The Single Subject News Project
In October 2017 the Center launched its Single Subject News Project, with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, to provide news outlets with training and best practices on how to find, build, and engage audiences. The project worked with a cohort of nine newsrooms. The War Horse, The Marshall Project, The Trace, Chalkbeat, and The Hechinger Report cover veteran’s issues, criminal justice, gun violence, local education news, and innovation and inequality in education, respectively. The cohort also includes ProPublica, The Texas Tribune, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, and The Center for Public Integrity, as investigative and nonprofit models with broader coverage areas.
During the first phase of the project, researchers gathered metrics from participating news outlets and assessed audience development plans, staffing, technology, and funding. During the second phase of the project, each newsroom worked on a series of performance challenges related to growing their digital audience. The project produced a number of best-practices from our research including:
- Optimizing for Audiences: SEO 101 for Nonprofit Newsrooms
- Five Reasons Why Nonprofit Media Should Ask Their Audience for Support
- What Nonprofit Digital Newsrooms Need Next to Grow their Audience and Find Revenue
- The Email Newsletter Benchmarking Tool
- The Email Newsletter Guide
See the project’s Medium page for a full list of research and best practices.
