How the Akron Beacon Journal has increasingly served Black readers — expanding its audience and revenue

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Grow your audience and paid online subscription base by bridging significant gaps in reaching key segments, including Black readers.

Q: What problem were you trying to solve, and why was solving the problem strategically important for your organization?

A: We needed to dramatically grow our paid online subscription base to generate revenue supporting our core journalism mission in the community. Marketing data also showed significant gaps in reaching three key audiences online, including Black readers, those aged 25-44 and households with under $60,000 income.

Our newsroom goal is to grow our paid digital subscription revenue to a level that sustains funding for our journalism. We also knew that if we were deficient in providing news relevant to these three groups of people in our community, we were not doing a sufficient job covering our community.

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