Viewpoint: Why newsroom transformation is key to subscription growth

I recently attended a great roundtable discussion with a number of non-media folk to discuss customer retention tactics. I was talking to an industry expert about the work we do at FT Strategies, and explaining how one of the primary pillars of our focus with news organisations is the graduation from print to digital. “Still?”, she asked incredulously.

“Yes. Amazing isn’t it?”

I can barely believe that digital transformation has been top of the agenda in the media industry for close to 20 years already.

However, in my own experience and having visited multiple newsrooms globally over the years, for every one editorial team that has done the hard and demanding work of digital transformation, there are many, many more that have not. Where would your newsroom fit?

See if any of this sounds familiar to you:

• Editorial functions pretty much the same as it always has: with a large part of the effort dedicated to print and a small (likely separate) team working on digital
• Deadlines still reflect a print mindset: copy is filed late in the day, and if it makes its way online this will likely happen after the print edition has closed, or in some cases very late the next day
• There is a pervasive fear that digital will “cannibalise” the print edition, so early copy publishing is not regular practice unless it is done by a different team creating their own – often very different – web content
• The C-suite and executives talk about “going digital” but there is little real interest, investment or commitment to making this happen, and new hires are just replicas of the old hires
• There is a paywall in place, or being planned, but the task of growing and retaining subscriptions will fall to commercial or marketing teams
• Marketing and commercial teams circumvent editorial as much as possible and try to build a subscription business on copy that is late, old or irrelevant by the time it reaches its audience

I think the last point is most interesting. As the news industry has (finally) woken up to the idea that paying for journalism is not a new concept, there has been a rush to establish reader revenue models which promise the annuity revenue and stability that digital advertising cannot.

While paid-for content is absolutely correct as a concept, the execution is far more difficult – and one of the reasons for this is a real fear of trying to tackle and change editorial workflows, cadence and practices to service a digital, willing-to-pay audience.

The universal truth in news organisations globally is the separation of “church and state”. There is no doubt that editorial integrity should be protected at all cost. But in this modern world the notion that newsrooms should have little or no role in commercial endeavours – including subscription growth – is becoming increasingly obsolete - if not completely counterproductive to sustainability and growth.

As newsrooms become more representative, younger and dynamic and we pay more attention to audience diversity, there is no place for static thinking about our place in the world.

The FT’s subscription engine room

At the Financial Times, we most definitely experienced more change in the past 20 years compared to the preceding 125 years. The advent of the internet, the iPhone, and high speed connections completely disrupted our distribution channels, our users’ reading experiences and of course the fundamental business model of newspapers – ours included.

Across the industry, print has been in long-term decline for more than 20 years now, and advertising growth has been elusive for almost as long: very little of our past business remains intact.

At the FT, we’ve benefitted from visionary leadership that bit the bullet many years ago, and we worked extremely hard (and still do) to build and grow a successful digital business in both reader revenue and carefully considered advertising strategy that has seen digital ad revenues double in the past three years – and that very much included our editorial leadership and cross-departmental input.

Some of the most exciting product innovations at the FT are collaborative efforts that include or are driven by editorial, like FT Edit, or this example of a 'Draw your Own Chart' from the Visual storytelling team, or this fantastic visual explainer on AI.

There are vastly different conditions in this new era, and keeping the engine room of news companies entirely isolated from commercial reality is simply not good for business.

As much as we lament the decline of print and advertising and blame the rise of social media and platforms for our woes, much of the news industry is suffering from:

• A built-in “church and state” stress fracture in our businesses and the industry as a whole
• Siloed thinking and an inability to collaborate effectively or to think outside the box
• An unwillingness and genuine fear to try new things and experiment
• Suspicion of commercial colleagues – a damaging “us and them” mentality
• Product, engineering and technology teams falling on the commercial side of the fence and an often unhealthy tension between product and editorial

At the Financial Times, we have found that a closer relationship between commercial, editorial and technology can only result in revenue growth in the long term.

It is also vital to carefully pick the people who can make this happen – the glue that holds an organisation together.

There was a session at The Audiencers event in London this past week about bridge roles and how important they are in newsrooms. Panel participant and consultant Dmitry Shishkin has made very good observations about how wonderful things happen when product and content come together.

And Hannah Sarney, the FT’s newly appointed Editorial Product Director, will also be in Oslo next week to talk about her roles as a very effective bridge leader through the FT’s Next Generation Board and on the audience development team too.

Reader revenue models help newsrooms transform digitally

The establishment of reader revenue models (subscription or membership) at so many news organisations is positive not only for revenue generation but also for the toughest challenge of organisational and cultural change.

A paywall has a galvanising effect on journalists who don’t want to see their hard work going on a website for free – and for newsroom leaders it helps with adjusted workflows and better copy flow to publish valuable journalism with a clear value proposition for readers.

Reader revenue strategies are entirely in lockstep with quality journalism, and not with the high volume game of clickbait and churnalism. More importantly, for a paid model to be truly successful it will be enormously strengthened by the input and commitment of all: and this means editorial too.

When newsrooms are at worst actively campaigning against transformation initiatives - such as refusing to do any digital publishing, not attending digital training, treating digitally skilled staffers as inferior, citing labour contracts that don’t include digital work… the list goes on - it leaves organisations in a really tough spot.

The answer at this point is very simple: strong leadership. In a recent study, created in collaboration with the Google News Initiative, we found that leadership is a pivotal factor for sustainability and the growth and success of news organisations.

It is this trust and leadership from editors that will ultimately make the difference in the long-term fortunes of news organisations. Print is and will remain a premium product with a definitive market niche. But to ignore the commercial realities – and digital opportunities – of our industry is to be no better than the band leader on the Titanic.

Success lies in a common goal and purpose and having all staff in the same lifeboat and pulling in the same direction is the only way to leverage growth and guarantee sustainability.

Over the course of the next few months, we’ll be writing a series of blogposts on newsroom transformation highlighting key initiatives and lessons we have learned working with publishers across the globe.