Nordkurier, a news publisher based in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in the country’s northeast, created a weekly newsletter that aims to strengthen the bonds between people who used to live in the region with the area’s present and its future. By autumn 2021, the newsletter had just over 3,500 subscribers, and apart from advertising it has also enabled other business opportunities for the publisher.

During the past year, the staff of Diario de Navarra (DN), a regional news publisher based in Pamplona, Spain, have been intensifying their efforts to drive digital subscriptions. The publisher is also targeting two specific audiences (families and professionals) as part of an effort to move from a generalist audience approach to segmented audiences.

To support its ambitious goal for increasing digital subscriptions, the publisher, as you might expect, based in the far north-west of Germany, launched a newsletter in June targeted at families. Over 3000 people have subscribed to the newsletter since then, and it is also driving digital subscriptions on nwzonline.de.

In late May, the Bonn-based news publisher General-Anzeiger launched a weekly newsletter called Bonn Appetit aimed at foodies. It has taken off like a hot new restaurant, allowing the newsletter to hit its annual subscriber goal ahead of time.

Table Stakes Europe allowed the French publisher to streamline collaboration between the newsroom and other departments of the company, and provided structure to clarify governance in the newsroom. Over the course of the programme, Les Echos also made significant progress with segmenting and serving specific content to its target audiences, including female readers and the start-up ecosystem.

Having identified people interested in housing as a promising target audience, the German publisher used a persona-based workshop process to create a new product – a website subdomain – for its content about building and living. The workshop approach demonstrated how user-focused methods can help news publishers in their product development.

Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger (KStA) is a daily print newspaper and web publication, owned by DuMont, a regional publisher based in Cologne, Germany. During the past year, KStA made significant headway with the aim of focusing on specific audiences rather than general ones. The publisher used data analysis to identify the topics that engage its audience – and those that it could stop covering – with impressive results.

Barcelona-based news brand ARA launched in 2010. They publish a print newspaper and have a digital presence (website and apps) with ara. cat. ARA has editions in Catalonia, Andorra, Girona, Tarragona, Lleida, Balearic Islands and Valencia. There is also ARA in Spanish and a selection of articles in English.

Le Parisien was the largest company in the first round of Table Stakes Europe with a newsroom of 440 journalists. The print newspaper is still by far the largest revenue generator for Le Parisien (90% of the revenue). However, with a steady annual decline in print paid circulation, the newspaper needs to gain 200,000 digital-only subscribers to offset the print decline and sustain its editorial ambitions.

Le Télégramme has always been recognised as one of the best regional daily newspapers in France. Its 150,000 print (home delivery) subscribers are loyal but ageing and Le Télégramme needs to speed up the acquisition of digital subscribers to fuel its growth again.