Defining sustainability in news publishing

The partnership between FT Strategies and the Google News Initiative is dedicated to delivering sustainable growth strategies to 500 publishers. But what does “sustainability” mean in the context of news publishing organisations? That question is extremely difficult to answer and of course, context matters (location, content type, target audience and audience size, revenue model). However, having worked with hundreds of publishers across the region and with numerous ecosystem partners, we would argue that there are a set of “common ingredients” that underpin a sustainable news organisation. This blog post will explore our definition of sustainable news organisations and the “common ingredients” that enable sustainability.

Although defining “sustainability” in the news context could be perceived as an academic exercise, DW Akademie eloquently explains the importance of an industry wide standard - “In one crucial respect the climate debate is far ahead of the media viability debate: There are feasible and commonly accepted parameters and methods to assess the climate situation—such as carbon dioxide concentrations, ocean acidification, temperature, precipitation, or sea levels... Up to now, the discussion around media viability misses just that.”

Our joint teams – working alongside an external advisory board of publishing executives, academics and industry associations – aligned around the following definition of Sustainability:

Building upon this definition, we set out to ascertain the “pillars” or “common ingredients” that are needed for a news organisation to reach a position of sustainability.

The first pillar is strong financial performance and resilience. This is defined as a publisher that has exhibited (over the last three years) a healthy profit margin and has enough cash to cover its costs and meet its financial obligations (e.g. debt repayments) over the next three years. We consider financial performance as the outcome on a number of inputs detailed below.

The second pillar is a valued, differentiated product with strong audience engagement. This is defined as a publisher that invests in original reporting and produces content that better meets the needs of their communities than their competitors. This is driven by reliance on, and consistent use of, customer research, testing and audience analytics.

The third pillar is a viable business model to monetize audience engagement. This is defined as a publisher that has established a business model which supports their independence and journalistic mission. For example, European publishers typically generate a larger proportion of their revenue from digital formats and directly from their readers (either via subscriptions or contributions) than their Asian counterparts.

The fourth pillar is the business foundations to operate effectively and adapt. This is defined as a publisher that has developed critical organisational capabilities including: supportive long-term ownership, clear and well-communicated strategic goals, a collaborative and talented workforce, necessary financial controls (and agility) and an appropriate technology infrastructure.

Finally, no publishing organisation exists in a vacuum, and therefore it is important to acknowledge the market context in which a news organisation operates (pillar five). A favourable market context is defined as a location where there are high levels of press freedom, a strong national economy, a captive audience (that trusts and is willing to pay for news), a large market with a deep sense of community and federated access to the internet.

To be successful, news organisations typically require a minimum level of competency across all five pillars of sustainability.

Over the next three years, FT Strategies and the Google News Initiative have committed to significantly expand a programme that supports publishers in their business and digital transformation. This will culminate in publisher programmes delivered to more than 500 publishers in 50 countries globally, to develop sustainable growth strategies for their organisations.

As a result of investing the time required to meaningfully define sustainability and its key pillars, we have been able to map the pillars against our existing programmes. This has helped us to update our programmes and identify opportunities for expansion into critical new areas in 2023 and 2024.

In 2023 and beyond, we have programmes that are designed to help publishers build valued differentiated products with strong audience engagement. Audience Diversity Academy is our flagship five month programme designed to help publishers improve the diversity of their audience (e.g. gender, age, geography) and embed inclusive strategies internally. In addition to this, we have, in the past, also run a Rapid Response programme which was a shorter, two week programme designed to help publishers rapidly design and test new solutions to a critical problem whilst also developing test and learn capabilities.

We also offer two programmes which help publishers build viable business models to monetize audience engagement. Subscriptions Academy is a five month programme designed to help publishers increase their number of digital subscribers and develop a long-term reader revenue strategy. Digital Revenue Launchpad is a three month programme designed to help publishers develop a new reader revenue strategy and test the associated opportunity size.

There are also programmes that help publishers build the foundations to operate effectively and adapt. To this end, we offer a number of week-long foundation programmes such as the North Star Foundation which supports publishers in creating a North Star organisational goal and a tangible plan of how to achieve it, and are in the process of developing more. In previous years, we ran Data & Insights Launchpad. This was a three month programme designed to help publishers build specific data and insight capabilities (e.g. audience segmentation or an audience engagement metric).

We are always improving and updating our existing programmes to reflect the feedback that we receive from publishers and new trends within the publisher ecosystem. We are also open to ideas (from publishers, academics, industry associations) in terms of how we could extend our programme offering - for example, covering other content (such as digital advertising) or segments of the market. Please, if you have any ideas, contact us.

If you would like to apply for any of our programmes on behalf of your organisation or would like to refer another publishing organisation - please register your interest here.