Audience – Who are we doing this for?

To explore practical ways of identifying your audience, continue to the section on Defining Audience.

Why should you define your audience?

• Your target audience is not everyone. Mass‑media days are gone; resources are finite and the distribution is scattered, so choose the people you can truly serve where they are and let that drive product and revenue bets.

• Deep knowledge of specific audience segments allows you to build lasting relationships. While it's impossible to understand everyone, you can learn the motivations, pain points, and (content related) needs of a clearly defined group.

• A shared vocabulary keeps the whole company aligned on its most valuable asset. Frameworks such as User Needs, User Personas, or psychographic segmentation give editors, product managers and marketers the same language for planning activities and measuring success.

This emphasis on segmentation reflects a subtle but important shift. Traditionally, serving the public was a top-down process, with editors and reporters deciding what audiences needed to know. Over time, movements like civic or public journalism encouraged more bottom-up approaches, inviting conversation, responding to social needs, and reflecting community voices. As media scholar Mark Deuze notes, public journalism can bridge this tension. It preserves journalism’s core storytelling mission while integrating the authentic wants and needs of its audience (Deuze, 2005).

News publications have long targeted specific segments of society. Historians generally consider the Acta Diurna (Daily Acts) from 131 B.C. Rome to be the first known medium of news. By chronicling political decisions, legal proceedings, and key public events, the Acta Diurna did more than just share facts. It framed an emerging notion that there was a definable audience to be informed.

Such early recognition of a target audience foreshadowed how media can influence public discussion and civic access. Whether a publisher’s mission is journalistic, political, or commercial, audience-focused thinking has remained a fundamental part of any successful media strategy.

Without an audience, we don’t have a business.

Sarah Marshall, Condé Nast

In the mass-media era, segmentation naturally revolved around attracting advertisers. Publications honed in on broad but monetisable groups, building tons of media concepts to appeal to those audiences. Digitalisation has disrupted the old approaches. While advertisers keep feeding the platforms, more publishers are shifting toward reader revenue and therefore focusing on serving more precisely defined audience segments.

Today, data capabilities allow newsrooms to identify which stories convert occasional visitors into loyal readers, how traffic from social media differs from search-driven visits, and how to personalize newsletters. We also now know the questions that led users to our platforms, revealing not just what they clicked on, but what they were actively seeking. These insights prompt a key editorial question: “Who, specifically, are we making this for?”

For as long as users are using search engines to understand the news, it's a very valuable channel. News organizations ignore or dismiss search users at their own risk. What could be more valuable than a reader who is actively signaling that they are looking for news? If they arrive through search, it means they chose you over a competitor.

Anna Dubenko, The New York Times

When a newsroom wants to know its audience, data and technology are its best allies. First-party data is often the most reliable way to understand your audiences. After years of back-and-forth, Google (developer of both the largest ad platform and the Chrome browser) cancelled its plan to phase out third-party cookies. Still, the looming threat pushed many publishers to invest in first-party data tools such as customer data platforms (CDPs).

Since the future of third-party tracking remains uncertain, owning your data allows you to understand your audience on your own terms and reduces reliance on external providers data. Publishers that collect consent-based, first-party signals can personalise responsibly, serve more valuable audiences to advertisers, and future-proof their reader-revenue strategies.

Talking about audience development instead of content development lowers the threshold for collaboration. It naturally brings together content, target groups, data, and technology.

Kirsi Hakaniemi, Keskisuomalainen

Defining Your Audience

The concept of the Model Reader was introduced by Italian novelist and philosopher Umberto Eco in his 1979 book Lector in Fabula (The Role of the Reader). According to Eco, a text only comes to life if the reader has the cultural and linguistic competence to interpret it. The Model Reader is a hypothetical person with the ideal knowledge to fully understand the intended meaning. This idea can be seen as an early version of audience-centric thinking.

Over time, other models have emerged to help define and understand audiences. Each model offers a unique perspective and combining several of them can provide a more complete view. Many of these frameworks are rooted in human-centered design. Although each model has distinct methods, they share the same purpose: to provide a shared vocabulary that helps newsrooms consistently answer the critical question, “Who are we doing this for?”

Most of these models segment audiences based on characteristics or needs rather than behaviors. Behavioral segmentation and funnel-based approaches are addressed in the next chapter, Engagement.

The marketing team might have more specific cohorts or personas, but in the newsroom, we think more in terms of user needs. Who needs what from our journalism? How do we meet those needs at this moment?

Jennifer Hicks, The Wall Street Journal

My interviews confirmed that there is no single correct way to define a target audience. While traditional definitions have often relied on demographic markers used in marketing, modern newsrooms tend to dig deeper into motivations and informational needs. That said, demographic factors still matter, especially age. A recent Nieman Lab article suggests that age may influence news habits more than nationality.

In interviews, professionals shared mixed views about whether and how to engage Gen Z. Several noted that reaching younger audiences requires formats and skills that many current newsrooms lack.

To explore practical ways of identifying your audience, continue to the section on Defining Audince.