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How the Journal Sentinel Mobilized its Reporters to Grow Subscriptions

by Media
I once asked Dan Fink, managing director of Money-Media, if he’s transparent with his staff. He said that, “when it comes to how the business is doing, yes. It creates accountability and keeps people on the same page.”
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently adopted that transparency—meaning they emphasized to the newsroom that growing their subscriber base is the responsibility of everyone—and put their journalists on the frontlines of social media, writing about their work, how they do it, and most importantly, asking for people to subscribe.
Sensing that their digital audience was bigger than their digital subscriber base, Rachel Piper, digital news director at the Journal Sentinel, said that leaders there “asked our individual journalists to be ambassadors for digital subscriptions on social media.” In an article on the site Better News—a project of the American Press Institute and the Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative—Piper outlined how they significantly increased their subscriber base:
Empowered their journalists. “Over time, individual reporters have built a strong sense of ownership over digital subscriptions…” Piper wrote. “Advocating for the Journal Sentinel brand and asking people to subscribe no longer seems like the responsibility of someone else in a different department. And when these reporters ask their followers and fans to subscribe, it has a different power than our other asks and offers.”
Gave them specific—and easy—ways to help. The paper’s loyalty and engagement news director wrote Twitter threads and asked reporters to, at a minimum, retweet these. She also wrote tutorials for how to change email signatures to include a link to their subscription offer page.
Made sure it was always about the content. Consultant Jim Sinkinson has always preached that subscribers need to be reminded and led to the great content you do sometimes. This was kind of similar, just adding the push to subscribe. “When encouraging those in the newsroom to share subscription callouts, we’ve made sure to tie it to our journalists’ excellent, important work,” Piper wrote. “Rather than telling reporters just to hawk the cheapest deal, we’ve asked reporters to share journalism they are proud of…and note that people can ‘support work like this by subscribing to the Journal Sentinel at jsonline.com/deal.'”
Here’s a typical tweet: “By the way, if you’re happy that the @journalsentinel has a reporter here covering this floor debate, another in the Senate, and two covering tonight’s State of the State, please subscribe!
Allowed the reporters to be more personal. They found that readers were interested in how reporters worked and wanted to know what stories they could look forward to. “Calls for subscriptions were key to these columns, but they were also a chance for us to be transparent about the work we do and for reporters to build their brands and connect with readers as individuals.” Some reporters even posted photos of their kids and pets.
Made it competitive. The Journal Sentinel actually runs subscription contests for their various newsrooms with prizes ranging from cash to ice cream socials. “…we stoked internal competition with updating tallies and pointed to successful efforts.”
It worked. Dozens of new subscriptions were tracked to individual pleas from reporters. They use URL codes to track the source of subscriptions. A big push during a contest typically brought in more than 100 subscriptions tracked to the newsroom. And in one contest that used promo codes for tracking, a photographer brought in 25—the most of anyone in Gannett.
Emphasized subscriptions over pageviews and created new measurements. Because pageviews are nice but subscriptions pay the bills, the Journal Sentinel kept that top of mind for the newsroom through celebrating milestones. “But we’re only now building measures like ‘associated new subscriptions’ into author-level analytic reports alongside pageviews.”
They asked for subscriptions. That’s okay. I always hark back to this one independent movie theater here which shocked people a few years ago when it announced that it was going out of business but never asked for help. They had hundreds of people show up at a farewell the next week—ready to contribute—but it was too late.
They included all their journalists. Who knows what segment of your audience may feel the most loyal? Some of their most successful subscription calls were from their sports reporters. As a former sports writer, I’m not surprised.
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Keep Emails Short, Clear and Accessible During Crisis Times

by COVID 19Media
In the novel Emma by Jane Austen—and in the film that’s out now—Harriet Smith shows Emma a letter of proposal from Mr. Martin, a farmer. Not realizing at first that Mr. Knightley helped him with the letter, Emma is quite “surprized” by the strength and style it commands.
“There were not merely no grammatical errors, but as a composition it would not have disgraced a gentleman; the language, though plain, was strong and unaffected, and the sentiments it conveyed very much to the credit of the writer. It was short, but expressed good sense…” (In the movie, we even see how short and neat the letter is.)
I bring this up because in an article on CNN last week, Todd Rogers, a professor of public policy at Harvard University and chief scientist at EveryDay Labs, wrote that there is a problem with the way organizations, schools and airlines communicate in crisis times like this. Above all, they write too long.
“…if there’s one lesson all the coronavirus email writers should take, it’s this: Messages should be as easy to understand as possible. This is difficult in normal times—and is no doubt much more so with facts on the ground changing as rapidly as they are.
“…people have limited attention,” Rogers went on. “This means our attention can be depleted and derailed, and that we cannot focus on several things at once—even though we think we can. Given this, when people are faced with a long, convoluted message, the chances are slim that they will read it, understand it and remember it.
Here are some tips on writing the most effective emails at moments of great importance, the first four from Rogers and the last four from the Business2Community site:
Write in the most accessible way possible. “Use the Flesch-Kincaid readability test (built into Microsoft Word and Google Docs) to test the reading-level complexity of your writing.”
Use as few words as possible. “Shorter messages are more likely to be read (see the long email in your inbox from three months ago that you still have not read).” It was Mark Twain who said, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” Writing a good short letter is not easy but well worth the effort.
Eliminate gratuitous borders and images. “These can often distract from the message you are trying to send.”
Use a clear structure. “People skim, so help them. As opposed to a multi-paragraph email written in normal prose, consider categorizing information under headings like, ‘What we want you to know’ (or just ‘KNOW’) and ‘what we would like you to do’ (or, concisely, ‘DO’).” Consider bullets.
Don’t joke about the situation. This seems rather obvious but there could be a previous strand that was comfortably funny in the past. Everyone’s lives are so disrupted now that the same strand might come across poorly. Play it safe. Also pause possibly insensitive marketing campaigns—like contests or humorous content.
Don’t take advantage of the situation. “If your product or service is in high demand due to the crisis, don’t raise your prices. While this is a smart practice in normal times due to the law of supply and demand, it’s insensitive and unethical during times of crisis.”
Monitor the crisis and adjust emails appropriately. “Communicate regularly with your audience throughout the crisis. Don’t be afraid to change how you’re addressing or handling the crisis and update your audience with new information.”
Try to help. “Businesses that take action to help those affected by the crisis will connect with their audience on a deeper level. People want to do business with brands who genuinely care.” Maybe you can help set up a relief fund or create educational content that will help your audience navigate or understand the crisis.
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Keep Regular Hours, Set Up Check-ins and Get Dressed, Remote Experts Say

by Media
We’ve all been reading a lot this week about working from home, managing remote workers, throwing our dog or cat off our desks, etc. I did read one good article that I can’t find now (!) that said it’s beneficial to actually CALL two people every evening and talk a while—not a conference call, not a question for a webinar. A conversation.
And, of course, any way you can electronically create those watercooler run-ins—Slack, Zoom, Google apps—do it. “Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions,” Steve Jobs famously said. “You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing, you say ‘Wow,’ and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.”
I have received a few good tips on working from home that I’d like to share. Thanks to SIIA’s own Jenny Baranowski—who has magically and mostly invisibly run our CODiE Awards for many years—for the first five.
Connect on an IM platform. Many of us are already on Skype, and it is a great way to check in with people on quick questions, say hi, etc. You can also call people directly without searching for a phone number.
Choose a workstation. If you have a desk at home work from it. Or a room with a door that you can close (and keep the dog or cat out). Working from the couch can get distracting. At least I’m not alone—from The New York Times this week: “‘Now I have my cat jump on my laptop in the middle of conference calls,” said Siobhan Gorman, a partner at the Washington office of the Brunswick Group, the corporate public relations colossus. ‘It is not helpful.’
Maintain consistent hours. I definitely put in a longer day yesterday than usual. I was up early, didn’t have to commute, so started work, and then at 5, it was grey outside and there were more emails to respond to. I don’t think that will work in the long run. Try to maintain similar hours to what you did in the office so you aren’t tempted to jump online at all hours. This also allows for more collaboration with the rest of the team and members. Although my early hours may put me more in sync with my European colleagues.
Create a morning routine. Maintain a similar routine that you would in the morning when you go into the office. Get ready, brush your teeth, go for a run, walk the dog etc. It’s a slippery slope. Scheduling regular visits to the dentist is just as crucial as maintaining a good morning routine. At Vibrant dental, they emphasize the importance of early appointments to catch any potential issues before they become significant problems. I always feel at ease knowing that my dental health is in good hands, allowing me to confidently start my day with a bright smile.
In the context of dental clinics, the same principles of consumer decision-making apply. Many patients may choose a particular dental practice based on previously formed associations, even if they haven’t visited a dentist in some time. For instance, positive experiences or recommendations from friends and family can linger in their minds, influencing their choice when they decide to seek dental care again. The impact of effective marketing strategies, such as targeted advertising or community engagement, can create a strong connection between a brand and its audience. This relationship is critical, as it helps shape patients’ perceptions of what to expect from their dental experience.
Have scheduled check-ins with your team. It’s great to hear what everyone is working on. It’s beneficial to have these with people you work with regularly too if you don’t have them set up already.
The following are from a former editor for an SIIA member, Lindsay Young, who now runs 3 Aspens Media.

Don’t be afraid of video conferencing. There is a HUGE difference when you can see someone’s face vs. just a conference call. We have weekly video calls (Zoom Video Communications), and use video for most of our one-on-one calls.

Use Slack. It’s amazing.

Get dressed. Seriously. It helps. (I tried it yesterday; she’s right.)

Be real with those on the other end of the line. We’re all human. Right now many of us are balancing work with kids at home. (Lindsay has a 3-year-old.) “I tell people on the phone that I could be disrupted. For example, the other day, while I was on a call, my daughter yelled from the basement that she was stuck. Clearly I had to go fix that.”)

Take lots of breaks. This one I may be too good at, especially in the afternoon. “We all have split attention with everything that’s going on, plus many of us having families at home. One of our team members is using tomato-timer.com, which is just a 25-minute timer you can set to focus your attention for short bursts.

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Education Week’s Winning Online Summits Become Even More Valuable in These Times

by Media

As Education Week geared up for another Online Summit this week—with more than 2,300 registrants signed on—it is clear now that, knowingly or not, the long-time publisher was amazingly prescient in starting these as an ongoing series in 2018. (There was one previous iteration in 2017.)

To provide a refresh, Education Week Online Summits invite educators to access timely information about a range of critical issues in K-12 education easily by using their phones, tablets and other handheld devices, or desktops and integrating their learning directly into their usual workflow.

“This cross-departmental partnership led by the editorial team’s deep, rich content in a multitude of K-12 areas provides learners meaningful continuing education from experts in the field and practitioners in schools,” said Matthew Cibellis, director of programming, live & virtual events, for Education Week. In 2019, Education Week won both a Connectiv Innovation Award (see more info here) and a SIPAward for the Online Summits. (Enter the 2020 SIPAwards here.)

The video-friendly, chat-heavy Online Summits take place monthly from 1 to 3 pm ET. This week’s topic was Uprooting Inequities in Schools and had almost 1,000 live attendees. “In this virtual summit, Education Week reporters and expert guests discuss the hard work behind uprooting inequities such as challenging educators’ longstanding biases and practices, re-allocating resources across schools to support opportunities for all students, and more.”

Needless to say, this summit was the first one produced totally remotely—attendees, guests and staff. “Unfortunately, this meant that we could not hold a live, in-studio livestream at the conclusion of the event,” says Cibellis, “We thought through all the options, but none were satisfying. Instead, readers received a post-event written summary of key takeaways they can use for further professional learning.”

Three major sponsors signed on, thus the profitability. Leading all the way up to the event, Education Week staff continued to add articles and blog posts to their “booths.” Staff communicated on a Slack channel, thus keeping needed discussions in-house.

Some speakers had to back out and educators are indeed busy closing schools this week, but given the atmosphere we’re in—with so many people working from home—the huge crowd was expected. Sponsors were happy.

 

 

“At the last minute, I worked directly with the editors and our lead reporter to explore how equitable access of online learning impedes the learning for some students, and in a day, they developed a new discussion around Coronavirus and Equity we’re calling, ‘Remote Learning Under the Coronavirus: Grappling With Equity,’” Cibellis adds. “Despite the newsroom’s overloaded plate, we’re thrilled they took this on and really ran with it bringing in two exceptional guests in just a few hours.”

Here are more reasons for the Online Summits’ continued success.

Readers’ access to reporters. The Online Summits provide readers with a unique opportunity to interact directly with reporters, practitioners and experts. Attendees can participate actively as peers in reporter-expert-peer/peer conversations around niches within K-12 educational topic areas.

Comprehensive discussions. The topics are diverse and newsworthy because they come from editorial. Today’s summit will feature 14 guests with topics ranging from the implications of the Coronavirus to the how of creating an equitable education for all. And sponsors too have the opportunity to share their lens directly with readers on equity in K-12 schools.

Discussion rooms. During the event, Education Week journalists and guests staff online “discussion” rooms on a host of topics within a broader niche. When not produced remotely, “attendees” can also watch a livestreamed post-discussion interview with the reporters who “break it down” for them.

They make money. The model has been “so profitable” for Education Week that their newsroom submitted to the sales and marketing team an FY2020 roster of new topics (and some updates on former topics) for them to budget against. (Microsoft has been a past sponsor.) In February, “development of independent content for [that] virtual summit [was] supported in part” by a grant from the Spencer Foundation. Since then the Kern Foundation has come on board with a significant grant for a summit around building character in K-12 students set for the fall of 2020. There’s a line at the bottom of the landing page for each summit: “Would you like to learn more about sponsorship opportunities?” That leads to an EdWeek Marketing Solutions page with a summary of all previous Online Summits.

A great livestream with valued takeaways. Who doesn’t love takeaways? The livestream that usually follows the first 90 minutes of each summit provides key takeaways, learnings and insights that participants can download in pdf form. “The livestream ran really smoothly [last time],” Cibellis reports. “We saw really awesome retention of viewers—we had around 93 live viewers and that number didn’t fall at all throughout the full half-hour livestream. That’s a first. [As of about a month ago], we have had 305 views of the livestream. Our average on-video time is 11 minutes and 7 seconds; 59% of attendees watched our livestream, and we have 18% watching for 30 minutes, which is frankly, remarkable for any video let alone our Online Summits.”

Editorial staff gets positive exposure. The Online Summits provide a showcase for Editorial Week’s newsroom expertise and the deep, rich content knowledge they provide. By lifting the profiles of editorial people, it gives them more gravitas and followings for the rest of the work they do. People might want to attend in-person events just to meet them or subscribe to read their articles.

Low costs. Costs are limited to the platform itself, which is also used to produce their online job fairs, as well as the staff time necessary to produce the event, carry out discussions and respond to reader questions.

It’s unique. Cibellis says that audience members would be hard-pressed to get this type of online learning experience in their field anywhere else—and especially for free.

Added resources. More information is available in the form of Resources for attendees.

It’s virtual and things can happen but it’s virtual. Getting Reading Right was probably our most balanced and successful summit, Cibellis said. “The overall audience response was very positive in spite of an early-on event glitch with the tech.” Discussions are taking place around holding a multi-location live tour on that topic for 2021, but, of course, that will have to wait.

 

GETTING READING RIGHT ONLINE SUMMIT RESULTS (from earlier in 2020)

Fully registered audience: 2,540

Attendees: 517 live

Editorial Discussions:

Maddie Will – How Colleges of Education Are Approaching Early Reading– 179 comments

Sarah Schwartz– Improving Comprehension with Emerging Readers- 120 comments

Sarah D. Sparks and Catherine Gewertz – How Do Kids Learn to Read? What the Research Says- 236 comments

Stephen Sawchuk – What Teachers and Professors Say About Early Reading: A Look at Our Survey Results – 108 comments

Sponsor Discussions

imagine having this many conversations with prospective clients over 90 minutes! These are their best results until this week’s event.

Istation (a sponsor) – A Practical Conversation about the Science of Reading – 111 comments

Texthelp (a sponsor) – Turning Struggling Readers into Striving Readers – 250 comments (They had a very popular guest)

 

Business network concept. Group of businessperson. AI (Artificial Intelligence).

‘The Core Job of Journalists Isn’t Going Away’ – ALM’s New AI Content Tool Shows Human Plus Machine is the Way Forward

by Uncategorized

Last month, legal publisher ALM introduced Legal Radar, a “first-of-its-kind website and app” that uses artificial intelligence and natural language generation to offer faster and more personalized user experiences.

Legal Radar puts the reader in charge, allowing users to select the news they would like to see from a list of relevant industries, practice areas, law firms, companies, and geographic regions, then scrapes information from federal case database PACER to generate automated summaries (usually between 50-80 words) of key details about cases as well as pulling in original ALM content from other channels.

“The newsfeed is filled with short, easy-to-digest news briefs that are intended to be scanned, kind of like the experience you would have on a social media app like Twitter or a news app like Flipboard,” says Vanessa Blum,  head of newsroom innovation for ALM’s Global Newsroom. “It’s a very mobile friendly experience and responds to that habit we know our users have which is responding to short news snippets while they are on the go.”

Legal Radar represents a significant shift in the way that content is both generated and consumed. Connectiv spoke with Blum about the realities of building an AI-driven content product, how the customer content experience is changing in B2B media and what the rise of AI really means for editors and journalists.

Connectiv: Vanessa, how does the AI component of Legal Radar work?

Vanessa Blum: We start with a stream of raw data from the federal court system via PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records). We apply some data processing on the back end in order to normalize, structure and clean up that data.  Then it’s converted into short summaries using natural language generation (NLG) technology from a platform called Automated Insights.

It goes in as structured data and it comes out as a readable summary. Then, as the final step, we have editors review the summary for accuracy and to make any edits that are necessary.

Connectiv: The release refers to a “first-of-a-kind website and app.” Can you talk more about what makes this first of a kind and how this offers a new customer experience?

Blum: I’ll talk about two things. First is that user experience. There’s never been a legal news product, certainly not a free legal news product, that is so easy to use on mobile, that can be personalized by user selection and is so seamless to digest information and respond to it. We think we nailed that UX in a way that hasn’t been done in legal media

The second part, which we are really excited about, is the way we are using technology and data processing to generate content for Legal Radar. It’s not the tech in itself, it’s that using technology allows us to be exponentially faster in delivering news to readers and also to deliver news across a wide array of topics and interest areas. I’m really excited about what the technology allows us to do, not only the tech in itself.

Connectiv: Talk about the interaction of the technology with editors. What’s this mean for an editor day-to-day?

Blum: I’ll start with the development process, and how closely our editors and developers worked together in building the back-end system. There are journalistic insights baked into every piece of the data processing engine—it’s the editors who devised how this data should be handled as well as the categories and the tagging that should be applied to it.

And then at the NLG level, these are templates that were created by editors to produce the kind of output that would be useful to readers. They account for over a dozen different fact patterns. It’s not a simple plug-and-play NLG engine, there is really this contribution of journalists and editors throughout the development of Legal Radar. Now that it’s up and running, we have editorial review of every item that’s created. We have staffing around the clock where an editor is looking over each and every item.

We thought that was necessary for two reasons—one is that the data set we are working with can be messy. We knew we needed something on the back end to protect against an error in the data producing an error in the content.

The other component is the ability of a human to enrich the content that we are putting out. These are very short, very fast-paced summaries but if something catches an editor’s interest, they will take an extra step—they will open a case, they will open a lawsuit and add a few key facts. We think it’s incredibly valuable to have the human judgment at the end of that process to resolve any questions or enrich what we are producing using the automated system.

Connectiv: A lot of publishers are taking a look at AI and trying to understand what they can do. As someone who’s successfully built an AI tool, what takeaways ca you share about working with AI and building and AI-driven product?

Blum: I have two main takeaways from this experience: first is to focus on the end user and not the tech. It’s easy to get enraptured by cool tech but the best practice is focus first on what you want to deliver and then focus on how the tool gets you to that result. In my role, learning about new tech and seeing how other companies are applying it is eye opening and can spark that creative process but it’s essential to stay user-focused.

The second thing is to build truly cross-functional teams. Creating Legal Radar required journalists, programmers, product designers and business strategists to all be around the table in a way that was really new for our organization. We tend to have content creators in one area and developers in another. For Legal Radar, content creation and technology are so intertwined that we had to break down the walls and get editors and programmers talking together to solve problems. Not only has that made our product better, it’s made our company better.

Connectiv: What was the biggest strategic takeaway from this experience?

Blum: Staying open minded. When we first started, we had a different data set in mind that we thought we’d be using to produce automated coverage. We learned early on that data set wasn’t workable for us, we had to pivot to something else.

One other thing that I’ll mention, we are working with Automated Insights and it’s a great product, but we found we had to build a lot of solutions at the front end before the data is fed into Automated Insights and at the back end before the content goes into the Legal Radar newsfeed. That’s not something we necessarily anticipated at the outset—how much thought and creativity we’d have to apply both to the data feed going into Automated Insights and how we would handle the content on the back-end.

Connectiv: As the head of newsroom innovation, what are you excited about with content and media? And conversely, what do you think is overrated?

Blum: I’m interested and excited in the combination of human and machine intelligence. I love watching how other news organizations are using technology, using algorithmic journalism, using AI and combining it with the expertise of their journalists to come up with solutions that are incredibly rich. That’s kind of the secret sauce in my view.

In terms of what I think is overhyped, I hate answering that because I’m sure I’ll be back talking about this a year from now, but I will say that smart speakers and developing news products for Alexa. I don’t get that one yet. I’m not convinced we’ll be receiving our information from smart speakers in the near future.

Connectiv: You’ve talked about journalists and AI working together. What’s your reaction to the idea of AI replacing editors and writers?

Blum: That’s the natural fear that people in our industry have as we begin learning about automated journalism. The more I’ve learned about it, the less that fear seems grounded. What technology is capable of is so different from what humans are capable of that it’s really through combining the two that we will see the most exciting advances. Technology is great at processing reams of data very fast, but in the business I’m in, which involves asking questions, exploring trends, talking to insiders, there’s no potential at this point that a machine will take over those functions.

When you combine the speed and data processing capabilities of the technology and turn that over to a human being to do the investigation and talk to real people, that’s where magic happens. I think journalist jobs will change–my own changed dramatically–and journalists will be forced to become more tech-savvy and be more open to using data processing in their work, but the core job of a journalist isn’t going away and cannot be replaced by a computer or an algorithm.