Case Study Tag: De Correspondent

Newsroom overview

Who They Are
A Dutch member-driven news organization that brings context to the news by rejecting the daily news cycle and collaborating with their readers.
Location
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Founded
2013
Membership program launched
2013
Monthly unique visitors
550,000
Number of members
69,340
Percentage of revenue coming from members
53.8 percent*

De Correspondent built a member-financed newsroom from the ground up. Building a company that retains members is something they’ve long practiced across internal teams. But they’ve of course encountered challenges, including in scaling the model globally. The organization has demonstrated the importance of intentionality and organization-wide methods for meeting members where they are at.

The research team explored the daily newsroom routines and external member engagement activities that they’ve found most powerful for keeping members front of mind. Mayke Blok, membership strategist at De Correspondent and The Correspondent, told MPP that “the fact that we started off as a member focused organization really, really helps. So it’s in the DNA. But I think we did stray a bit from what our members thought and wanted for a while and resolved that by getting more in touch with them.” See how they’re doing this now.

*95 percent of De Correspondent’s revenue came from readers in 2019. The remainder came from book sales and donations.

Why this is important

De Correspondent Managing Editor Maaike Goslinga and Conversation Editor Gwen Martèl have both worked at the publication since its early days. In reflecting on what has worked in collaborating with members, they noted, “The most important lesson throughout the years to build a membership-focused newsroom is: don’t consider members as an afterthought, but include them in your daily thinking.”

Editorially, this entails taking the suggestions of members seriously and increasingly responding to member requests for specific information. But that becomes a huge task when your membership program approaches almost 70,000 members.

In its seven years of publishing, De Correspondent has found that it isn’t enough to chase competitors in the Netherlands and around the world and relentlessly publish stories. Among their core principles are “we are your antidote to the daily news grind” and “we collaborate with you, our knowledgeable members.”

The two principles are closely tied. Articles need to reflect correspondents’ unique vantage points and offer members new ways of understanding contemporary problems, often including their expertise. Strategically, this combination helps De Correspondent focus on member retention (as opposed to acquiring new members), with a current organizational goal of maintaining 70,000 De Correspondent members.

What they did

In practice, editorial and membership teams realize the “don’t consider members as an afterthought” goal in a number of forms, starting with strategic staffing or identifying appropriate point people internally. De Correspondent co-founder and CEO Ernst Pfauth identified a trend that’s common in many newsrooms: for organizations with relatively flat hierarchies, it’s easy for responsibilities that seem like everyone’s shared concern to not move forward in the shuffle of day-to-day work.

In response they created a conversation editor role held by Gwen Martèl. Members tell staff that De Correspondent actually feels more personal than when there were fewer members on the platform, thanks in part to the introduction of this role. 

As detailed in this post, the conversation editor role involves coaching staff on how to work with members, including:

Efforts to build a member-focused culture from inside the newsroom, such as:

  • Transforming lessons learned about member participation into new features for a “member rolodex” and the wider platform.
  • Helping correspondents enrich their reporting with members’ knowledge and experiences. Martèl said that for each article or new pitch, “We ask: how can we involve members? It all boils down to the simple realization that members have a lot of knowledge and experience that can be useful for our journalism.”

Improving conversations with members, and their experiences overall, by:

  • Bringing more diverse voices to the on-platform comments section
  • Inviting members to take part in discussions they’re knowledgeable about
  • Organizing dissent

Martèl works closely with Pfauth, who is serving as product owner for De Correspondent’s site and new mobile app. They’re working to ensure that their design and development of features don’t deliver on only a small group of members’ requests. They’re stepping back to see which member voices they’re taking into account when making decisions (and recently have begun other staff projects focused on improving service for specific groups of members, including new members and people whose engagement on the platform have waned). 

This is all part of more direct communication practices between staff and members as part of developing “a continuing story with them,” said chief engagement and campaign leader Lena Bril. In the past members have shared their experiences on De Correspondent podcasts and in articles on the platform too, and they’re asked to pose their questions to correspondents and podcast guests in advance of interviews.

More recently, one frequent member request for an audio app with stories read by correspondents crossed the threshold of being potentially useful to many members. The request was included in development of the audio app and the conversation between members and correspondents will feature prominently.

In September 2020 members were notified of the new audio app via email: “The world’s a busy place, but independent journalism that cuts through the noise is more important than ever.”

The results

In order to stay member-focused while scaling, De Correspondent has

  • Created substantive routines for keeping members in mind throughout a story’s life cycle.
  • Started surveying members regularly about their experiences and ideas.
  • Added a full time conversation editor whose job it is to enrich the site’s journalism with the knowledge and experience of members (including ensuring that the online comments section is an open and safe space).
  • Created a weekly membership metrics and engagement report for all staff and more broadly published member sentiments through all-company Slack channels.

Initiatives that are keeping De Correspondent member-centered are highly grounded in listening to members and reporting insights to colleagues. Bril said the organization is in the habit of talking directly to individual members whenever that feels logical. In general, members are the first to know when there is important organizational news, including new features and correspondents. For the latter, the daily newsletter to members will include a note explaining that the staff would like to introduce members to their new correspondent. Members are regularly thanked in that newsletter for their support and contribution to De Correspondent’s journalism, and they’re encouraged to respond with their feedback. 

As detailed in this case study on how De Correspondent refreshed its member insights, De Correspondent surveys its members quarterly in addition to soliciting their thoughts at the beginning and renewal phases of their memberships. The membership team then shares updates on what members have told them, which ultimately helps the rest of the organization understand what is preoccupying their membership at any given time. 

Internally, the membership team’s introduction of a weekly membership metrics and engagement report for all staff has been successful. In a monthly presentation to staff the membership team presents the most insightful information from traffic data (pageviews, growth, engagement, requests, and more). The information is also helpful for story sourcing. Recently De Correspondent received many member questions about the workings of 5G connections that resulted in publication of a “super explainer” about the technology. The report was useful in helping identify member interest in 5G that led to the explainer, and when the story was published, members were informed that their request was heard and acted on. 

Instead of forwarding individual pieces of member communication only to the most relevant correspondent, engagement staff are now sharing more broadly on relevant general Slack channels. To improve transparency and visibility into members’ reasons for cancelling their memberships, there’s also now a real-time “cancel channel” that’s available to the wider company to watch.

What they learned

The portion of members who care about on-site comments doesn’t represent all readership. Pfauth said that early in De Correspondent’s operations, he was highly focused on the communications that staff, members, and non-members could see: their on-site comments. (The comments sections below correspondents’ articles are accessible for posting by members only, though all readers can see the comments.)

Pfauth has since learned through member research how little many of the organization’s members cared about those comments. Because only a percentage of members said they valued comments on their own, the team now serves a curatorial role in directing members’ attention to those individual comments that are especially meaningful, including through emails to members. Today the engagement team regularly organizes Q&As with relevant invited guests whose contributions may have otherwise been buried deep within the comments.

The team has also learned the value in being flexible around hosting live gatherings. One form of listening that De Correspondent regularly practiced — meeting its members live at in-person events — started to change even before the 2020 coronavirus pandemic kept members at home. The organization previously hosted large live events several times annually, partially to remind staff that they exist because of their members’ financial support and participation. While it created goodwill and community between members and staff, it wasn’t financially viable to keep ticket costs low and host events without sponsorship.

They’ve since had experts join smaller groups of members for 40 or 50 person gatherings (sometimes taking the form of small events and panels at the newsroom) and hosted smaller hackathons that are more focused around De Correspondent’s journalism itself. Pfauth said that with the changing strategy around live events, members see less of staff in real life but that the decision helped the organization be more resource considerate, particularly around use of staff time.

Key takeaways and cautionary tales

Keep members top of mind takes work in a mature member-driven newsroom. When your membership program reaches the size of De Correspondent’s, it can be easy to let it run on autopilot. Instead, De Correspondent hired a conversation editor and implemented several new newsroom processes, including a real time “cancel channel,” to ensure the whole newsroom continues to keep members on their mind.

Other resources

Disclosure: De Correspondent is a founding partner of Membership Puzzle Project.

National Digital native Developing Memberful Routines Staffing our Membership Strategy De Correspondent Retaining our Members

Newsroom overview

Who They Are
A Dutch member-driven news organization that brings context to the news by rejecting the daily news cycle and collaborating with their readers.
Location
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Founded
2013
Launched membership
2013
Monthly unique visitors
550,000
Number of members
69,340
Percentage of revenue from membership
53.8 percent*

In summer 2017, members of the Membership Puzzle Project team traveled to Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Utrecht to interview De Correspondent’s members. They interviewed 30 members with varied occupations, membership tenure, and reasons for supporting the organization, with the goal of gathering insights to iterate on De Correspondent’s membership program. In the process, they helped inform the membership program for what would become English-language publication The Correspondent. 

De Correspondent staff participated in the interviews and were the stakeholders for the resulting synthesis. Three years later, MPP asked the membership and editorial staff what insights from that exercise have “stuck.”

*95 percent of De Correspondent’s revenue came from readers in 2019. The remainder came from book sales and donations.

Why this is important

What works for your members during Year One of your membership program may no longer work quite as well a few years later. The most successful member-driven organizations have a strong capacity to flex, and are continually gathering formal and informal feedback on how they should adapt as their membership base grows and changes. 

Many organizations undertake a rigorous audience research process before launching their membership program, then “set it and forget it.” The process undertaken by De Correspondent offers a blueprint for evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of your membership program when it’s no longer brand new. 

What they did

De Correspondent published a call for member research participants (language here) and, together with the Membership Puzzle Project team, selected 30 people from those who submitted information about themselves. The teams worked to be thorough in engaging the voices of people who:

  • Represented a range of involvement with DC, including readers, commenters, and experts who had offered story help to correspondents.
  • Were diverse in terms of age, gender, profession, and level of interaction with other media sites. 

Participating members then scheduled time based on their availability and location. All responded to the same questions (included at the end of this document) whether they were interviewed individually or in longer-running sessions with groups of eight members.

Immediately following each conversation, staff who facilitated and observed the sessions from MPP and De Correspondent listed what they’d learned that was a confirmation or a surprise for them, an exercise that is detailed in step #14 of this Poytner article. The MPP team then undertook a deeper note review and theme mapping that culminated in an end-of-listening-week presentation to De Correspondent staff.

The results

Through the interviews, De Correspondent gained the following insights:

Members want to support De Correspondent, not just use the product. Chief Engagement & Campaign Leader Lena Bril, who took part in the original 2017 member interviews, said, “Overall it was a fantastic way to hear that our ideals resonated with our members… Almost all insights have become part of our DNA. The insight that members want to support us, not just use the product, is important.” 

Constantly communicate what your organization stands for. Mayke Blok, Membership Strategist at De Correspondent and its English language sister publication The Correspondent, said, “I think what we learned from conducting those interviews was how well informed our Dutch members are about the principles and our mission and how important it is to continuously communicate what we stand for to our members.”

Members’ voices need specific representation. Starting in 2019 De Correspondent created a full-time membership team, including Blok as strategist, Daphne van der Kroft as membership director, and Daan Aerts as data analyst to attempt to implement the members’ voice into the organization more.

“We do this by looking at our member data, conducting more surveys and trying to communicate the wishes and desires of our members to the rest of the organization. I think this helped to make all parts of the organization, ranging from editorial to development, more aware of how our members view our journalism and what they like and dislike” beyond the initial interview research, Blok said. (Jump to MPP’s case study on their commitment to collecting minimal data for more on that.)

The research insights weren’t all positive, but Blok said the process of gathering insights was useful: “It showed how perfectly members could pinpoint flaws within the organization and how valuable their opinion is to avoid blind spots in how we operate.” 

What they learned

Show different approaches to correspondents’ beats: “One of the most useful lessons was that our members really appreciate it when we show that we disagree with each other. Since the interviews we highlight that more often on our platform and in our newsletters,” Bril said.

In recent practice this has involved publishing the different perspectives of two climate correspondents, Eric Holthaus (who is somewhat pessimistic about the possibility of what can be done about climate change) and Jelmer Mommers (who often writes about how humans can incite change while there is still hope for the planet), and the conversations between them. Other examples include De Correspondent’s economics correspondent Jesse Frederik and education correspondent Johannes Visser discussing whether market forces have an influence on education and Frederik debating economics correspondent Rutger Bregman about lazy argumentation on this podcast.

Invite members to pay more than membership costs: Bril said the insight that many members would be open to and feel validated in paying more for De Correspondent’s journalism has been and continues to be useful. One example of how they’ve made it actionable is in setting up a new foundation to make it easy for individuals and institutions to donate beyond the annual membership fee. When staff shared the idea of creating this new Correspondent Foundation with members, they did so by inviting members to “think along” with staff about the shape such an organization might take and encouraged members to consider applying for a volunteer position at the nascent foundation.

Make surveying members a part of regular engagement: Sending digital surveys to members is now a regular, albeit time-consuming, activity. New members are sent surveys about their expectations within 30 days of joining De Correspondent, then surveyed about their experiences approximately quarterly (with questions requesting reactions to editorial style and what changes they would want to see on the platform) and again as their annual renewal date approaches. Beyond those inputs, “it would be advantageous to go through the process with a moderator or external researcher again,” said Bril about embarking on a larger listening tour.

Key takeaways and cautionary notes

Through active listening, your organization can learn what your current and prospective members value most. Members don’t pay De Correspondent for digital access. They pay to contribute to what they consider to be a public good. De Correspondent cofounder and CEO Ernst Pfauth said that, following the 2017 member interviews, he’s found himself repeating the insight about what makes a De Correspondent membership most worth retaining to those who have them. “They appreciate the constructive aspect of what we’re doing,” Pfauth. He says the process of getting to know members better has been “like therapy” for the organization. 

Other resources

Disclosure: De Correspondent is a founding partner of Membership Puzzle Project.

National Digital native Conducting Audience Research De Correspondent Designing our Membership Program Retaining our Members

Newsroom overview

Who They Are
A Dutch member-driven news organization that brings context to the news by rejecting the daily news cycle and collaborating with their readers.
Newsroom
De Correspondent
Location
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Founded
2013
Launched membership
2013
Monthly unique visitors
550,000
Number of members
68,944
Percentage of revenue from membership
53.8 percent*

The Dutch news organization De Correspondent made a commitment from the beginning to collect as little data on their audience members as they could. In addition to an internally built CMS called Respondens, De Correspondent uses the “Google Analytics alternative” Matomo. 

Data analyst Daan Aerts explained that information from Matomo cannot be traced back to an individual person, but that anonymized aggregated information includes details like pageviews and homepage visits, country-level location, and sign-up page actions. Location information doesn’t get more specific than city-level, and the company uses a visitor’s full IP address to determine his or her location before stripping off the last digits and storing the address. There’s no tracking of visitors across their devices.

Member-specific information can be used to internally understand information including how much on-platform conversation an individual article has generated, new member reach, and average member financial contributions. Aerts adds, “I benefit from a well-designed data governance plan. In my work, I never come across identifiable information about our members. Within our organization, people have access to data on a need-to-know basis.”

In the U.S. the investigative news organization The Markup similarly limits its collection of reader data, partially informed by De Correspondent’s approach.

*95 percent of De Correspondent’s revenue came from readers in 2019. The remainder came from book sales and donations.

Why this is important

Nearly every online interaction we have – shopping, reading, socializing – is tracked. At a time when this has become standard across the industry, many individuals are concerned about their digital privacy and footprints. As detailed in one of the more human, readable examples of an organizational privacy policy, De Correspondent limits what it collects both on principle and in practice. 

As their sister English language news organization The Correspondent details in their member compact, privacy and audience revenue don’t have to exist in tension with each other. And the organizations stands out in being forthright in their intentions in this regard, telling readers, which helps build trust.

Courtesy of The Correspondent

What they did

Most De Correspondent members are located in the European Union or the European Economic Area, and are protected under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). But it isn’t the only reason that De Correspondent has committed to collecting minimal data.

Over seven years of publishing, De Correspondent has seen that its current and prospective members don’t just say they care about how their privacy is treated on site – they truly want to know the organization’s policies with regards to their own information. As shown below, the company provides more details on the handling of user data than many of its peers. 

These practices are also detailed in the privacy and cookie statement on The Correspondent and shared here in English. (Note that under US law, where many members of The Correspondent reside, unfair or deceptive uses of data are unlawful. Beyond that, federal privacy laws vary by the type of data or marketing used and also vary by industry. The Correspondent’s policies are voluntarily and comparatively conservative in terms of what data the company collects, as detailed below.)

More information regarding the handling of member information is as follows from the public privacy and cookie statement. Note the sentence “we also use all of this data to gain insight [in]to the reading preferences of our members (in legal terms, because we have a legitimate interest to do so)”:

The results

While it may be harder to “know” members without having much data about them, De Correspondent has been able to get the information it needs to design smart editorial products and cultivate loyalty through voluntary audience research.

Part of that comes down to their decision to invest more in editorial and membership staff. For most of its existence De Correspondent has not employed full-time data analysts. Aerts became the organization’s first data analyst in 2019 and works on the three-person membership team alongside a strategist and membership director. (Conversation and engagement editors work in parallel from within the editorial department.)

Aerts has spent the past 18 months building dashboards and synthesizing membership data, as well as creating self-service tools for the organization, including a “Daily pulse” Slack channel  – an automated Slackbot that provides organizational clarity into how membership is growing or stagnating compared to goals.

De Correspondent cofounder and CEO Ernst Pfauth said that with this work the organization is still following its principles and anonymizing user data, but presenting it better internally for cross-team intel. Pfauth said that the days are past when, “If I wanted to know something about churn, for example, I had to ask a developer [and] a developer made a query and then they showed it to me. And now by building these dashboards [we’re] making the data more accessible to everyone.”

Relevant information is also distributed in a weekly member email and monthly presentations to all staff.

What they learned

Prioritizing privacy does not mean you will be data poor. Mayke Blok, Aerts’ teammate and membership strategist at De Correspondent and The Correspondent, told MPP: “We believe that you can often get sufficient information without collecting huge amounts of data from your members. There’s always a way to work around not having all the metrics available. You can use surveys, or ask the questions you have in a different way.” For more information on De Correspondent’s surveying practices with members, jump to MPP’s case study on how De Correspondent collects qualitative insights about its members.

Blok said that the membership team is regularly coming up with questions about its members, such as how important the first 30 days of a membership are to their willingness to keep supporting the publication, and considers those insights along quantitative data.

“To answer that question we looked at cohort data, but also implemented a survey that provided us with a lot of context. You need to contextualize the numbers you do have, instead of falling into the rabbit hole and just keep trying to find out more by collecting more and more data,” Blok said.

It’s not just about not collecting as little data as possible, it’s about making sure it’s used only for the right purposes. Protecting users’ privacy is also about making the right choices with the data you do have access to. Aerts offers an example: Technically, De Correspondent could tell who is very interested in journalism about LGBTQ issues and use that a number of ways. But De Correspondent opts to use that data only to show someone their “recently read” stories.

Key takeaways and cautionary notes

It’s possible to maintain user privacy while collecting meaningful data for product decision-making. De Correspondent collects data including time on site, bounce rate, visits per visitor (according to cookies), e-commerce sales, and events like clicks on menu items and comments, all of which they track anonymously. Compared to other digital news organizations, this is a low amount of information – something its members value greatly.

Other resources 

Disclosure: De Correspondent was a founding partner of Membership Puzzle Project.

National Digital native De Correspondent Building our Membership Tech Stack Developing Membership Metrics