The Startup Newsroom: Lessons from the Single-Subject News Project Lara Setrakian and Kristin Nolan Tow Center for Digital Journalism

@hypertopical #nichenews

News Deeply is an award-winning new media and technology company that fuses news, information, technology and digital design. Our vision is to simplify the user experience of complex information, creating information products that serve a mix of media, enterprise and institutional clients. The News Deeply platform provides a single-subject design, allowing clients to capture complex issues in a simple, unified dashboard, with a highly engaging user interface design.

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About Us: News Deeply

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The Deeply Model Geographies EXAMPLES Myanmar Deeply Congo Deeply Egypt Deeply

Strategic Issues EXAMPLES Oceans Deeply Poverty Deeply Disarmament Deeply

Science, Technology, & Public Health EXAMPLES Alzheimer’s Deeply Brain Deeply Robotics Deeply

Our First Platform: Syria Deeply

Syria Deeply was a crisis reporting project that incorporated the latest technological tools of the day, all to track an ongoing conflict. The aim was to improve the art of storytelling with user-centric design.

Our Next Project: Arctic Deeply

With our partner, the World Policy Institute, we are incubating Arctic Deeply, an exploration of an issue that effects the planet and all people on it. The Arctic story is a bell-weather for climate change and its human impact.

Three Rising Trends: •  Hypertopical Publishing •  Niche/Vertical News •  The Journalist-Entrepreneur

Skills Required: A Fusion of Toolkits

Editorial Talent •  Integrity

•  Eye for the Story

•  Subject Matter

Mastery

Entrepreneurial Talent •  “Lean Startup” Methodology

•  Management Skills

•  Project Management Skills

•  Financial Literacy

•  Technology Literacy

•  Sales Capacity

•  Operational Grit

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Who We’re Talking About

Our study captured a wide variety of single-subject news sites covering specialized beats, from arts & culture to geographical issues to science.

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Common Cause: Shared Motives and Execution Strategies

The majority of single-subject news sites are attempting to fill a gap in mainstream media coverage while providing and maintaining specialized knowledge.

“What I noticed with these outlets [entrepreneurial start ups] were that they were still an insider’s

game…entrepreneurs that aren’t plugged into the scene are ignored…”

-Brian Kovalesky, StartUp Beat

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Contrasting Models: Target Audience, Structural Setup, and Major Media Ties

TARGET AUDIENCE

Audiences are

niche, many sites

exhibited different

approaches for

accessing them

STRUCTURAL SETUP

Single-subject

sites come in a

lot of shapes,

forms and sizes

MAJOR MEDIA TIES

Some of our

case study sites

were housed

inside of or allied

with a major

media outlet

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Shared Emphasis on Engagement and Impact

Single subject websites value engagement and impact over traffic. We’re not showing traffic numbers as evidence of our impact. We’re pointing to things like our Reuters collaboration and we developed others as we went along to show how we were impacting the conversation [on climate change]. We found a way to have an impact on the conversation without having to build a giant website with huge traffic. It’s very expensive and difficult to do. So we found high-impact, low-cost solutions for doing our work. That was attractive to funders.

-David Sassoon, InsideClimate News

Seed Funded Bootstrapping

Like any Startup, They’re Either…

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…and they’re all looking for revenue.

Diversified Revenue Streams For the most part, single-subject sites seek alternative revenue streams

Foundations

Merchandising

Live Events

Direct Sponsorship Earned Revenue/

External Projects

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Corporate Subscriptions

Market/Job Boards

Crowdfunding

“Free-mium” Paywalls

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Startup Funding Map

What They’re NOT Doing for Money

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Traditional Advertising

Content Syndication

What’s Holding Them Back?

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Startup Management

Skills

Marketing/User

Acquisition

Technology Skills

So How Did They Do?

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Traffic

•  Peak return rate was 60%; mean was 39%. •  Event drivers followed major new events or special

events within the niche. •  Between peaks, single-subject sites identify their

“super user”— the die-hard readers of their topic, the community they serve and monetize.

Engagement Statistics

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The industry is following us around. This season, for the first time ever, ESPN has a reporter assigned to every single NFL team. So they have 32 beat writers, and they never had that before. And that’s something we’ve had since the beginning… That’s the innovation.

-  King Kaufman, Bleacher Report

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