What happens when you mix news product experts with local news leaders and ask them to discuss the news industry’s most pressing challenges? Solutions.

Last week, the News Product Alliance (NPA) piloted our first in-person event: The NPA Forum for Local News, in partnership with the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Our network of NPA product leaders—including coaches, instructors, and mentors from our programs—joined U.S. local news executives to collaborate on a strategic vision for addressing our industry’s greatest challenges. Topics included product operations, audience trust and behavior, sustainability, leadership, and adaptation to new technology.

The semi-structured unconference format allowed the 75 participants to set the agenda in a collaborative spirit, proposing and delivering engaging sessions while guiding the group toward developing action items and insights to share with the broader NPA community. Sessions included: 

• Gen AI is a UX Revolution: How Do We Reimagine News Products?

• The Article Holds Back Change in Everything—How Can We Move Past It?

• Learning from Spaces Outside Media to Make News More Personal

• Building Direct First-Party Relationships with Readers

• The Worst AI Ideas You’ve Heard

While we’re still processing the wealth of insights generated, we wanted to share a high-level overview of the themes that emerged and invite you, our community, to join us in these ongoing discussions as soon as possible. 

We’ve already created a few ways for you to join conversations started at the NPA Forum: 

• On Tuesday, May 28, at 12 p.m. EDT, Nikita Roy is bringing her talk on generative AI to the larger NPA community. RSVP now for “Gen AI Is a UX Revolution: How Do We Reimagine News Products?” to learn more and build upon the conversation we began at the Forum.

• We’ve established an open community of practice in Slack, #ai-tools, for those who want to discuss AI products for newsrooms. If you’re interested in helping us moderate this channel and keep the conversation going, DM Community Manager Margaret Schneider. Separately, Giovanni Moujaes from inewsource is convening a small working group to see if there’s more we might be able to build together in terms of AI solutions for audience and reporting challenges.  

• We’ve also started an open community of practice in Slack, #elections, for those working on election news products. We’re planning election-themed events in June, and Scott Klein from Newspack is leading a collaborative effort to share election resources. 

That’s not all, folks! If you feel inspired to tackle the challenges we’ve identified or want to act on the solutions we’ve gathered (and shared below), join us on Slack and introduce (or reintroduce) yourself to let the community know what you’re passionate about.

Without further ado, here are the four themes we asked the NPA Forum participants to explore, how they defined these challenges, and some of the proposed solutions they generated. 

How do we build and strengthen healthy news product operations in local news?

A healthy product operation in a news organization requires a combination of skilled individuals, a supportive and flexible organizational culture, efficient processes, an understanding of audience needs and behaviors, and a shared alignment on mission and desired impact. It can be especially challenging to establish product operations in local news organizations with limited resources, resistance to change, confusion about roles and responsibilities, or a fear of failure. 

Solutions:

• Structure + Collaboration: Establish clear organizational structures to streamline decision-making and clarify roles and responsibilities. Encourage cross-departmental collaboration to share knowledge and resources, breaking down silos and improving communication.

• Training Programs: Implement product training for executives and journalists to better understand what product development is, what role it plays within news organizations, and how it can improve technology and business decision-making. 

• Capacity Building: Host small newsroom product boot camps and establish fellowships and mentorship programs to enhance skills and support.

How do we build and strengthen a diverse talent pipeline of news product leaders for local news?

Unclear paths to leadership and the complexity of power dynamics within newsrooms can hinder the growth of potential product leaders, particularly those from historically marginalized and underrepresented groups. We must find solutions to attract and retain talented product professionals, creating clear paths to leadership as well as introducing more entry-level product job opportunities.

Solutions:

• Empowering Leadership: Provide product leaders with resources and support to drive change and make informed decisions.

• Diverse Training Programs: Implement inclusive training programs focused on product development and leadership skills to ensure a diverse talent pool.

• Mentorship: Develop robust mentorship and coaching systems to nurture talent and build leadership capabilities across teams.

How can local news best adapt and ethically integrate new technologies, such as AI?

News organizations have been failing to catch up with tech companies since the internet and social media transformed our society. While ethical dilemmas, potential misuse, and fears of AI replacing human judgment are major concerns, we must figure out how to become active players in the rapidly evolving landscape. To do so, we must improve our understanding of AI’s capabilities, find creative use cases for AI, and develop agile mechanisms to drive internal adoption.

Solutions:

• AI Product Managers: Integrate AI product managers in newsrooms to oversee AI implementations and ensure they align with journalistic values, audience needs, and business goals.

• AI Literacy: Provide AI literacy programs in newsrooms to enhance understanding and utilization of AI technology.

• Creative Integration: Explore creative use cases for AI in qualitative data synthesis and audience categorization to add value. Collaboration across the product thinking community is key to pushing this forward. 

How should local news meet audiences’ information needs in a constantly changing and diverse environment?

With the ongoing disaggregation of audiences across social platforms and the incoming disruption to search traffic, news organizations must build (or rebuild) trust with their audiences and develop direct relationships. Understanding audience needs and collecting appropriate first-party data is critical to creating news products that serve the right content to the right audiences in the right mediums, and ultimately lead to sustainability.

Solutions:

• Own Your Audience: Prioritize understanding and engaging with the audience through direct interaction and feedback mechanisms, such as developing owned platforms or taking steps to collect first-party data.

• Innovative Engagement: Work with influencers and use tools like team challenges, games, and intentional online communities to create fun and personal connections with the audience.

• Data-Driven Decisions: Use AI to synthesize audience data and improve data-driven content and product decisions, ensuring they meet the audience’s needs.

We want to thank all of the NPA Forum participants, as their collective brightness will elevate the work we do moving forward. And say that the NPA Forum wouldn’t have been possible without the support of our event sponsors, the Knight Foundation, The New York Times, Google News Initiative, Missouri School of Journalism, and Newspack. We appreciate their support.

The News Product Alliance is committed to providing ongoing support for news product professionals to tackle these challenges as we work together to transform the news industry. In the weeks to come, we will continue to share guides, blueprints, and other resources that came out from the Forum to address these topics in greater detail. Let us know how you’d like to be part of these efforts in Slack!

Wondering how you can attend an NPA event IRL?

You’ve probably noticed that as a small organization serving a global community, our convening strategy relies heavily on virtual events, such as our annual NPA Summit (coming again in October 2024!). This pilot was a test of our convening power and operational capacity to determine whether we could successfully execute an in-person event. Good news: We passed with flying colors and hope to build on what we learned by hosting a larger in-person gathering for the broader NPA community in 2025—stay tuned 😉!

Michael Donohoe contributed to this post.

Disclaimer: ChatGPT was used to synthesize ideas from images of ideation sessions and notes taken during the event. All content has been edited by multiple NPA team members to verify that it aligns with actual conversations from the event.