Six ways a regional mediahouse made new connections with its users during Covid-19
Nobody can meet in person, the reporters are working from home, all the interviews are done over the phone and nothing is as planned. But at Fyens Stiftstidende, a regional mediahouse in Denmark, the lockdown has led to new levels of audience engagement. Ways that will continue after our society opens again.
Engaging your audience in a constructive manner is the core of the future of journalism — and especially for the local media. During this time with a lockdown in big parts of our society, the local media are hit very hard on the economy, because the economy still is based on ads. And as the ads are some of the spendings that are downsized first, it hits the local media hard.
Layoffs and even shutting down media businesses are happening all over the world these days.
In order to stay alive to be able to inform, help and connect societies, the media businesses must find new ways to be meaningful in their societies.
Creating connections by engaging your audience in a constructive way is one very powerful way for a media to become meaningful.
Here are six examples of how the danish regional mediahouse Fyens Stiftstidende became relevant to their readers by working to engage in a constructive way.
1. Help the local businesses
One of the first reactions to the situation was to take care of eachother in the local communities, and when the local businesses started hurting, the newspaper made a helpline, where the local business-owners could get help for free. The newspaper collected all the questions, and connected with lawyers, doctors and accountants to get answers for the local business community.
More than 50 local businesses send their questions to the local media, and in that way Fyens Stifstidende listened and helped the local community.
2. Help the readers help their local shops
But the real pain for most of the local shop-owners was of course the fewer customers and the decline in revenue. Instead of just listening to — and telling all the sad stories of what went wrong, the newspaper decided to act. A new journalistic campaign was created. And after only three weeks more than 1880 local citizens had been part of the campaign — helping the local businesses. The readers participated by telling why they use their local shop, and the newspaper gives back by making a lottery, where one of the stories are being chosen every day, and the person who has written it gets a giftcard to the local shops.
The editor in chief writes; “We are not asking you to buy more than you normally do — but to shop as normal and local as you can.”
The campaign was named “Appreciate your town”
3. Digital readers editorial meeting
Normally the mediahouse invites its readers to reader meetings almost every week. But during this lock down-period that is of course not possible. Instead some of the meetings are going digital. One example is when a local newsdesk invited to a readers editorial meeting, where the readers could tell the reporters, what stories they would want in the newspaper, and what questions, they needed answers to. Almost 200 people participated in that first digital editorial meeting, and almost 5000 have seen it after it was live. It was transmitted over facebook-live, and the comments are filled with good questions, the newsroom now are working to find answers to.
Read more: https://www.facebook.com/VoresFaaborg/videos/2945267545529267
4. Help your local community help itself
In a local community people depend on each other. In the good times and in the bad. In the town Faaborg, the local news desk decided to use that in order to help everybody get through this rough period. The journalistic campaign “Faaborg helps Faaborg” was created. The local weekly teamed up with a local competitor and made the campaign something that everybody in the community could share.
The campaign includes an online show with local celebrities, a t-shirt with a local slogan and a lot of other ideas. All the money that are being collected are either going to a town festival or to a fund where the local business can get help. That decision is made by the local citizens who are voting to decide, where the money goes.
5. Remember to listen to the young people
The young people are often left out of the conversation in the newsmedia. That was also happening during the beginning of the corona-coverage. But the newspaper decided to listen to the young people and help them get their voice heard. The newspaper created a partnership with a danish museum of communication; Enigma and decided to collect stories about what the young people felt, the lockdown meant to their feeling of belonging in a community. The museum is gathering all the stories and is making an exhibition when the lockdown is over.
To get the stories, the newspaper connected with the local highschools, where the teachers helped get the stories from their students. The stories are articles, podcasts and video, and they are being published by the local media during the lockdown to get the young voices heard.
6. Listen louder
During the period with corona — the journalists at Fyens Stiftstidende used a lot of different ways to reach out to their audience. One of them is through the audience engagement tool Hearken.
Hearken helps the journalists listen to the audience in a structured way. With an embed under each article the journalists ask the readers what they want to read about — and then they can answer questions and at the same time make more relevant journalism. The numbers show that the articles that are made based on Hearken-questions get more views and time spend pr article.
The new connections will continue
There is no doubt that the editor in chief, the local editors and the journalists are looking forward to the communities reopening so everybody can meet in person again. But the lockdown has also helped create new ways of working, new concepts that can continue after the lockdown. But most of all, the connections with the local communities will stay strong also during a lockdown. And that will continue and make the local newspaper even stronger in their communities because by stepping up during a time of crisis it is obvious for everybody to see how important local media are.
If you want to know more about how to work with journalism in a constructive and engaging manner, please reach out: www.roomofsolutions.com
