The Startup Newsroom: Lessons From the Single-Subject News Project: #newsrev briefing
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Transcript of The Startup Newsroom: Lessons From the Single-Subject News Project: #newsrev briefing
The Startup Newsroom: Lessons from the Single-Subject News Project Lara Setrakian and Kristin Nolan Tow Center for Digital Journalism
@hypertopical #nichenews
News Deeply is an award-winning new media and technology company that fuses news, information, technology and digital design. Our vision is to simplify the user experience of complex information, creating information products that serve a mix of media, enterprise and institutional clients. The News Deeply platform provides a single-subject design, allowing clients to capture complex issues in a simple, unified dashboard, with a highly engaging user interface design.
@hypertopical #nichenews
About Us: News Deeply
@hypertopical #nichenews
The Deeply Model Geographies EXAMPLES Myanmar Deeply Congo Deeply Egypt Deeply
Strategic Issues EXAMPLES Oceans Deeply Poverty Deeply Disarmament Deeply
Science, Technology, & Public Health EXAMPLES Alzheimer’s Deeply Brain Deeply Robotics Deeply
Our First Platform: Syria Deeply
Syria Deeply was a crisis reporting project that incorporated the latest technological tools of the day, all to track an ongoing conflict. The aim was to improve the art of storytelling with user-centric design.
Our Next Project: Arctic Deeply
With our partner, the World Policy Institute, we are incubating Arctic Deeply, an exploration of an issue that effects the planet and all people on it. The Arctic story is a bell-weather for climate change and its human impact.
Three Rising Trends: • Hypertopical Publishing • Niche/Vertical News • The Journalist-Entrepreneur
Skills Required: A Fusion of Toolkits
Editorial Talent • Integrity
• Eye for the Story
• Subject Matter
Mastery
Entrepreneurial Talent • “Lean Startup” Methodology
• Management Skills
• Project Management Skills
• Financial Literacy
• Technology Literacy
• Sales Capacity
• Operational Grit
@hypertopical #nichenews
Who We’re Talking About
Our study captured a wide variety of single-subject news sites covering specialized beats, from arts & culture to geographical issues to science.
@hypertopical #nichenews
Common Cause: Shared Motives and Execution Strategies
The majority of single-subject news sites are attempting to fill a gap in mainstream media coverage while providing and maintaining specialized knowledge.
“What I noticed with these outlets [entrepreneurial start ups] were that they were still an insider’s
game…entrepreneurs that aren’t plugged into the scene are ignored…”
-Brian Kovalesky, StartUp Beat
@hypertopical #nichenews
Contrasting Models: Target Audience, Structural Setup, and Major Media Ties
TARGET AUDIENCE
Audiences are
niche, many sites
exhibited different
approaches for
accessing them
STRUCTURAL SETUP
Single-subject
sites come in a
lot of shapes,
forms and sizes
MAJOR MEDIA TIES
Some of our
case study sites
were housed
inside of or allied
with a major
media outlet
@hypertopical #nichenews
@hypertopical #nichenews
Shared Emphasis on Engagement and Impact
Single subject websites value engagement and impact over traffic. We’re not showing traffic numbers as evidence of our impact. We’re pointing to things like our Reuters collaboration and we developed others as we went along to show how we were impacting the conversation [on climate change]. We found a way to have an impact on the conversation without having to build a giant website with huge traffic. It’s very expensive and difficult to do. So we found high-impact, low-cost solutions for doing our work. That was attractive to funders.
-David Sassoon, InsideClimate News
Seed Funded Bootstrapping
Like any Startup, They’re Either…
@hypertopical #nichenews
…and they’re all looking for revenue.
Diversified Revenue Streams For the most part, single-subject sites seek alternative revenue streams
Foundations
Merchandising
Live Events
Direct Sponsorship Earned Revenue/
External Projects
@hypertopical #nichenews
Corporate Subscriptions
Market/Job Boards
Crowdfunding
“Free-mium” Paywalls
@hypertopical #nichenews
Startup Funding Map
What They’re NOT Doing for Money
@hypertopical #nichenews
Traditional Advertising
Content Syndication
What’s Holding Them Back?
@hypertopical #nichenews
Startup Management
Skills
Marketing/User
Acquisition
Technology Skills
So How Did They Do?
@hypertopical #nichenews
@hypertopical #nichenews
Traffic
• Peak return rate was 60%; mean was 39%. • Event drivers followed major new events or special
events within the niche. • Between peaks, single-subject sites identify their
“super user”— the die-hard readers of their topic, the community they serve and monetize.
Engagement Statistics
@hypertopical #nichenews
The industry is following us around. This season, for the first time ever, ESPN has a reporter assigned to every single NFL team. So they have 32 beat writers, and they never had that before. And that’s something we’ve had since the beginning… That’s the innovation.
- King Kaufman, Bleacher Report
@hypertopical #nichenews