The UK-based publisher planned to adopt a new approach to covering topics relevant to people in their twenties and thirties. The result – Quarter Life, a series of articles for young professionals – has been an eye-opener in showing the impact of audiences-targeted journalism.

An ageing subscriber base in print. A weak flow of new young paying digital readers. And no real focus on how to tackle the problem. That was the situation for NWT, a regional Swedish news outlet, in October 2021. One year later – a total change. This is how NWT succeeded in reaching young audiences and increasing revenue from that target group, and what six steps it took to build a better and younger future.

The Spanish newspaper used the Table Stakes methodology to identify a new focus audience, the Spanish Legion and the broader community around the military unit. La Voz de Almería has since launched a dedicated website section, newsletter and a YouTube channel to serve this target audience.

In the beginning of 2022, the newspaper based in Tübingen in southwest Germany launched its first audio product, a podcast called “Am Gericht” (“At the courthouse”). The show looks at issues related to crime and justice, and it has been particularly successful among women, young audiences, and current and future legal professionals in the region.

Nederlands Dagblad is a national news outlet with Christian roots in the Netherlands, writing about Protestant and Catholic news. But in the Netherlands, there is also an evangelical group of Christians – about 200,000 of them – with no media outlet focussing on this group. ND saw an opportunity, and jumped right in: in the fall of 2021 it started to create content about and for Dutch evangelicals.

During its participation in Table Stakes Europe in 2019–2020, the German newspaper made significant progress in establishing a new digital-first, audience-focused workflow. Since then, the publisher has continued to innovate on how it covers local news, and it has created a new product – an evening news summary – that matches its readers’ interests and habits.

The Austrian publisher had already made the strategic decision to focus on digital subscriptions when it joined Table Stakes Europe, and this year they launched a freemium paywall. In this interview they discuss how the TSE experience helped them engage their audience and increase their digital subscriptions.

Vocento’s lifestyle and health section Vivir was hit hard by the pandemic. But moving away from print-centred workflows and adopting a digital-first mindset allowed the group to boost traffic, turning it into a success that can serve as a model for other sections.

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.