Of all the promises made in the news industry’s great transformation, a focus on reader revenue holds perhaps the greatest promise. INMA recognises the global industry focus on this subject and is poised to become the global industry leadership on the topic of news media subscriptions.

Over the next year, INMA will engage with Grzegorz (Greg) Piechota (Oxford and Harvard researcher) in a series of INMA-exclusive reports, workshops, Webinars, and engagement sessions designed to immerse association members in what we believe is the next generation in reader revenue development.

Piechota will serve as a Researcher-in-Residence at INMA.

Prior to his new role with INMA, Piechota has been the Google Digital News Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, Research Associate at Harvard Business School, a digital strategy expert, and a former news executive at Agora in Poland. He also serves as a long-time member of the INMA Board of Directors.

Piechota will head up the four pillars of our leadership initiatives on this topic:

1. Customer Value Nurturing: INMA believes this is consumer engagement 2.0: creating and managing value from a market perspective — not a newsroom perspective. How can we take a strategic approach to demonstrating value people get when they pay? How can we create value beyond content? How can we help our customers find success?
2. Consumer Business Innovation: News media companies shift from managing profitable products to managing profitable customers. In the past marketers asked: How many customers can we sell our products to? Today we ask: How many products can we sell to this customer? We will study, benchmark, and showcase how to grow consumer business beyond media subscriptions.
3. Newsroom Transformation 2.0: The digitisation of news products is done. Now, the real transformation begins, as the newsroom holds the keys to content economics. How do we make the strategic shift from a “news product for everybody” to a “new product aimed at a set of customers”? How to steer away our news teams from chasing viral hits to embrace loyalty-building beats?
4. Local Media and Subscriptions: We know that the experiences of global and national players in media subscriptions are different than local media. Some believe the product is the culprit. It is not local enough, not exclusive enough, nor quality enough. Some others ask whether the business can be sustainable on subscriptions at all as the addressable markets are so small. We aspire to dive deeply and shine light on the opportunities for local players.

At INMA conferences in Miami, Stockholm, New York, and Hamburg, Piechota will unveil the latest research in these spaces: present findings, conduct interactive workshops, as well as lead Webinars and reports around each of these four pillars.

In addition, INMA aims to develop a monthly reader revenue newsletter by Piechota, as well as informal online meet-ups and perhaps a Slack channel where members can interact about growing their digital consumer business.

“Greg has become the authority worldwide on media subscriptions, and it is a privilege to continue his fellowship on this vital subject with INMA,” INMA CEO/Executive Director Earl J. Wilkinson said. “There are media companies that are ahead on data, KPIs, analyses, culture, and more. Yet there is no single company with a monopoly on everything. INMA members have a lot to learn from each other on the vital subject of media subscriptions. So our hope for the next year is to constantly improve. The gap between news media and the broader subscription economy was so vast two to three years ago.

“The gap is closing quickly. If INMA can accelerate the closing of that gap even by a few months, I see that as a great value to the industry.”

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