NewsBeat

August 2019 NewsBeat 9 than the current reliance on what is a declining share of advertising revenue," Franklin said. "There will be less focus on viral, one-and-done, click-bait-type stories and headlines, and more attention on building a long-term relationship with a core cohort of paying subscribers. It's a different way of thinking about building readership. And, local news organizations will need to cultivate a large enough contingent of paying customers to sustain their essential news gathering operations in their communities." Spiegel spent months analyzing the three news organizations' data, looking for behaviors that correlated with subscriber retention. "For the markets that we've studied, having a daily habit is paramount, with a couple of extra twists to this," said Ed Malthouse, Spiegel's Research Director. "Local content—differentiated content is the term that I used—is another really important factor that we see across the markets. … The exact meaning of local can vary between the markets, but what's important is, you own that and others don't. You do it better than anyone else." While Rosenstiel found the data noteworthy, he cautioned against drawing conclusions too broadly. He pointed out that the study involved just three publications and that some metrics of web visitors are complicated to interpret. Encouraged by the findings of this initial research, Medill has launched a follow-up study on small- and medium-sized markets in the Midwest to see whether the findings can be applied more widely. For now, Audrey Cooper, the San Francisco Chronicle's Editor in Chief, said Northwestern's findings will have practical benefits. "The amount of work that went into crunching 13 terabytes of data is truly astonishing, and it's given us some insights that we could have never otherwise obtained," Cooper said. "Some of it, thankfully, confirms some of our hunches about how to continue to evolve the business; other data has prompted us to ask new questions about how to report and distribute essential news to our readers— current and future." How to Build Habit One of the biggest challenges in digital news is replicating a print-newspaper level of customer loyalty by getting more visitors to adopt a daily digital habit. "The traffic to most sites is coming from a core group," Rosenstiel said. "So the key is to expand that core group – not to get people who come twice a month to come four times a month." But how do you build a core group with a daily habit when readers have so many choices? Ed Malthouse, Research Director of Medill's Spiegel Research Center, presents his findings to representatives of the Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and Indianapolis Star during a December meeting at Northwestern University. "I actually think this is a healthier business model. … There will be less focus on viral, one-and-done, click-bait-type stories and headlines, and more attention on building a long-term relationship with a core cohort of paying subscribers." — Tim Franklin, Medill School senior associate dean and head of Medill Local News Initiative

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