Regular readers of this column know by now that our newsroom has thrived financially in recent years, with an enormous audience and multiple streams of revenue ensuring that independent journalism endures in Cleveland.
That’s not an accident. Our newsroom leaders have collaborated for more than a decade with leaders from all of the Advance Local newsrooms to experiment together, learn from each other and build a set of best practices to make us all strong.
What I’ve regularly wondered, though, is why no one who covers the media nationally has noticed what we and our sister newsrooms have done. For years, the national story has been decline. Our reality is different — and now it’s finally being noticed.
This week, The Nieman Journalism Lab, part of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, published a story examining how Advance Local newsrooms in June accounted for seven of the top 10 local news websites in America when it comes to audience size. Our newsroom was number 10.
Think about that. A newsroom in Cleveland – a city that does not even rank in the top 50 in America for population – had the 10th biggest audience in June.
That happens only because we have worked to serve you, our audience. Through our engagement with readers, and by studying what content they take time with, we have learned what to cover when it comes to news, sports, entertainment and opinion. Our continuing conversation with you, including the many emails you write in response to this weekly column, has helped us focus.
The work never ends. Every summer for some years now, I’ve participated in an Advance Local exercise to examine where we are and where we are headed. Every week for a couple of months, a team of us poses provocative questions to each other and brainstorm the answers. That’s how we innovate.
Back in 2018 and 2019, we started talking about how our newsrooms had to focus on generating the revenue we need to sustain themselves. Instead of relying on sales or circulation teams, we dedicated ourselves to self-reliance. We had to throw away the idea that editors should think solely about journalism and not dollars.
Because of those discussions, we reached the point a few years ago where our newsrooms pay for themselves, partly with advertising revenue that comes from the massive audiences described in the Nieman Lab report.
Our sources of revenue are not static, however. Every year, it seems, a source that has been reliable will dry up, and we go find something to replace it. My colleagues across Advance Local have become quite skilled at rolling with the punches. Just as one social media channel decides to reduce its news content, another platform rises where we can reach an audience. We’re always experimenting.
The latest challenge comes from artificial intelligence. Search engines that have long linked to our sites are providing AI summaries of content these days, cutting into the number of people who visit us. On the other hand, as I’ve written here repeatedly this year, AI offers us unlimited potential for growing our audience with a variety of content we create, using AI as a tool. I think we can easily grow our audience beyond whatever we might lose because of AI.
How do we get there? In this summer’s thought exercise, my Advance Local colleagues and I have brainstormed quite a bit about AI, and the result has been a rapid evolution in how we use AI as a tool. We have a long way to go, but I treasure the thoughts that come from my colleagues throughout Advance. Together, I feel certain, we will continue to chart a path to success.
Our strategies are ever-changing, but our goal remains the same: We want to remain your top source for news, sports, entertainment and opinion content. We want to remain the watchdog you rely upon to question those in power. We want to remain your champion in seeking to improve our community and state.
It’s a never-ending quest.
We’re glad that someone outside of Advance Local has finally noticed that all of our hard work of the past decade has paid off for our newsrooms and the communities they serve. Communities like greater Cleveland and Northeast Ohio.
I’m at cquinn@cleveland.com
Thanks for reading.
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