Facebook program is helping Southeast Missourian grow digital subscribers

Since April 20, a cross-functional team of Southeast Missourian and rustmedia staff have been involved in a program with the Facebook Journalism Project to address some of the business challenges facing the news industry. The Missourian group is one of 30 news organizations selected in April from 300 applicants across North America.

Called the Facebook Reader Revenue Accelerator, the program's mission is "to bring news organizations together to innovate; learn from one another; and collaboratively develop strategies to improve their business both on and off Facebook."

The Southeast Missourian's team is led by publisher Jon K. Rust and includes staff from news, data analytics and newsletters, audience, marketing and product design.

"The program is quite remarkable," Rust said. "Not only are we focusing on the various components of attracting and retaining digital subscribers, the program is also a powerful primer on organizational management theory and project prioritization."

The 30 news organizations have been split into two groups, which meet virtually for a weekly three-hour Zoom call. During these calls -- where all are expected to be on camera -- team members regularly break into smaller meeting rooms to get to know and collaborate with other participants.

According to Facebook, more than half of the news groups are owned or led by Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian and/or other communities of color, and 75% focus on local news.

In other words, Rust said, there are few national media organizations involved in this particular Accelerator and "lots of agile innovation taking place."

The Southeast Missourian team then meets weekly for an hour with a personal coach -- in its case, a former New York Times and Bloomberg customer insights specialist who is now a consultant -- along with joining periodic one-hour, voluntary "pop-up" meetings on specific issues with the other teams. Internally, the team holds a "sprint meeting" every morning -- targeted to last no more than five minutes -- to touch base on what each member is working on that day, including any areas where they might need help. And at least once a week, the group meets to outline, add to and evaluate its project priority list.

"The scheduled internal meetings are helpful," Rust said. "But really, we're gathering in even smaller groups throughout the day -- amidst a lot of other work -- as we bounce ideas off each other. One of the themes of the program is a 'bias for action.' The key is to constantly measure the impact of what we're doing, and we're doing a lot of AB and sequential testing."

The initial part of the program lasts 12 weeks from April to mid-July, where besides refining their reader strategies, program participants are challenged to identify and plan a significant initiative, which Facebook will help fund through the remainder of the year with a grant distributed by the Local Media Association.

"We are working on several projects right now, from how we organize our email newsletters, communicate with existing subscribers to our check-out payflow, but the biggest project is a total revamp of our digital platform," Rust said. "We look forward to sharing more with the community later in the year. In the meantime, we're appreciative of Facebook giving us access to talented coaches and putting us together with some truly inspiring media organizations. There's no question that the local media business model has its challenges. This program is helping us chart our future path so that quality local journalism can be sustained.

"Of course, without our readers and subscribers, everything would be bleak," Rust said. "So we're really appreciative of them, for sticking with us and supporting us as we continue to navigate into the future. After plateauing for a few months toward the end of last year, our digital subscription base is now up 13% from December, and up more than 330% from just over three years ago, while at the same time our print circulation is holding steady. With advertising revenue still down, we can't thank our subscribers enough."

According to Facebook, by the end of 2021, more than 1,250 people from about 300 news organizations will have completed an Accelerator program worldwide.