Audience Development in Organizations

Evolving audience expectations, consumer technology and digital platforms are reshaping how people encounter journalism, pushing every newsroom to build new skills and structures. The 2024 Reuters Institute Digital News Report points out that audiences have wanted more from journalism than simply “being informed” since the 1940s. Today’s industry-wide focus on user needs turns that long-standing idea into a pressing daily challenge: how can we serve those needs better?

Before the current focus on user needs, the field of audience development took shape around two practical questions: How can we put our journalism in front of more readers, and how can we succeed on the digital platforms they use? After a decade of effort and change-management by early audience-development champions, the discipline has become a newsroom essential. “The audience team is at the core of any successful newsroom,” as Amalie Nash of INMA writes in her Newsroom Transformation blog.

Based on the interviews conducted for this project, the role of audience development now extends across every stage of the funnel and beyond. Below are six key questions that emerged as central to the work of today’s audience development teams.

Who exactly are we serving, and what do they need today?

Who are we writing for? What do their needs look like, especially in this particular moment? We then shape our coverage to meet those specific needs and moments.

Jennifer Hicks, The Wall Street Journal

Which platforms or channels deserve our limited time, and why?

We provide central social media support and guidance, but each brand decides which platforms to use. We can advise them, explaining that Wired's BlueSky success doesn't guarantee the same results for other brands. We also serve as the main contact point for all external platforms.

Sarah Marshall, Condé Nast

Where is this user in their journey with us, and how can we sustain them or guide them forward?

We needed to figure out which user actions actually benefits us and what correlates with downstream retention, so we created these reader states. To increase engagement, we discovered that certain behaviors, like newsletter signups or app usage, significantly increase long-term engagement.

Mariah Craddick, The Atlantic

I think people move in and out of engagement depending on their current mode or what’s happening in their lives. Someone might be highly engaged one month and then two months later drop off completely.

Alexandra Smith, The 19th

What business or mission goal does this initiative advance?

We use commercially driven KPIs that brands understand well. We encourage brands to prioritize formats with the highest monetizable value.

Sarah Marshall, Condé Nast

How can we stand out? How can we bring our uniqueness and sense of personality into every platform we use?

I'm giving the community all of myself. My voice, my personality, everything. So how do we translate that into the app? How do we make my presence a natural part of the experience on all of our platforms?

Sofie Flagstad Hansen, Zetland

What should we prioritise in the coming year?

We don't want to lose sight of search. It’s not dead, just evolving. Newsletters are a major priority: we’re moving from link lists to voice-driven, narrative formats that drive revenue while continuing to test emerging channels.

Sarah Marshall, Condé Nast

To answer these and other questions about the relationship between the brand and its audience, publishers have built dedicated audience development teams or incorporated and developed skills in strategy, data, social media, search, and content creation within their existing teams. The structure of these teams varies widely depending on the organization’s size, strategy, and available resources as there is no one-size-fits-all model. Adriana Lacy Consulting offers a useful overview of the pros and cons of centralized, decentralized, and hybrid team structures.

While conducting interviews with leading audience teams, one fact stood out clearly: nearly all team members came from journalism backgrounds. While the industry has faced waves of layoffs in recent years, audience roles are mostly staffed by journalists who have pivoted to non-editorial roles by adding new layers of expertise in data and user-centric thinking.

They all have traditional journalistic backgrounds that they apply towards audience engagement. We’ve hired reporters, people from radio stations, to come do digital stuff at the Inquirer. I’d say we are hiring a skill set more than a position.

Ross Maghielse, The Philadelphia 

Effective audience development requires a holistic, collaborative, and data-driven culture, supported by bridge roles that connect audience work across the newsroom and guided by a strategy rooted in audience needs. To build this foundation, audience centricity must be embedded in the company’s overall strategy. Clear skills and responsibilities must also be defined and actively upheld.

For audience work to succeed, it’s essential that audience editors are fully trusted by the newsroom. That means they need both editorial and journalistic skills. Not just data and analytics expertise. If they’re seen as outsiders, especially as marketing people, their efforts will face skepticism and fall short. To be effective, they must sit within the newsroom and be viewed as part of it.

Anna Dubenko, The New York Times

The New York Times’ recent Audience Editor vacancy outlines precisely these hybrid expectations. Strong experience on journalism, platform expertise, and an ability to translate insights into editorial action. View full job description here.

Audience-centricity is not a label you can simply attach to an existing product while continuing business as usual. True audience focus requires rethinking how journalism is created, distributed, and measured, starting with the needs of the people it serves. Audience-centricity is a mindset that lives in the details.

We don’t use no-reply emails. When I send a message, even to 12,000 people, recipients can hit reply and respond directly to me, not to a generic team inbox. They see that it’s me writing, and I take pride in that. It’s a very Zetland approach. We believe people should be able to talk to us. One of our key audience groups doesn’t follow media institutions, they follow people. So it’s important they know that we are people too.

Sofie Flagstad Hansen, Zetland

A few years ago, The Membership Guide published a valuable chapter titled Staffing a Membership Strategy. It highlights an important risk: “One risk of the mantra that membership is everyone’s responsibility is that it becomes no one’s responsibility.” The guide offers useful frameworks and practical guidance, including a checklist for defining roles and responsibilities around audience development. It is well worth reading, even if your revenue model does not rely on memberships.

To define clear roles, responsibilities, and tactics across platforms, start with the "Platform Strategy Inspired by Condé Nast." It helps translate strategy into action by assigning ownership for every recurring task and connecting each metric to a specific role. This approach sharpens decision-making, uncovers skill gaps, and empowers teams to create repeatable, scalable practices. As Sarah Marshall of Condé Nast notes, when people know exactly what they’re accountable for, they can confidently take ownership and lead their work.