After a successful first round, ARA returned to Table Stakes Europe with a new challenge: to embed audiences-first thinking across its entire editorial team. Building on its initial success with a website focused on housing in Barcelona, the team has started to help other parts of the newsroom shift towards audience-driven journalism.

The German publisher’s second year in Table Stakes Europe allowed it to spread the audiences-first approach further in the newsroom, build on its existing audience-focused products and launch new projects.

2023-04-25. “We want to create emotional touchpoints that not only strengthen the loyalty of our existing readers to our brand but also engage with new audiences who have not yet experienced our platform, allowing them to form a positive first impression through one of our verticals,” says Bettina Widmer, of Switzerland’s Blick Group.

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.