The Hub’s five-minute survey is poised to drive industry-wide change
By Katie Hawkins-Gaar
If our news organization ceased to exist tomorrow, how would you feel?
This is just one of the questions that readers, listeners and viewers fill out when taking the NRH Audience Insights Survey, a yearly questionnaire that’s customized for newsrooms and journalism organizations, developed, administered and analyzed by the News Revenue Hub.
“Since day one, we’ve insisted that newsrooms listen to their audience, and we’ve provided them a vehicle for doing so every year,” said Mary Walter-Brown, Hub founder and chief executive officer. “Not only is the survey a tactical tool for working with newsrooms and helping them develop really successful programs, but it’s become an important industry-wide litmus test for what news audiences want and need.”The proprietary survey might seem simple on the surface, but it’s a crucial strategic and fundraising tool for scores of newsrooms across the U.S.
Administering the survey is the first step the Hub takes with each new consulting client — something the nonprofit organization has done since its founding in 2016.
In total, the Hub has surveyed around 90 newsroom audiences, with many of those audiences responding year over year. Because the survey includes numerous benchmark questions administered to all organizations who use it, Hub staffers are able to compare individual newsrooms and journalism organizations to their peers and generate Hub-wide insights and trends.
“Surveys can be a nice-to-have for businesses,” said Walter-Brown. “For us, it’s an absolute must. We always start with listening and it drives all our strategic decisions moving forward.”
Here are the various ways the Hub uses its Audience Insights Survey to support newsrooms and the journalism industry at large.
The survey as a strategic tool
Administering the Audience Insights Survey is often the first major project when a news organization joins the News Revenue Hub. “The survey establishes a baseline of their audience’s feelings and beliefs,” explained Abbey Gingras, the Hub’s senior director of consulting services. “It informs our entire strategy going forward.”
The Hub’s approach differs from other media surveys in that it’s not focused on measuring news consumption habits as much as understanding consumers’ emotional connection to the news outlet. The insights gleaned from the survey have become strong indicators for how successful a newsroom will be at compelling their audience to invest in journalism.
Getting a strong response rate is priority number one. The Hub helps organizations share and promote the survey the same way they would a campaign — through direct emails, website calls-to-action, and newsletter toppers. Some organizations distribute through additional avenues, like texting, depending on how they normally communicate with their audience.
Once the survey is complete, the Hub team spends hours analyzing the data and feedback and then presents the results to the newsroom. “We give them an analysis of their own data, but also how they compare to peer organizations,” Gingras said. Because the survey is conducted year over year, the Hub will also track an organization’s internal trends over time.
Toward the end of the analysis presentation, the Hub presents a list of next steps — tasks the newsroom can do, like taking a deeper dive into the results and following up with respondents who shared their contact information; plus items that the Hub and newsroom will do together, like tailoring fundraising campaigns based on the feedback received.
Bridge Michigan, which joined the Hub in 2019, has used their Audience Insights survey results in a variety of ways, from inspiring story ideas to determining which beats and subject areas they should dedicate more staffing and resources to. In 2021, Bridge learned that readers wanted more political coverage. As a result, they hired a politics reporter and centered their summer crowdfunding campaign around the new hire.
“Audience surveys, while just one piece of data, are a critical insight into what a very engaged segment of our audience thinks about us,” said Amber DeLind, Bridge Michigan’s membership and engagement director. “Their feedback helps us improve and know where they would like us to grow,”
DeLind added that the survey gives Bridge staffers insight into the ways their readers are changing, in both their responses and demographics year over year. “It also helps our newsroom understand more about our readers and what they care about at scale, rather than from one-to-one reader communications,” she said.
In an effort to demonstrate transparency with their readers, Bridge Michigan began sending out a summary of each year’s survey findings. Bridge Michigan’s sibling publication, Bridge Detroit, shared the results of their reader survey for the first time this year.
The survey as a fundraising aid
In 2022, Bruce Putterman tried something new. As the publisher of CT Mirror, he decided to redirect readers from the end of the audience survey to a donation page. It was a simple, successful move. “We raise a couple thousand dollars each year directly from the survey end page,” Putterman said.
Based on CT Mirror’s success, the Hub began piloting an end-of-survey fundraising redirect with other news organizations and saw that it consistently brought in money.
Gingras explained that the survey acts as a primer for readers to give. “The questions are prompting people to think about how much they value an organization and if they’re willing to support it,” she said. “Then they get redirected and immediately get an opportunity to do just that.”
Like Bridge Michigan, CT Mirror has used survey data to inform their coverage decisions. They added an economic development beat, deemphasized their investment in social media, and gave readers the option to receive their newsletter once a day — all in direct response to survey results.
“The survey is such a good opportunity to get direct feedback from the audience that’s provided in a way that is actionable,” Gingras said. “Getting that feedback on a consistent basis and building strategy around it is so smart. Otherwise, you’re just making guesses about what your audience wants.”
The survey as a driver for change
Although the Audience Insights Survey is tailored for each organization, the core benchmark questions remain the same. That gives the Hub years of data to learn from and cross compare amongst organizations.
“Because we ask newsroom audiences all the same questions, it generates benchmarks that are really important and illuminating for the broader news ecosystem,” said Walter-Brown, the Hub’s CEO.
Of note, the percentage of people who say they will never donate to or become a member of a news organization has been declining. In 2020, 13.59% respondents — across all Hub organizations who surveyed their audiences — said they will never give to news. In 2023, that number dropped to 4.6%. The percentage of people who say they want exclusive benefits in exchange for supporting a news organization is also dropping. In 2019, 15.37% of respondents said they wanted a benefit in exchange for support; in 2023, the average was 6.2%.
The Hub’s survey also assesses news organizations’ Net Promoter Score or NPS, a market research metric that measures customer loyalty and satisfaction on a scale from -100 to +100, with higher scores desirable. On average, NPS across Hub clients has been trending upward. The average NPS in 2019 was 42; in 2024, it’s 45. Regional newsrooms have consistently had the strongest NPS, averaging 64 in 2024.
The Hub believes that soliciting this type of direct-from-reader quantitative and qualitative data is essential because it provides meaningful insights without being invasive, reliant on data-mining, or tracking audiences in increasingly unreliable ways that can often lead to making inaccurate assumptions about consumers.
While the Hub acknowledges that survey takers are not necessarily a complete reflection of a news organization’s entire audience, the demographic trend over the past several years indicates that news consumers are increasingly white, older, affluent and well-educated.
“We must do more to help newsrooms diversify their audiences,” said Walter-Brown. “Surfacing this data is the first step; now we have to take action to drive change.”
Putterman said that another way the CT Mirror team uses the survey results is to spark much-needed conversations, like how to square demographic data with DEI efforts.
Walter-Brown knows how valuable the survey data is — and she knows that the Hub can do more with that information. The nonprofit is currently building out Mission-Driven Metrics, an initiative that will provide insight into how effectively newsrooms are reaching and representing the communities they aim to serve.
“We are looking more closely at the survey data set as a whole,” Walter-Brown said. “There is so much to learn and so much progress to be made.”