How Can Journalists Build and Maintain an Audience?

Building an audience is important, though a somewhat counterintuitive, piece of journalism. As a journalist, one’s job is to essentially interpret and communicate the truth. 

And so it can feel a bit disingenuous to write for the sake of an audience–is it really the truth if it’s catered for one point of view? The answer to this lies in another question–is any one person capable of communicating the truth objectively and completely free from bias? 

The answer, of course, is no–one is always informed by their unconscious biases regardless of their level of awareness. Therefore, one person’s version of events will always appeal to someone more highly than it will to another individual, even if those two people have a similar background on paper.

An audience sustains a journalist’s career. Newsrooms and other methods of employment are helpful, but if someone is always reading the material, the journalist will always have a reason to produce more material. In the age of clicking on articles, this is particularly important: the person who gets the most clicks online will likely work a lot. So how does a journalist begin to build that audience? How do they toe the line between truth and catering to an audience? And more importantly, how does a journalist maintain their relationship with their audience?

PEOPLE RELY ON SHORTCUTS TO GET THEIR INFORMATION

Understanding this is extremely important to the landscape of journalism in the 21st century. The rise of social media websites like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, have created echo chambers where people will pass around the same articles among their circles of friends. Therefore, most people have no idea that they’ve developed a bad habit of getting their information from the first source they see because confirmation bias plays an extraordinarily powerful part in their consumption of that information. Therefore, interjecting new information into that already very established ecosystem can be difficult.

“Quite often, audience-building involves a more calculated effort to optimize search-engine rankings, exploit the flow characteristics of existing media, target specific messages to specific audiences, or marshal the publicity machines of major studios and publishers,” writes James G. Webster, author of The Marketplace of Attention: How Audiences Take Shape in a Digital Age.

AUDIENCES DO NOT STICK TO THE SAME SOURCES FOR THEIR MEDIA CONSUMPTION

Most often, they will be accidentally checking the same source over and over as a result of the algorithms, but if they see a headline that aligns with their values, they will most likely click.  Unfortunately, casual consumers are not likely to be your audience members, as they tend to only consume news that comes across their plate. However, more niche readers, who are more than likely familiar with these algorithms and just as frustrated with them, will be the people who find your work and champion it.  So how do we speak to those people?

BRANDING AND VALUES

Everything seems like it belongs to a “brand” nowadays, which is a colder way of referring to the marketable parts of someone’s personality. A journalist is, themselves, the brand–regardless of whether or not they would like to be seen that way. The journalist is marketing their way of seeing the world and communicating information. That is what people are going to be reading them for. And in that, the journalist should decide what they would like to be known for.

One such example is Mandy Matkin, who began The Murdaugh Murders podcast. Matkin is now primarily known as an investigative journalist. Someone with their fingers firmly on the pulse of Wall Street, however, may want to be known as a financial writer. Either way, grounding oneself in that central value will provide an easier path ahead for the journalist and their potential audience to connect with them.

SOCIALS AND PROMOTION

Another interesting question to consider–what comes up when you Google yourself? Making sure your work makes it to all of your socials, is appropriately tagged and discoverable, and is being shared by friends and family is essential. An official website is also important here, as it boosts credibility and centralizes all of the journalists’ available work. Audiences want their information to be as accessible as possible. Journalists in newsrooms may want to consider purchasing domain names, whereas other journalists have a bit of freedom in how they want to structure their official website (a blog, a SubStack, etc.) These should be presences that are accessible, but committed to the aforementioned brand and values of the journalist.

REMEMBER: EVERYBODY INVOLVED IS HUMAN

The most important aspect of gaining and keeping an audience is in the almost impossible reminder that despite the sheer amount of computers, metrics, and other technical talk that goes into building readership in the 21st century, people want news they trust from other people.

Humans want to talk to other humans.  The rise of proprietary audiences in the 21st century is proof of this, and it is also why all of the journalist’s presence online should be accessible. Audiences want to carry the work they like forward in the 21st century, and engaging a proprietary audience can ensure longevity in your work like almost nothing else can guarantee. Responding to comments and praise, acknowledging audience observations, and making them feel like a part of the work will ensure that you have a returning audience for your work.

Journalism doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and therefore, the journalist and the audience are equally essential parts of the success of the journalist.  While we are still learning how information travels in this new version of our world, we can use what we do know to optimize the experience for every single journalist and potential reader.