? Structure doesn’t have to mean just relationships on an org chart. Sometimes rethinking existing roles and workflows can be a solid first step towards larger structure changes.“

Columbia Journalism Review / Tow Center

To do this at Berlingske Media Group, Lars and his team have now developed forums in the middle of all teams from the 4 groups, one for advertising and another for logged users, with representatives from each title. The goal here is to first develop their strategy in a sustainable manner, learning from each other and bringing expertise together before executing in each title. 

3. Bridge roles move your organization forward

Dmitry, Independent publishing consultant and “influencer” of the industry, particularly when it comes to bridge roles and user needs, was the final panelist to take to the stage, discussing some of the essentials for success in bridge roles based on his experience.

Start by relaxing decision makers

People are naturally averse to change, but change is your friend disguised as your enemy! 

Words matter – you need a common vocabulary

If you describe the same thing differently across multiple teams it’ll be like you’re talking about different things. Instead of competing for the “right” language, collaborate and explore a new shared language.

Train people to go from one part of the organization to another 

By moving between teams and understanding various goals and what “success” looks like, your people will gain respect and trust from teams.  

Those in bridge roles need soft skills and to be able to communication easily 

Bridge rolers are in the “people” business, and good communication skills are essential:

• Needs to have a deep understanding of the organization of the company & its values
• Needs to be respected by all teams – socializing is very important; get to know people in their everyday lives. So you need to be up for that
• Will wear lots of hats, so should enjoy constant change & development
• Keen to learn – humble to not understand something (similar to project managers) 
• Listener & leader – good communicator who isn’t afraid to say no, having a narrative over what needs to be prioritized to achieve business goals 
• Patience – not always a directly rewarding role, has to evaluate whether something is worth continuing
• Should be able to translate between teams – teams use different languages, so those in bridge roles should be able to help translate but also connect the two, help them understand each other
• Be bold, use data and tell stories. If something is obvious and no one can see it (or don’t have the time), think of how you can visualize it with data, tell it as a story or something else. And present it to the right people in the right context. If you firmly believe in something, giving up should be the very last resort ;-)

Tolerance to fail if lessons are learned 

For example, back in 2016, Dmitry worked on a BBC hackathon project in Africa. Whilst the products launched weren’t successful, it did allow the BBC team to learn some important lessons, both internally and externally.

1. Listen to audiences, and then listen again, using these learnings to be more precise in task-setting

2. Try new things, but make decisions quickly – listening to audience feedback also helped us to drop one idea and take another further and then scale it from one regional solution to several international ones

3. Prepare: things do still take time. 

4. Get the team environment right, people need to be flexible to make it work

5. Understand what you get into – for instance, in this project, Africa includes many emerging markets with talented developers, many of whom are working within digital start-ups and have little free time

The takeaway: part of a bridge role is having the confidence to try new things, accepting that you may succeed in a way that you weren’t expecting. 

Integrating user needs is a typical bridge role task

But to ensure success, all teams need to be involved. They need to understand what user needs are and how to push in the same direction. 

More on bridge roles:

• What are bridge roles in media organizations?
• From problem solver to innovator: how bridge roles have evolved in newsrooms
• The rise of bridge roles in news organizations

If you missed out first Festival, make sure you’re signed up to our newsletter to be the first to hear about our next event!

News organisations that want to deliver more value to their audiences now have a plug-and-play model they can use.

Dmitry Shishkin is back with an updated version of the user needs model, six years after posting his seminal article detailing six user needs. The updated model, user needs 2.0, so comprehensively maps people’s news needs that practically any news organisation can just use it off the shelf.

The user needs model essentially provides news organisations with a set of needs that most people have when they’re consuming news content. It is premised on the idea that news organisations can be more valuable to audiences by addressing their news needs better and more systematically.

The original model comprised six needs:

User needs work

The model works and that’s why it’s been so effective across many news organisations. It delivers more value to people. And it delivers more reach and user engagement for news organisations.

Views to BBC Russian content nearly tripled in five years as the newsroom focused more on the news needs of their audiences. At The Conversation, focusing on the news needs of young professionals led to a 45-50% increase in the portion of people who read whole articles and helped secure partnerships with other publishers including Fast Company, Público and others.

I suspect another big reason user needs has been so effective within newsrooms is that it doesn’t so much as solve problems many newsrooms face when they try to become more informed by their audiences as it negates them entirely.

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An argument I hear often as we support teams within The Conversation to become more audiences-informed is: “we’re just going to publish clickbait articles if we just listen to what people want”.

But familiarity with the user needs model has consistently assuaged this concern. Because the user needs model doesn’t condescend to journalists by minimising their journalistic intuition and expertise. It doesn’t tell them what they must commission. Instead, it augments the impact of their ideas and enables them to produce content that is even more valuable to people.

And once they see it in action, once they see how anchoring their ideas around relevant news needs supercharges the reach and impact of their work, journalists become advocates. ​​

At The Conversation, we started using user needs in 2020 with our UK newsroom to make its COVID coverage more valuable to people. The success of this project – despite our rather crude approach back then – has been eye-opening. We’ve since been deploying user needs across more teams to support them in becoming more audiences-informed.

User needs 2.0: “help me” and “connect me”

User needs 2.0 better captures people’s news needs today. The original model mapped people’s needs to know and understand what’s happening, and their need to be entertained or inspired.

But people are also looking for news content that they can use to do something, to take action. Over the years, audience research carried out by multiple news organisations has made this increasingly apparent. And this insight has informed the news needs that those organisations have looked to address with their journalism – from Vogue’s “make me feel responsible” to The New York Times’ “make my life easier” and The Conversation’s “motivate me”.

User needs 2.0 now incorporates this insight with the addition of two new action-driven user needs: “help me” and “connect me”.

“Help me” is more concerned with the personal. It is the need to find information that solves a problem, that details how to do that thing that will improve their lives.

“Connect me” is more societal in scope. It is the need to feel part of something bigger and act for the sake of not just themselves but others too. In one of our research with some of The Conversation’s climate readers, we kept hearing that they wanted to know more about what neighbouring communities were doing to mitigate or adapt to climate change. The need to be connected and to do something about the biggest crisis of our time was clear.

With the introduction of these two action-driven needs, this new model is comprehensive. It covers people’s needs to know, understand, feel and do. So comprehensive that the barrier for news organisations to implement user needs is now really low. Most news organisations can now just use the model without doing much user needs audience research of their own. The needs of their audiences is very, very likely to be represented in the new model.

Getting started with user needs

The user needs 2.0 model is detailed in a whitepaper just published by Shishkin and SmartOcto. An entire section of the whitepaper is devoted to implementing the model in newsrooms (addressing the “help me” need!).

It boils down to:

1. know your audience (at least a little bit) and determine their news needs
2. create a baseline to understand how well (or not) you’re addressing those news needs
3. start focusing on user needs to create more value to people

You can also read this detailed piece which explains how we implemented user needs with The Conversation’s UK newsroom.

The user needs model can be transformational. It’s an actionable model that helps news organisations elevate the power of their journalism and be more valuable to people. And the more valuable we are to people, the more they trust us, the more they come back to us. It’s a win-win. Implement it.

Download the full user needs 2.0 report here.