The stories newsrooms publish most are, article for article, the least effective, and Dmitry Shishkin thinks the fix starts with how publishers commission.
Ten years after a piece of BBC audience research turned into the user needs model, its architect used his FIPP Congress slot in Madrid to argue that most publishers still get this the wrong way round. Shishkin, now an independent consultant after senior roles at the BBC, Culture Trip and Ringier, told the audience that topic and format are only two of publishing’s three pillars. The third, the reader’s motivation, drives subscription and loyalty metrics, and most newsrooms still leave it to instinct.
Key takeaways to copy & share
> Article for article, "update me" pieces underperform every other user need, yet newsrooms produce more of them than anything else > Tag every piece with three things: the subtopic (personal finance, not just finance), the format (Q&A, feature, listicle, data-led) and the single user need it serves. Then commission on all three > One dominant need per piece. An article that tries to serve every need gets a headline that can only sell one, so most readers never discover the rest > Don't let the newsroom write its own user needs model: take the needs from audience research. At Ringier, across five countries, conversions, subscriptions and loyalty metrics all increased once teams moved to the model
Measure the angle as well as the story
