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‘Make It as Great as It Could Be’; Good Journalism Needs Trust Inside Organization and Out

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“Diverse sourcing makes us more trustworthy arbiters of the news.” As a new study again talks about the lack of consumer trust in news organizations, it’s important for B2B, niche and association media to take actions that instill trust—both from our audience and colleagues. Here are a few ways we see that happening across the landscape.

“Many news organizations are embracing approaches such as solutions journalism around subjects like climate change that aim to give people a sense of hope or personal agency. Others are looking to find ways to widen the agenda to softer subjects or make news more relevant at a personal level, but there will be a limit to how far journalists can go—or should go—to make the news more palatable.”

That quote came from Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2022. “Solutions journalism” is an interesting phrase and certainly an appealing one for publishers in this precarious age. According to the same report, “trust in the news has fallen in almost half the countries in our survey, and risen in just seven… news trust in the USA has fallen by a further three percentage points and remains the lowest (26%) in our survey.”

That lack of trust translates into a tougher first-party data strategy, according to the report. “We find that most consumers are still reluctant to register their email address with news sites. Across our entire sample, only around a third (32%) say they trust news websites to use their personal data responsibly—comparable to online retailers such as Amazon—and the figure is even lower in the United States (18%).”

That presents B2B media with a big challenge, one we have seen taken on by Neal Award winners (2023 nominations are open for the 69th edition) and will surely be discussed as we gather for BIMS 2023 in Orlando, Feb. 23-24. Meanwhile, here are 5 tips for creating a conducive atmosphere for good, and maybe even solutions, journalism:

Be inclusive. “Diverse sourcing makes us more trustworthy arbiters of the news,” Neema Roshania Patel, editor of The Washington Post Next Generation Audience Development team, wrote on Poynter recently. “A 2021 study from the Reuters Institute shows that younger people have a strong interest in coverage that is clearly more diverse and inclusive, with an emphasis on ‘human, personal and real stories.’ …Are we engaging with a diverse range of sources, even when the story isn’t explicitly about marginalized groups?”

Encourage your colleagues. “As writers for a B2B publication, we have to have business angles in our stories. But business stories can be elevated to have so much more to them, and we are absolutely encouraged to get to those heights,” said Ben Fidler, BioPharma Dive senior editor and a 2022 Neal Award winner. “As I reported out [the award-winning feature article] and saw the story getting bigger, my colleagues pushed me to keep going and make it as great as it could be.” Others on the staff were also encouraged to contribute. “We hired a photographer. Got the design team involved. It turned into a significant effort. As a senior editor, I may have gotten more instant trust in the idea, but this story could’ve been pursued by anyone who went after it.”

Present a more positive big picture. According to an extensive new Pew Research Center survey of nearly 12,000 working U.S.-based journalists, 70% of journalists surveyed say “they are ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ satisfied with their job, and an identical share say they often feel excited about their work.” And an even larger majority say they are extremely proud of their work. But “when asked to describe their industry in a single word, nearly three-quarters of journalists surveyed (72%) use a word with negative connotations, with the most common responses being words that relate to ‘struggling’ and ‘chaos.’” The detachment of remote work could have something to do with this, but that pride needs to be built upon by the respective media organizations.

Be vulnerable—it’s okay. In an article titled The Surprising Power of Simply Asking Coworkers How They’re Doing, the Harvard Business Review said this: “Seek feedback from your colleagues, especially those who are junior to you. Demonstrate your trust in them through the way you communicate and act on their feedback. For example, expressing vulnerability by acknowledging their views and talking openly about challenges you’re facing humanizes the relationship you have with your peers and direct reports.”

Listen actively. “Active listening is about listening to understand rather than just to hear. That isn’t inherently difficult—but it does require much more of a conscious effort than the passive approach most of us normally take,” writes Fast Company, reporting on the “three A’s” of active listening: A constructive Attitude; a dedication of Attention; and Adjustment: “Maintain a degree of flexibility to follow the course of what a speaker is sharing with you rather than trying to anticipate what will be said.”

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Be Actionable, Tell Stories and ‘End With a BANG!’ ACS Wins With Innovative Communications Guide

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It’s interesting that the 2022 Gold EXCEL Award Winner for Best New Innovation (C&EN’s How to Sell Your Science: The Art of Science Communication) focused on reaching audiences—given that our Editorial Council meeting this week also focused on getting our words out to our audience. As usual with any American Chemical Society product, there’s a lot to learn from how they did it.

“I will never forget the phone call I received from my mother after she opened an electronic copy of my dissertation… Before I could even bring the phone to my ear, I could hear my mom’s deep belly laugh as she cackled, ‘Katie, I don’t know what any of these words mean.’ ¶ I was completely speechless. ¶ How could she not understand?”

Those words came from Kate the Chemist—Kate Biberdorf, a chemist, science entertainer and professor at The University of Texas—at the beginning of a special guide from American Chemical Society’s Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN) titled How to Sell Your Science: The Art of Science Communication. The guide, which was part 3 of their email course and won a 2022 Gold EXCEL Award for Best New Innovation, attracted 408 subscribers from 49 countries in just the first two weeks.

Biberdorf goes on to say that given the chance, she would’ve sent a different email to her family telling of her exploits—explaining how her research was used, highlighting her “favorite part of the results,” and sparing them the entire 400-page document.

It was a warm and wonderful way to start this essential guide. Let’s take a look at some of the other things that C&EN got right here. Congratulations to Dorea Reeser, executive editor, for heading up this initiative. (Nominations for our 2023 EXCEL Awards open on Nov. 14.)

Offer a simple sign-up page (pictured above). The only answers people need to give are name, country, email and profession or student status. And their descriptive paragraph is brief (85 words) and to the point: “Science communication is the job of every scientist, and C&EN’s 6-week guide is here to help you communicate your science effectively to audiences, including those outside of your area of research.”

They didn’t overwhelm and made it personal. People could sign up “at any time” to receive the guide and one email per week (on Thursdays). The writers were all science communication influencers “that represent the diversity of our audience, and the tone is personal and inspiring through the anecdotes and advice they share.”

Brought in revenue. The guide was part of four email-courses that generated significant revenue in advertiser underwriting, allowing C&EN’s sales team to price and sell branded versions. Even the sign-up page has a thank you ad for funding support from the Genentech Foundation.

It’s solution-oriented and looks to connect scientists with their audience. The guide “provides advice on topics that are important to scientists, including how to sell your science to your friends and family, create an engaging research poster, give an engaging research talk, get your science in front of journalists, win research funding, and create a website to showcase your work.”

Practices what it preaches. The four main tips it offers are: Start with the big picture; tell them why you care; introduce the science; and end with a BANG! (their all-CAPS). “Leave on a high note.” At the end of the guide, they do what they say and offer this advice: “And if all else fails, blow something up. It works every time.”

Used social media well. They leveraged the social media reach of C&EN, ACS, ACS Education and writer accounts of science communication social media influencers. (Kate the Chemist’s alone must be HUGE – my all-CAPS.) On his LinkedIn page, writer Fernando Gomollon Bel posted this: “I’m super grateful to Dorea and Linda at C&EN for having invited me to this wonderful initiative! If you’re interested in #scicomm and learning how to speak about your research to new audiences, check it out! It’s a totally free subscription, with tips and tricks from several experts in #communications. 😊😎”

They give advice and actionable takeaways… “Tell them why you care. This is your chance to humanize the science and transfer your passion about the material.” “Think of yourself as a popular TikTok star and keep the science short and sweet.” “People are more willing to listen to you if you immediately connect the science to their everyday lives.” “Give a clear, one-sentence summary of the science, and do it as passionately as you can.”

…And warnings. “If you slip up and find yourself going on a tangent about quarks, forgive yourself! The most important thing is that you are out in the real world engaging in conversations about science.”

 

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‘Our Biggest Investment Is in People’; a Q&A With Breaking Media CEO John Lerner

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This is the first in a series of BIMS 2023 Speaker Q&A Previews. We hope you get a taste for what these speakers will deliver IN PERSON on Feb. 23-24 in Orlando and choose to join us. Register here for this much-anticipated summit event! 

Last year, John Lerner, CEO of Breaking Media, spoke about their amazing 50% growth during the pandemic: “We are doing a lot of content marketing programs. We added really strong editorial teams.” It was good to hear content given such royal stature. We caught up with John, a speaker at BIMS 2023 in February, to ask him about digital advertising and how best to maximize growth.

With the Business Information & Media Summit (BIMS) set for Feb. 23-24 in Orlando, our director of programming and development, Tony Silber, has embarked on a new Q&A series featuring some of the incredible speakers we have lined up. In the weeks ahead, we’ll publish one or two brief Q&As every week, each of them zeroing in on a specific topic related to sessions at the event.

Last year, given the times we were still in, Lerner spoke a lot about the online experience, giving customers “the opportunity to run their own native content (labeled as such) intermingled with our editorial content.” And how customers want to be considered thought leaders in their space.

In this first installment of this BIMS series, Lerner moves on to talk about digital advertising and what’s needed for growth to continue.

Tony Silber: Given the macroeconomic uncertainty, what’s your sense of the digital advertising market for 2023?
John Lerner: The conversations with our customers regarding 2023 are focused on ROI and strategic hyper-targeting. There is obvious trepidation about the economy, but at the same time, many feel this is an opportunity to gain market share. Just as digital focused on ROI was an efficient way to market during the pandemic, we feel that this trend will continue moving forward as marketers can see the results of their digital media spend in real-time or close to that.

What are the media products most in demand by marketers?
JL: Any marketing solution that leverages first-party data and/or contextually relevant content is in high demand. We get a lot of feedback that marketers are fed up with waste. This applies to the entire marketing funnel, even at the top. We are laser-focused on targeting appropriately for all marketing programs.

What kinds of tech support do you need to maximize growth?
JL: We continue to invest in people, processes and tools that allow us to track, segment, deliver and report on targeted-marketing programs. That being said, this only works if we have quality editorial coverage of the markets we serve. So at the end of the day, our biggest investment is in people.

Where do events fit in the marketing mix going forward? We know that dollars pivoted to digital advertising in 2020 after events were cancelled.
JL: We feel that events have really segmented into two categories: trade shows and niche boutique events. Each market will support 1-2 large trade shows, but I have heard many marketers are still evaluating ROI beyond the #1 show in their market. The highly focused boutique events offer an opportunity for more networking, and we feel these fit well with highly targeted digital media.

Thanks, John. Looking forward to seeing you at BIMS!

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‘Habit Is More Important Than Intensity; Study Offers Keys to Reader Retention

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“Habit is more important than intensity,” said Arvid Tchivzhel, managing director of digital services at Mather Economics. “I’d rather have someone read one article a day and come back than someone who reads six articles at a time and doesn’t come back for months.” A recent study offers ways to help your readers say, “I’ll be back.”

Last year, Tara Lajumoke, managing director of FT Strategies, said that “if 2020 was ‘the year of subscriptions,’ 2021 [was] ‘the year of the light readers.’ It’s therefore worth investing in big drivers of engagement for loyal and casual readers—on the homepage, via newsletters and recommendation engines—and developing non-news propositions, so that those who come for the headlines will stay for the podcasts, or the crosswords.”

An article earlier this year on Medill’s site reported that “regularity is more important than intensity” when it comes to subscriber/reader retention. Analysis of millions of page views by digital subscribers of a business weekly for 6 months in 2021 showed that “having readers who read more often is 10 times more important than having them read more articles.”

“This research is significant because it shows the key to success in keeping readers is building habit, whether you’re a general interest metro daily or a weekly business publication with a more upscale audience,” said Tim Franklin, senior associate dean and John M. Mutz chair in local news at Medill. “The formula is the same. Do things that regularly lead readers back to you.”

This may not be breaking news, but it’s still vital to note. Here are more strategies, based on the findings:

Focus on your loyal readers. Medill advises downplaying breaking news for “a balance of content that attracts your most loyal readers, the ones who will subscribe… Put the big photo and headline on the content that serves most of your readers.” Add a newsletter to address the specific, high-traffic niches, they urge. They also recommend using “teaser” links to related content at the bottom of stories and, even for this political publication, links should also go to “real estate or healthcare news because of the synergies between those readership areas.”

Initiate a comprehensive “onboarding” process for new subscribers. It should include a set of messages highlighting exclusive content and website navigation, said Michael Silberman, senior vice president of strategy at media consultancy Piano. He also recommends emailing daily round-up newsletters to subscribers and making sure that the content that drives frequency is highlighted. “Putting all those pieces together is really important,” he said.

Experiment with additional content areas. “The analysis found that articles about restaurants and dining ranked in the top four areas of page views by prospective readers, those who visit the website but aren’t yet subscribing.” Tchivzhel said that makes sense because it’s an affluent audience. Experiment with additional content areas—there’s nothing to lose. “We’re really trying to use the data to see how far we can expand our audience outside of traditional business,” the publisher said. “We see some potential opportunities if we put more resources behind those areas.”

Learn what topics drive your most regular readers. Stories about commercial and residential real estate resonated most for this business weekly. Second place went to a long-time political columnist. They were surprised that healthcare stories came in third, said the publication’s publisher, calling it a “something of a revelation. We know this is a big healthcare market, but we didn’t have a lot of data around how many subscribers are there because of that.”

Build up and market your popular writers/columnists. That columnist is “worth his or her weight in gold,” said Medill Spiegel Research Center research director Edward Malthouse, and brought in many subscribers they termed “political junkies.” Not surprisingly, they hired a second politics writer. The finding “affirmed some of our hunches and gave us more confidence about doubling down in those areas,” the publisher said. “This will help us refine some of our audience strategies around [converting] more casual readers.”

Find a habit your readers can latch onto. In what they called Project Habit, The Wall Street Journal also found habits to be crucial to reader retention, especially during the first 100 days after a reader had signed up. They found that “playing a puzzle had a more dramatic impact on reader retention than other actions the team had been promoting.” You start to understand why Wordle was worth so much to the New York Times. (Though I haven’t heard much about it lately.)

 

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‘Attacking the Creator Content From a B2B Standpoint’; Workweek Has the Write Stuff

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When Workweek began almost a year ago, co-founder Becca Sherman, a BIMS 2023 keynote speaker, said that “influential business content is no longer limited to Wall Street Journal articles or Gartner white papers, but also comes in the form of tweets, product reviews, YouTube clips, newsletters, and more… Workweek is designed to grant more opportunities…” Since then, they’ve been practicing what she preached.

Almost 4 years ago exactly, Hamish McKenzie, one of the three co-founders of Substack, told me this: “We strongly believe that in 5 years there will be a very obvious critical mass of people who will pay for content from writers who they trust. And it will be a mainstream, accepted part of the ecosystem. In the meantime, we have this induction period where people are figuring it out. This can work. People are learning how good an experience it is to be subscribed to an independent writer you love. We’re really focused on building that relationship—to get people interested in that model. We’ll keep looking for allies.”

Fast forward to today, and newsletters have become a huge part of the media ecosystem, thanks in part to Substack. And now other startups are taking that model and running some new steps with it. One of those is Workweek, a media company built around a roster of 21 newsletter writers. Workweek wants to grow name recognition for its talent, not itself.

“My goal over time is not for Workweek, the brand, to be front and center for the audiences of these creators,” Sherman, Workweek founder and CEO, said in an article on Insider last week. Instead, she hopes the company can grow individual media brands that succeed on their own, like Architectural Digest does under Condé Nast.

Sherman will be a keynote speaker at our BIMS event in Orlando, Feb. 23-24, speaking at a session titled, Here’s a Content-Centric Digital Native Who Wants to Remake B2B. Reading the Insider article and a couple other sources, some ideas stood out that I’m sure she will expound upon in February:

Establish a range of niches. Like Substack, which has 27 niches listed on their site, Workweek’s roster of writers, podcasters and social-media creators cover everything from fintech and healthcare to work talk, cannabis and climate tech.

Offer services to support the content creators. Workweek creates and run ads to help the newsletters grow subscribers. “In-house ghostwriters and meme-makers” take to social media to build engagement. An ad sales team works to bring in revenue for their newsletters and podcasts. The Insider article began with a story about a website the Workweek team created called Sunday Side Chicks to help one of their newsletters that was promoting a Sunday alternative food truck to Chick-fil-A.

Push the writers, “low-key” the company. This may be the new newsletter strategy. Workweek creators may not even mention their relationship to the company even though they’re considered full-time employees. Similarly, according to Insider, Semafor, the new news brand started by former Bloomberg Media CEO Justin Smith and NYT vet Ben Smith, designs its reporters’ bylines to look like headlines to bring them more attention. Here’s an example.

Being B2B may be their secret sauce. Workweek says it has 350,000 subscribers across its newsletters. A year ago, Substack said they had more than half a million. (When I interviewed McKenzie, they had about 11,000.) “No one’s really attacked the creator economy from a business-to-business standpoint,” said Rich Greenfield, general partner of LightShed Ventures, which has led their $7.5 million funding. “How do you best monetize thought leadership if you’re a creator focused on the business marketplace for whatever industry you’re in? And how do you scale that business? It’s really hard to do well on your own.”

Diversify revenue. Workweek is also getting into events, merchandise, and pay-to-download publications. According to Insider, they project that less than half of their October revenue will come from advertising. They also announced at the beginning of the year they’re launching a $10 million venture fund to invest in businesses brought in by the newsletter writers. Smartly, they’re also operating a job search and recruiting business that goes to those writers’ email lists.

Give back to the talent. Writers also get some cut of earnings generated from their work—from sponsorship revenue, events or merchandise sales. (The chicken website tee-shirts sold well apparently.) “Every dollar that we drive from a creator’s brand is shared back with a creator,” Sherman said. “Too often, executives and operators take home a lot off of the back of the people who are creating a ton of value. We try to really flip that model here.”

By February at BIMS, Sherman will be able to tell us much, much more about their progress, strategies and outcomes.