The 20th annual Online News Association conference converged in New Orleans Sept. 12-14, offering more than 160 sessions for organizations serving news online, including plentiful local news-focused panels, keynotes and collaborative discussions. One overarching theme was the importance of being audience-centered.
So interesting to hear, at one #ONA19 panel after another, news leaders talk about they’ve moved from “digital first” to “audience first.” I remember when, as a digital executive, it was a fight to suggest “audience first” rather than digital-first. #progress
— Frank Mungeam (@frankwords) September 13, 2019
Here are a few takeaways from the event that local media organizations can consider immediately.
Session: Real-life local news revenue experiments that aren’t advertising
With funding at the forefront of many of the topics at ONA, a panel of experts outlined eight new business model ideas that encourage relationship building with the audience and offers a revenue stream.
1. Project Text: For a small recurring donation, readers or viewers sign up to send and receive texts from reporters.
2. Wirecutter: The product review website and subsequent newsletters, owned by The New York Times Co., gives readers honest and in-depth details about products, offers discounts on products, and generates revenue through affiliate links.
3. Philly Eats: As an experimental restaurant app, Philly Eats leverages existing restaurant review content from The Philadelphia Inquirer to give users trusted, expert opinions about the local food scene.
4. Talent acquisition: Working with technologists and entrepreneurs for recruitment, marketing, community cultivation and economic development, Technical.ly hosts paid job postings and sponsored content among its unbiased, original niche content that attracts job seekers.
5. Community or topic-based events: Funded primarily through sponsorships, media companies including Berkeleyside and San Francisco Public Press use events as a strategy for converting new members, and after events, organizations benefit from editorial lift and content such as videos and wrap-ups from the event.
6. Niche audience + broad appeal: With subscription boxes growing in popularity, news organizations are finding even small audiences can be fiercely loyal and willing to pay for content, exclusivity and goods. Companies like NPR are hand-curating and shipping wine, artisan crafts and local foods to paying members, which promotes the media brand, creates a new revenue stream, and keeps supporters eagerly awaiting more.
7. BoiseDev: Rather than a traditional paywall, the development- and growth-focused independent publisher BoiseDev uses a time wall, which allows paying subscribers to see content a set number of days before it’s accessible to the general public.
8. Continuing education: News organizations can offer educational content and opportunities around high-interest topics for their local communities at a cost, such as how Generocity creates news and events focused on social good in local communities.
Session: Getting people to pay for local news online

Going beyond page views and duration, analysts with Northwestern’s Medill School delved into reader and subscriber behavior data from 16 news markets large and small, following the release of a report featuring local news leaders, and presented additional insight with a panel of experts at ONA. Two core themes arose from the research.
1. Habit is the single best indicator of subscriber retention.
“If I can get you from reading one day a month to 10 days a month, that cuts the churn probability by half,” said Edward Malthouse, Haven Professor at the Medill School at Northwestern University. “Differentiated content is what gets people to come back, not commoditized content.”
2. The more content someone consumes, the more likely they are to churn.
This could be because the poor ad experience users receive leads to disengagement, Malthouse said.
Session: How to make Facebook work for your local newsroom
A more refined posting strategy and focusing on what the Facebook audience wants were key messages from the session centered around using Facebook in local newsrooms.
.@epiniat: When you learn what your audience is most interested in, “kill” the types of posts you know they don’t care about. This may mean you have to cut down on how much you post on Facebook in general. Quality over quantity. #ONA19FB
— Mariya Lewter (@MariyaCLewter) September 12, 2019
At Newsday, Audience Engagement Editor Elaine Pinat explained that they are posting less on Facebook but more relevant content to their unique audience on Long Island, N.Y.
See the full deck and worksheet from this session.
Session: Lessons From the Instagram Local News Fellowship
In June 2019, Instagram and the Missouri School of Journalism kicked off the Instagram Local News Fellowship placing three of the journalism school’s 2019 graduates in three metro newsrooms for a summer fellowship.
The three student journalists spent the summer working at The Boston Globe, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch helping the newsrooms build community and attract younger readers by rethinking and reinventing the papers’ Instagram strategy through local news coverage on Instagram. The student fellows also worked with high school students, from a high school without a student newspaper, in proximity to their assigned newsroom.
Interesting talk about how newsrooms like @stltoday & @BostonGlobe partnered with young journalists to create Instagram strategies. Another bit of info from @instagram: don’t expect links in feeds any time soon (it’s “not on the roadmap”). It recommends focusing on stories #ONA19
— Kate Winkle (@KateEWinkle) September 12, 2019
Never surprised by the drive, talent & curiosity of middle & high school journalists. Loved hearing about the experiences @instagram local news fellows had working with teens. Important to create more projects like this @BostonGlobe @stltoday @reportinglabs #ignewsfellows #ONA19 pic.twitter.com/YPcBnm3mGi
— Elis Estrada (@eyes107) September 12, 2019
Session: How Instagram Stories helped us to double traffic and engage audience
Franak Viačorkam, digital media strategist for U.S. Agency for Global Media and a VP of the Digital Communication Network, shared how Instagram Stories can keep your audience engaged and inspired, including instruments and tactics to make Stories stand out, lead the audience to your website, as well as mistakes to avoid.
Traffic share from instagram stories varies from 8%-18% of ALL website traffic. Instagram stories should be original, exclusive, and quality. Pro tip: don’t buy one year subscriptions for creation tools because new ones come out all the time. #ona19 #ona19igstories
— Anna G. Bahn (@annaxgabriela) September 14, 2019
On providing content for #instagram 📱 This is the next gen of your audience!! So if you’re not already posting:
✔️try to post 1x/day
✔️consider what your strategy will be ✔️figure out what can you consistently implement
Bonus: Focus on what is unique to your content #ONA19 🙌🏻— Sarah Lee (@smorinews) September 12, 2019
Session: CrowdTangle Trends Report: How is local news performing on Facebook?
Last week, CrowdTangle released its U.S. Local News Trends Report, highlighting data from about 2,700 local news publishers’ post frequency, content mix, scheduling, video views and interactions on Facebook and presented findings with a panel of news leaders during ONA.
“Longer videos generated more views than shorter ones. We found that while shorter videos were posted at a higher frequency, longer videos accounted for an outsized share of the total views.”
–https://t.co/JolxraklTm
great insights by @crowdtangle at #ONA19— Kumar Manish (@kumarmanish9) September 13, 2019
Reduced volume, spread-out frequency and post variety (tracked by percentage) proved successful for Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. They even develop social-specific content to ensure high engagement and social reach. #ONA19 love the tone approach in the weather meme pic.twitter.com/y5XbOR5atY
— Joe Lanane (@joe_lanane) September 13, 2019
See all of the ONA19 sessions hosted by Facebook, CrowdTangle and Instagram.
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