Relevancy audits are becoming a highly important tool for publishers who want to change their news room, but why is it necessary, and how do you do it? This is the topic of this 29-page report.
Being relevant is a critical element of any company. If you are not relevant to people, they are not going to buy what you have to offer. For news publishers, however, this has always been a neglected concept. There is a culture within the press that the news is always important, if people don't like it, then that's their fault.
I'm reminded of a recent episode of the Media Voices Podcast, where Shirish Kulkarni had a brilliant example.
He said to imagine that you worked at Procter and Gamble or Unilever and you're selling soap powder. But then people increasingly stop buying your soap powder and even stop believing in the concept of soap powder.
Imagine then that when faced with this decline in market, your response to this was to say: "Our product is amazing. We still make brilliant soap powder. It's just that our customers don't understand how great our soap powder is. What they need is a soap powder literacy campaign. And that will solve the problem!"
If you did that you would not be working for Proctor and Gamble very long, but welcome to journalism because that's the approach we take. In journalism there is this idea that there can never be anything wrong with the news we bring, and so if the public is showing signs of disinterest, we blame the public.