Product thinking drives innovation at the News Revenue Hub
The News Revenue Hub continually evolves its offerings by adapting services, technologies, and resources based on client feedback. This approach, rooted in user-centric product thinking, ensures the Hub is driven by the real-time needs of newsrooms.
Two recent examples highlight this approach: a custom dashboard developed for the Forward and the creation of audience heat maps for clients including Verite and The Daily Memphian.
A custom dashboard for the Forward
When Julie Moos, the Forward’s new managing editor for audience, requested a way to track “quality forms of traffic,” the News Revenue Hub listened. After a series of conversations, the Hub built a custom dashboard designed to demonstrate, among other data points, which stories readers were engaging with before subscribing to newsletters or making donations. The dashboard centralizes this information, making it more easily accessible for editorial and strategic decision-making.
Though the dashboard was initially tailored for the Forward, the Hub created a flexible model that can be applied to other clients. It includes customizable tabs showcasing key data points such as performance by author, article length, and category. This allows the Forward to identify which stories resonate with readers across different engagement levels — from casual visitors to highly-engaged “brand lovers.”
Will Warren, a project manager at the News Revenue Hub, described the dashboard’s development as a collaborative process. “The Forward’s request prompted us to dive into the data that would best serve their goals,” he explained, adding that the Hub suggested additional data layers, like click-conversation rates.
“The dashboard has been foundational for understanding our audience patterns, both day to day and over time,” said Moos. “It allows us to take a holistic view of their behavior so we can see distinctions — all in one place — between different types of page views, different types of engagement, and different types of loyalty.”
Moos added that the data in the dashboard has enabled her newsroom “to move beyond a singular focus on pageviews to a more complex understanding of the Forward‘s value to readers and vice versa.” This shift has enabled Moos “to explain and show what it means for a story to ‘do well’ and focus more of our editorial energy on stories that readers find worthwhile and that benefit the Forward in multiple measurable ways.”
The dashboard was delivered in August, just a month after the Forward’s request, and continues to evolve based on ongoing feedback.
Heat maps for Verite and The Daily Memphian
Another example of the Hub’s product innovation is the creation of heat maps for Verite News, a nonprofit news organization serving New Orleans, and The Daily Memphian, a daily online newspaper in Memphis, Tennessee. Inspired by the Hub’s Audience Insights Survey — an annual questionnaire that helps newsrooms better understand their readership — the heat maps layer reader ZIP code data with Census population data to reveal geographic trends in audience engagement.
Abbey Gingras, senior director of consulting at the News Revenue Hub, explained that the Hub began collecting ZIP codes from survey respondents in 2022 and “wanted to make that data more interactive and actionable for newsrooms.” The heat maps help visualize where readers are located — and where they’re underrepresented. By identifying these gaps, Gingras noted, newsrooms can adjust their strategies to improve coverage in areas with low engagement. For instance, they can assess whether they are writing about or hosting events in specific ZIP codes with less representation.
The Hub prioritizes transparency in its surveys by clearly communicating how respondents’ data will be used. After adding a disclaimer to the survey’s optional ZIP code question — “We want to understand generally where you are located to see if we’re reaching our entire community. We will not share this information or tie it to your other answers.” — the response rate increased significantly. Now, over 95% of respondents provide their ZIP code.
As with the Forward-inspired dashboard, the Hub is actively seeking feedback on the maps from newsrooms and will refine the tool before rolling it out to additional clients.
Gingras emphasized that the maps are designed to democratize access to data across different newsroom roles. “We wanted to make sure this data was understandable and actionable, regardless of whether someone has a background in analytics,” she said.
Building trust through collaboration
Sophie Ho, the Hub’s director of product and insights, explained that the custom dashboard and heat maps are prime examples of product innovation driven by strong, collaborative relationships with clients. “When people come to the Hub with ideas, it’s because they trust our ability to experiment and try new things with them,” she said. The Hub’s engineering and consulting teams work hand-in-hand to carve out time for these exploratory projects, ensuring that clients’ unique needs are met.
Moos was pleased with the collaboration that took place to build the Forward dashboard. “We’re so grateful for our partnership with the Hub,” she said. “This product would not have happened as quickly or as well without the Hub, which has made it possible for us to identify key indicators, track their movement, understand the patterns in the data, and glean insights to inform our decision-making.”
The Hub’s openness to experimentation and willingness to find custom solutions reflects the organization’s commitment to turning data into usable, meaningful insights, explained Mary Walter-Brown, founder and CEO of the News Revenue Hub. “By addressing specific challenges newsrooms face, the Hub ensures these solutions are not only valuable for one organization, but scalable to benefit others,” she said.
This approach has been part of the organization’s mission from the start. When Walter-Brown launched the News Revenue Hub in 2016, she pledged to let newsrooms’ needs dictate the types of products and services the Hub would offer.
“There’s very rarely a situation where a newsroom comes to us with a problem that’s completely unique to them,” Ho added. “Doing the work to explore solutions with one newsroom will almost always help another down the line, especially given the way the Hub operates.”
Through its client-centric approach and ongoing innovation, the News Revenue Hub continues to deliver tools and strategies that empower newsrooms to better understand their audiences, deliver impactful news and information, and build a sustainable future.
“We think of the Hub as a real-time R&D lab,” said Walter-Brown. “We encourage newsrooms to pitch us ideas and work with us to test them.”
If your newsroom is interested in testing the new audience heat maps or dashboards, please reach out to Sophie Ho, the Hub’s director of product and insights, for more information.