Audience Engagement

The more time we can get readers to spend with us, the better the results — both for them and us. Here are ways to deepen and strengthen our relationships with them.

Curate newsletters that win with readers

Newsletters are a powerful tool to move readers down the subscriber funnel. Here’s how to master them.

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    • Develop an audience plan for a big winner in the making

    Audience plans are an outline of social, alert, boost and publish plans for a story we expect to be a big win.

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    • Unlock the value in evergreen stories

    Re-sharing allows us to grow subscribers through bringing forward interesting stories that retain enduring value.

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    • The art of “goosing” to extend the value of our best content

    We can improve premium stories that underperformed to help “goose” the story to get it out of the underperforming category and to assess what we could have done better.

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    • How to move searchers through the subscriber funnel

    Using your unique content to turn visitors into subscribers.

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    • How to use heat maps

    Heat maps are a great resource to help determine the best times for publishing a story.

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    • Digital strategies and best practices

    Readers in our growth audience segments tell us these are key parts of the day when they’re seeking to engage in news.

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    • Overview of the roles and interactions of audience and other teams in the CCJ

    The audience team will be on the frontline for Network content sharing – statewide, within the CCJ, with the regional teams and to USA TODAY – which will help local reporters’ work reach a wider audience and also supplement local production with relevant, interesting stories from other markets.

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    • Putting metrics to use on your beat

    What does success look like? How do you translate what your metrics are telling you into story ideas or deeper insights into what your audience is seeking – both for premium content and reaching new readers with top of funnel content?

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    • Understanding our key audience segments

    Gannett has done extensive research into people interested in news — those who are in our audience today as well as those who aren’t — so we can better understand who we’re working for. These documents and workshops will help you understand the segments, what members of each segment want from us, and how we can earn them as subscribers.

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    • Community engagement for underserved communities

    Q&A conversation about best practices, challenges and outcomes that emerge from engaging and including different communities in our conversations, newsletters and content.

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    • News values and judgment

    We tackle the fundamentals of what makes a story newsworthy, the essential practices of journalists and the shared values that differentiate journalism from other forms of content and storytelling.

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    • Improving our relationship with readers

    A primer on the the audience funnel. First, we will do an audience health checkup and what we can do to help move readers through the loyalty funnel. Then we explore what a reader NEEDS from our content  – and making sure we deliver.

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    • Tracking diverse content for Black and Latino communities

    For more accurate diversity data, it’s critical to tag your content properly, and you need to understand what to tag and what not to tag.

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    • Subscriber-only journalism: Making sure our work counts

    Moving away from page views to a whole-funnel approach in pursuit of subscribers and sustainable journalism.

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    • Digital subscription strategies for small and mid-sized newsrooms

    We share metrics, best practices and ideas to try.

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    • Focusing our newsrooms on digital subscriptions

    The truest sign of our health as a business and the fulfillment of our mission: paying subscribers. In this conversation, learn how your newsroom can keep existing customers and win the business of new ones.

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    • Understanding our target audiences

    What are “Family Forward” and “Know the Score,” and why are they so key to unlocking potential subscriber growth? This first in a series of dissecting our total potential local readership will delve into the content these two groups say are most likely to win their business.

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    • How to build a metrics-savvy newsroom

    The authors interviewed two dozen journalists and data analysts across 20 organizations, hunting for practices that are broad enough to be useful to most newsrooms, but specific enough that they provide a basic blueprint.

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    • Gannett homepage editors ran hundreds of headline A/B tests. Here’s what we’ve learned.

    Unlike SEO, which is about attracting initial impressions, these tips optimize for human interest in places you already have guaranteed impressions (homepage, Facebook, Twitter, etc).

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    • Why it matters when we publish

    Josh Awtry discusses how to optimize your post timing to engage with the widest audience possible. By being deliberate about posting times, your stories can reach further across communities.

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    • SEO for live and breaking news

    In this slideshow, you’ll learn how to use Google search results to amp up your breaking news and live content.

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    • Fault Lines: diversity, equity and inclusion

    The Maynard Insitute, backed by a grant from the Knight Foundation, will help our journalists see where coverage could improve across socioeconomic status, geography, race, gender and other fault lines.

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    • Audience growth (for editors)

    This webinar helps decision-makers understand how to grow their news organization’s audience. In this quick video, you’ll learn how to set goals and how to reach them.

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    • Audience growth (for reporters)

    Here are five things reporters can do to increase their own traffic.

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    • Building lasting relationships through engagement

    Here are a few clear steps to start to build relationships with your readers, including in-person, social and online.

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    • Best practices for engagement and UGC forms

    Summer Moore and Penny Riordan walk you through our new reader engagement form templates, which can be embedded directly into stories.

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    • Creating data visualizations

    In this quick clip, Maggie Farley discusses how to build visualizations that will engage and build trust with your audience. She demonstrates different tools to build quick data visualizations and animations.

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    • Exploring Google Trends

    Maggie Farley, a former Los Angeles Times foreign correspondent, is now working with Google News Initiative to help journalism thrive in the digital age. This video covers Google Trends.

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    • SEO for reporters

    SEO expert David Stone will explore examples of where a headline missed, and where it succeeded. Remember, this means more people will find your stories.

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    • Don’t forget social (for digital editors)

    What about the platforms we don’t talk about much? This seminar examines how to make the most of those platforms.

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    • News audience habits in the time of coronavirus

    What we’ve learned about readers’ interests in Covid-19 coverage in the early stage.

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    • SEO for digital editors

    SEO expert David Stone will share five tips to increase search traffic.

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    • How to use Viafoura for comment moderation

    Training to discuss the role of the moderation, moderator role and permissions, and how to moderate.

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    • SEO Boot Camp 3: Crafting powerful headlines that do well in search

    To stand out in the overcrowded SEO space, sites need to create powerful headlines that rivet audience attention and guarantee a high click-through rate. This training session showcases proven headline […]

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    • 50 tools for writing well with Roy Peter Clark

    Organized into four sections, “Nuts and Bolts,” “Special Effects,” “Blueprints for Stories,” and “Useful Habits,” this series is infused with more than 200 examples from journalism and literature.

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    • Tips for grant-writing and partnerships

    Wondering what you can do to receive newsroom grants or work with ProPublica and other nonprofits? We have tips from people who’ve been successful and those who’ve worked on the receiving end of the process.

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    • Protected: Table Stakes IV: Funnel occasional users to habitual and paying/valuable loyalists

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