Today, we’re kicking off a new initiative: What’s Working case studies. The idea is that media requires strategic clarity but also operational excellence. What’s Working focuses on operational excellence with case studies of publishers taking actions to grow their businesses in a rapidly shifting environment. The goal of What’s Working is to develop a database of tactical best practices in building audience-centric, sustainable media companies with explanations directly from practitioners.
We’re kicking off What’s Working with a deep dive from The Wall Street Journal’s head of audience strategy Vivyan Tran into how The Wall Street Journal has turned to audience personas to make sure its journalism is expanding its audience beyond its core audience of the older business executive. I don’t think I’m the first to make the joke that the WSJ’s biggest subscriptions hurdle is the “ultimate churn,” as its average subscriber is on the older side.
What I liked about this example is that it shows how publications like the Journal are now consumer products brands. That requires organizational change because it’s not familiar to journalistic organizations. Vivyan’s work on personas shows how this is as much cultural change as it is implementation of some new AI tool. This will be a recurring theme of What’s Working based on how often it comes up in our private salons.
As Vivyan said, “People are so much more aware of the context of the industry they work in. I could not have done this in 2023; it would have flown over people’s heads and been considered a waste of time and money.”
We have a slate of upcoming What’s Working case studies coming.
How The Daily Beast is building an internal AI app store to tackle sales, audience research and analytics.
How People is using video, games and personalized content to make its app a daily habit.
How The Atlantic is testing ways to get paid when AI agents use its journalism.
This is part of a larger initiative to relaunch TRB Pro membership that will stretch across audio, video, virtual and in-person gatherings. Our goal is for TRB Pro to be a central resource for media practitioners to connect with best practices and each other. TRB Pro members get unlimited access to the What’s Working database, invitations to What’s Working events, TRB Mixers and discounted access to TRB summits like TRB Audience Summit.
If you have questions about What’s Working or would like to contribute to this initiative, get in touch: [email protected]. Thanks to Sahil Patel for spearheading this initiative. You can reach Sahil at [email protected].