Expanding target audiences

This Nieman Lab blog post by Zach Seward has a lot of interesting information about how Steve Brill plans to make his Journalism Online pay-to-play system work. But I found this the most interesting:

Broadening the target audience

In the spring, Brill told me the goal was “to get the 5 or 10 percent of your most committed readers to pay.” This summer, he expanded that target in an interview with CNN: “The idea is that a newspaper probably has 10 or 15 percent of its audience who are the most engaged, who come to that Web site all the time. Those are the people who will be asked to pay a small portion.”

At Yale last week, he said “10 or 15 or 20 percent” of a news site’s unique monthly visitors might be willing to pay. I don’t presume to know what a realistic goal is, though that’s obviously crucial to the success or failure of paid-content plans. I do know that one study found “core loyalists,” who visit 2 to 3 times a day for 20 days a month, represent 25% of visitors to newspaper sites. So if you’re probing Brill’s estimates, there’s your starting point.

So 25 percent of newspaper readers are willing to really pay for news. Is that going to be enough? I don’t know, but I think newspapers need to work on expanding that number.

I think a lot of newspapers just assume their target audience online is their local audience, even if people all around the world can read their newspaper. But I think newspapers can take something unique about the region they cover, nationalize, and develop a new corps of dedicated readers who might be willing to pay.

For example, Notre Dame’s student newspaper, The Observer, is consistenly one of the most-trafficked college newspapers in the country, despite the university having a relatively small student body (close to 12,00o) compared to places like Georgia, Texas and Maryland.

Why is this? I don’t know exactly, but it’s likely because The Observer‘s football articles are read by the thousands of crazy Notre Dame football fans from around the country.

Other newspapers could take similar tacks, and try to nationalize their local coverage and draw in readers from around the country. For example, The Sacramento Bee uses their position in California’s capital to create a ton of coverage of California politics and policy, which could draw in readers statewide.

Another example? A newspaper like The Capital in Annapolis (where I used to intern) could leverage its position in the sailing capital of the world, and feature blogs, wire stories about sailing as well as product reviews or other features.

Every city is known for something, and the newspaper in that city should be able to exploit that something and use it to bring in additional readership.

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