Single Subject News Project

 The Single Subject News Project ran from 2017-2019, and was funded by a gift from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

The Single Subject News Project worked with a cohort of news outlets to provide training and develop publicly-accessible 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.

View the project’s reports on its Medium blog.