The Washington Post hopes to bring in young, diverse readers with a cross-company task force

The Washington Post is creating a task force to figure out how to attract more young and diverse readers.

The group — called “Next Generation” and composed of a “handful” of Post employees — will be tasked with overseeing new products, partnerships and initiatives to bring in these readers, said Kat Downs Mulder, managing editor for digital at the publication. This can include new formats, beats or services for the Post’s journalism, like social media and audio platforms or news distributors popular among its target audience.

The exact strategy for this team seems to still be in the works. The team will be co-led by a Post editorial director Phoebe Connelly and business director Bradley Lautenbach (both pulled from their roles to these positions full-time) and will also include folks from both the edit and business teams. But it’s not clear exactly how many employees will be a part of this task force — and whether they will be internal or external hires. Some Post employees will work on the team part-time, acknowledged Downs Mulder.

The team will focus on growing digital subscriptions among a so-called younger and diverse demographic. “In order to keep growing you have to keep finding new people,” Downs Mulder said.

Downs Mulder declined to say how many of the Post’s current 3 million digital subscribers are considered “young” or “diverse,” but said about 25% of The Post’s audience are 18 to 35 years old. “There’s room to grow there,” she said. The specific audience segments Next Generation is targeting are defined internally, but Downs Mulder declined to share them.

Before Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought the Post in 2013, the newspaper’s focus was primarily on Washington, D.C. Since then its international and national readership has grown, and the Post is committed to growing its audience even more with Next Generation, Downs Mulder said.

“This is one of the first times we are bringing people together from across the company,” Downs Mulder said. Next Generation will “touch every part of our organization” and facilitate cross-company collaboration. Audience insights will help “craft a road map” for Next Generation’s initiatives, she said, without sharing which exact insights the team will analyze.

Connelly has spent eight years at The Post, most recently as deputy director of video after helping to create a visual forensics department in 2020. Lautenbach is the head of commercial marketing at The Washington Post, where he leads the team developing ad solutions.

“They have both worked across the organization extensively due to the nature of their roles,” Downs Mulder said. “We wanted to have equal representation from the news side and the business side for this initiative, for a broader array of perspectives.”

The Post is also looking into potential partnerships with organizations or platforms that already reach Next Generation’s target audience. Downs Mulder mentioned educational and professional institutions, or tech companies, as examples.

This isn’t the Post’s only recent foray into trying to attract more young people. The publisher promoted Travis Lyles to the new role of Instagram editor in February; …read more

Source:: Digiday