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.

The Zaragoza, Spain-based news media company Henneo, which publishes the newspapers 20 minutes and Heraldo de Aragon, has spent much of the past year focussing on its audiences and developing more targeted content. This is being done in concert with efforts to launch a digital subscription model.