Access actionable, accessible newsroom data with Metrics for News

There’s no one “correct” way to use data in your newsroom. Each news outlet has its own unique needs, audiences, priorities and limitations, which will guide how their teams interpret metrics and implement them in their work. But there are common strategies and techniques that newsroom leaders can use to help incorporate audience data into a newsroom’s workflows.

In partnership with the Online News Association, the American Press Institute talked to two newsroom partners who use API’s Metrics for News (MFN) tool to inform their newsrooms’ coverage and improve their audience engagement.

In this webinar, Liz Worthington, director of product strategy at API, was joined by Erin Lebar, manager of audience engagement for news at the Winnipeg Free Press, and Elizabeth Couch, director of audience engagement at Crain’s City Brands, to discuss how they use MFN, learning lessons from your data and dealing with internal resistance to data.

“It’s Adobe Analytics with training wheels.”

That’s how Elizabeth Couch described Metrics for News. “You don’t need an advanced degree or special training or to be buddies with someone on the data and analytics team,” she said. “Anytime you have a question that you want a quick answer to, you can actually just go into MFN and find it.”

She says that MFN has helped Crain’s City Brands identify actionable trends and solve mysteries. One helpful tool has been the ability to put content into easily sortable buckets, and then mix and match categories to ask more interesting questions.

For instance, rather than simply wondering about the general success of a newsletter, MFN helps editors answers questions like:

• What type of reader is coming to this newsletter?
• Are they mostly subscribers or registered non-subscribers?
• Are they mostly in our region or outside of our region?
• Are they mostly interested in real estate coverage or manufacturing coverage?

This data can be helpful to validate — or refute — newsroom hunches, said Couch, which helps newsrooms avoid spending too many resources on plans that don’t resonate with the audience.

It can also be useful for finding “hidden gems” of stories. Couch said that they realized by looking at MFN that while stories about the business of law didn’t drive traffic, they did attract a slew of new subscribers. They were then able to focus on this underserved audience and move these readers down the funnel from anonymous readers to registered users and, ultimately, paying subscribers.

Data-informed, not data-led

Couch is careful to make clear that data and metric tools are there to support their journalism, not dictate it. The newsroom at Crain’s City Brands uses the data it receives through tools like MFN to help it do more impactful journalism, not chase clicks. She’s fond of the maxim that metrics without action are just numbers — newsrooms need to look at both the successes and failures that can be seen in the data and make decisions based on it.

On a daily basis, Couch says the Crain’s team uses Chartbeat and MFN as its main tools. Chartbeat offers insight into daily traffic and individual success to help Crain’s “win the day,” as she put it. MFN gives a broader look at audience engagement patterns and big-picture opportunities. She said it’s helpful to make sure that the “foundation” of the newsroom is solid, and that the outlet is serving its mission.

Using data to protect the brand and launch new products

Erin Lebar at the Winnipeg Free Press says that MFN has helped the team learn what has value to their audience, understand what they can stop doing and identify opportunities for change or experimentation. She also said that reporters appreciate that they now have access to their own analytics dashboards so that they can better understand how audiences are engaging with their content.

One prime example was how MFN helped grow the Free Press’s coverage of downtown Winnipeg. She said that while the downtown area is not a popular destination, coverage of the area always performed well. They decided to run a series of long-form, lifestyle stories about different aspects of downtown over the week between Christmas and New Year’s — a historically low period for traffic. And the series was a huge success, resulting in high engagement scores and popularity among several audience segments, including social media users and readers in rural areas. On an engagement scale of 1-300, the stories were scoring in the 260-270 range, reiterating the audience’s desire for content about downtown Winnipeg.

The Free Press also turned to MFN metrics to help launch new newsletters. The audience team knew that food was popular with readers, but it wasn’t until they could see the data that they knew a food and drinks newsletter was the place to start. The newsletter was a hit upon launch, and has maintained a more than 70% open rate since it debuted in 2021. They also saw that gardening stories always did well, particularly hyperlocal content that offered region-specific gardening information for Winnipeg’s unusual weather. That led to the launch of a monthly gardening newsletter in 2022, which also boasts an open rate over 70%.

The team at Crain’s even used its audience data to launch an entirely new newsroom. Based in Detroit, Crain’s noticed that statewide stories were attracting readers from West Michigan. That led to the hiring of a new beat reporter, whose coverage was popular enough statewide that it ultimately led Crain’s to open an entire newsroom in Grand Rapids.

How to make data accessible and actionable

Metrics for News is built to be accessible to every journalist in a newsroom. It has dashboards designed for different roles, so reporters can see their own work, while editors can see their teams’. The tool offers blended metrics, which take different data points that are important to a news organization and combine it into a single score, which allows each team member to keep their data comprehensive but also simple.

For Lebar at the Winnipeg Free Press, the goal is to keep metrics “middle of mind” by applying a no-pressure approach to analytics rollout in the newsroom. She began by asking team members to spend 30 minutes with MFN every week, so that they could become familiar with the tool and begin to take ownership of the analytics around their stories. She then went on maternity leave and, with no one to backfill her role, she was afraid that use of MFN would drop off entirely. Instead, she was pleased to discover upon her return that two-thirds of the newsroom was using it at least monthly.

At Crain’s, Couch took a more proactive approach to integrating MFN metrics into the newsroom. Every month, each reporter sits down with their editor to review their KPIs to gain a better understanding of how to improve their stories. Each meeting focuses on three key questions: What worked? What didn’t work? What surprised you? Couch said that these conversations have helped both reporters and editors better own their beats.

Using data to ensure audiences respond to mission-critical reporting

All news outlets have stories that are central to the mission of their work, but aren’t necessarily the most popular with readers. Data gathered from tools like MFN can help find creative ways to maintain this important coverage in a way that resonates with the audience.

Right now, Lebar said, the paper is struggling with its book section — one of the last printed book sections in Canada. She said they hear frequently from booksellers and authors that this section is vital to them, but the numbers for the stories in this section aren’t strong. Currently, the paper is using MFN to look closer at the people who are reading this content, and see what else they are reading, with the hope that this secondary content will appeal to a new audience who may also be interested in books.

Crain’s more niche business perspective means that they have fewer obligations to cover unpopular subjects as part of their legacy. But Crain remembers that feeling of being a community stalwart from her days in daily news, and her advice is to have hard conversations and be open to change. “Try new things and then try more new things and fail fast,” she recommended.

Top tips for using MFN in the newsroom

Erin Lebar, manager of audience engagement for news at the Winnipeg Free Press:

1. “You do not need 100% buy-in from everyone to use this tool successfully,” said Lebar. It also doesn’t have to be a product that team members use every day. Its value shines in its ability to guide long-term planning, when there is time for reflection and goal-setting.

1. Unsuccessful projects can still produce useful and actionable insights. “Failed experiments are not necessarily failures,” Lebar added. Being able to make changes, test ideas and then pivot helps newsrooms learn and grow each time.

Elizabeth Couch, director of audience engagement at Crain’s City Brands:

1. Be excited about data! “We’re so lucky today to have more information than we ever have before about how our work is performing,” said Couch. Using this data to help better serve your audience benefits everyone.

1. Start with low-hanging fruit, collect wins and then move on to more ambitious goals. This can mean showing over-worked journalists that something they’re doing isn’t working how they want — and that they can stop doing it and focus on other things. When people see the value in using data to make smart decisions, they are likely to get on board with using metrics in other situations, Couch said.

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