Journalism says it’s a service, but it doesn’t think like one
To survive, the industry must start delivering what its users need. Here’s how.
Several months ago, I was part of a gathering for solutions journalists from around the world. The term “solutions journalism” sounds positive, but this form of media isn’t focused on feel-good stories or “puff” pieces. Solutions stories look for what people are doing about a problem, and evaluate whether these attempted solutions are actually working, for whom, and why.
At the summit, I spent one lunch session chatting with a writer who is building a health and parenting newsletter for her regional readership. “I’m creating something I really believe has value,” she told me. “But — does it? I can’t really tell.”
People were reading her newsletter; thanks to increasingly-sophisticated analytics tools, journalists and publications can tell a lot about reader behavior. Her data could tell her who was reading, what content they opened, how much of it they read, how many times, at what times of day, on what platform, and whether they passed it on to others.
But what the data wasn’t telling her was why they were reading it—and what impact, if any, it was having on them.
Confusing Service with Mission
Like design, journalism is in the business of delivering “the data + the why” of human behavior. Publications tend to have clear and thoughtful mission statements that answer the why of their work: “Why do we think journalism matters?” And therefore: “What kind of stories do we think should we tell?” And, “How is our content unique from others’ content?”
But many outlets — especially those that aren’t investigative-driven — don’t have nearly as clear a grasp on the why of their audience: “Why does our audience think we matter?” And underlying that: “What do our readers need from journalism? In what ways do they rely on us to meet that need? Is our publication demonstrably changing readers’ understanding or behavior? How do we know?”
“I’m creating something I really believe has value. But — does it? I can’t really tell.”
A service delivers something of value that people cannot provide for themselves. For an industry that describes itself as a service, this inability to evaluate its own success is a fairly large miss.
User-Centered Service: Understanding Need + Access
It is conventional editorial wisdom that understanding reader preference is a necessity — so in addition to tracking analytics, editors will often try to capture readers’ tastes by asking them, via reader surveys.
The problem? Designers and editors both know that what people say they care about is often different than how they actually behave. Behavior is influenced by many factors, all of which may change over the course of a day (or week, or year). Readers may say they want more stories about municipal water treatment because they know that’s a “good” thing to say — or even because they genuinely intend to sit down and learn about water safety. But after the survey, when the editor runs analytics, she’ll see that people still click far more often on stories about BTS, not water treatment.
Service designers work to get beyond stated user preference, to better understand user behavior and lived experience. What does safe water mean to the readers who said they wanted more stories about this topic? How are their lives affected by it? What kind of information about water safety, if any, do they need and rely on? What are the consequences if they don’t get it? What kind of information could be of help that they don’t even know about?
A service delivers something of value that people cannot provide for themselves.
To answer these questions, service designers spend time with users to better understand their daily lives. This process is called “contextual inquiry”—gathering qualitative data on how people use a product in the context of their lived experience.
Service designers will pay attention to things like: When does this person interact with the product? How (mechanically, step-by-step) do they interact with it? What else is going on in their lives/days when they do? What do they do with it? And especially: What do they do with it that surprises us? What places do they get stuck? Are there any parts of the product they can’t access? What makes them stop using it? Are there other products they use instead of this one? Why? Are there any points we would expect them to use this product and they don’t? What can we see about why?
This line of inquiry isn’t just useful for specific story topics — it can (and should be!) applied to audience as a whole.
If you’re an editor, ask: What kinds of information do your readers rely on for their wellbeing? What do they rely on you specifically for? And where do (or might) those spheres overlap?
Delivering Service
Once we’ve observed the behavior and context of our own audience, we can start to draw insights. Thanks to existing analyses of reader behavior, we already have some insights into universal audience needs:
- Conventional wisdom: People don’t trust “the news.” Insight: People rely on reporting in times of crisis and disaster.
- Conventional wisdom: People don’t trust “the news.” Insight: People trust voices they know and admire.
- Conventional wisdom: People don’t want to pay for journalism. Insight: People pay for specific services journalism provides, namely information: real-time data, fact-checked quotes and statements, accumulated research, analysis of complex problems, and indexed resources.
Framing these insights as a question of “how might we…?” allows us to immediately begin to try answering it.
What kind of journalism service can you imagine? Look at these “how might we’s:”
How might we feature more voices that our readers already trust?
- We could hire more writers from groups that are historically underrepresented in media.
- We could rely on “citizen journalists” reporting issues in real-time.
- We could hire people that have deep networks in our city and put them through journalistic training, instead of flying in trained journalists with shallow or no ties to the city.
What kinds of information do your readers rely on for their wellbeing? What do they rely on you specifically for? And where do (or might) those spheres overlap?
How might we get news to all readers who need it, in a way that they can access, regardless of cost?
- We could partner with local caregivers, social work services, community halls, houses of worship, libraries, shelters, or hospitals to provide on-site access to our publication for free.
- We could provide our publication in multiple languages. We could add close-captioning and voice text.
- We could reimagine what form a “publication” product could take in these specific contexts: A news-and-meditation app for the elderly? Free publication-only computer stations at the library? Wearable tech in a hospital?
How might we make our in-house knowledge available to other institutions and industries that could benefit from it?
We could bundle our “institutional expertise” on city issues and sell to paying subscribers, including the government, universities, philanthropies, nonprofits, and businesses.
How might we provide the same degree of real-time, inclusive, need-to-know information that people rely on in disaster, to ongoing issues of civic importance?
We could combine all of these services above by reimagining our publication as a community service and a business: One that highlights a real-time civic problem on its home page, accessible to all, and provides a historic deep dive for paying subscribers.
Journalism’s mission statement is to act as an informational service for its core audience and the public at large. As the industry faces perilous times, the industry’s biggest potential lies in a version of the model practiced at the gathering I attended: The ability to evaluate journalism’s impact; and to identify where it is working, who it is working for, and why. Journalism’s survival as a critical public service depends on it.
Originally published by Modernist Studio.
