Is your audience a genuine community or just passive consumers of your content? This has been a consistent question and challenge for publishers and broadcasters in the wake of radical changes in media consumption this century as consumers have moved from traditional platforms to rapidly growing online ones.
In previous waves of digital disruption, businesses adopted varied tactics to establish closer relationships with their audiences, from building or establishing their own online communities or forums, embracing and engaging with their audiences on established social media platforms such as Facebook, X, Reddit or WhatsApp or aggressively growing their face to face or online events portfolios.
The goal of all these strategies was to establish more two-way and personal ties with readers but this is an easier strategy to execute on paper than in practice. Common barriers to achieving success in building communities include overcoming established internal cultures - such as a reluctance amongst editorial teams to embrace direct interactions with audiences - to the difficulty of achieving a direct return on investment from communities. In addition, publishers relying on external social platforms for community activities run the risk of the rug being pulled from under their feet as the platforms may changes their algorithms and unsettle or change the nature of the engagement with users in those spaces.
Growing focus on community
Yet despite these challenges, many in the industry are turning to community as a way to both grow and retain audiences but also to further diversify their revenue streams. Global industry body WAN-IFRA in its World Press Trends Outlook report 2025-2026, released in January, pointed to community-like activities being amongst “the primary growth engine” for the media industry. The ‘other’ revenues category defined in the report – which includes activities such as events and memberships – has doubled in size in the last five years, making up a quarter of overall revenues for the media sector.
And experts in digital communities point to a trend amongst some online audiences of seeking out smaller more intimate online spaces compared to larger social networks. Speaking at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Venessa Paech, co-founder and director of Australian Community Managers, said there was a move towards “the cosy web”. “There’s this idea that we want the small and intimate pockets again,” she said, adding that many users are “exhausted” by large social platforms and “think it’s toxic and would love a quiet little space in a safe place on the internet”.
Some brands – both established and newly-formed - are now putting community at the core of their strategy and growth plans. Village Media, a Canadian-based media group founded over a decade ago which runs local news sites in that country as well as in the US and Africa, is placing its bet on growing through embracing community-based journalism. The firm has also developed its own social media platform which is used by its own sites as well as licensed to other publishers in North America.
Closer to home, UK-based brand B2B Marketing made a radical shift in its business model at the start of the decade – from an events and content-led business (it was originally founded as a trade magazine over 20 years ago) for marketing professionals to a hybrid model between events and an online community-based service. The latter – served on a platform called Propolis – provides customers with access to networking on marketing best practice with like-minded professionals as well as more 121-support from a team of experts to address their specific needs.
Driving audience participation
And whilst more established titles and brands are not being as radical in embracing community, there is more of a concerted drive amongst some to drive increased interaction and audience participation which fits with their business objectives around increasing subscriptions revenue. Data from both the Financial Times and the Telegraph show the benefits of encouraging more activity below the line – readers that consume comments on the FT are 11x more engaged than active users who don’t read comments, and comment writers are 48x more engaged. Over at the Telegraph, they are seeing a 119% increase in the number of comments added once one of its authors go below the line.
Titles such as the New York Times and the Economist are also connecting their leading journalists more directly with readers. This helps with engagement but also as one defence against the rise of AI – Economist President Luke Bradley-Jones says promoting its writers is one way to emphasise the “artisanal, human-crafted” aspects of journalism to further distance them from machine-generated content.
The New York Times recently released a feature on its site highlighting comments made under articles by their writers and the Economist has been gradually moving away from its traditional practice of not naming its writers to deploying them much more proactively as faces and voices of its newsletters as well as of its growing video coverage.
This approach is mirrored in local and regional journalism in particular with the new wave of start-ups that have emerged in recent years. “It’s more about depth than it is about breadth. We’re seeing the end of the scale model,” says Lucas Batt, who runs a media consultancy called Greater Community Media and worked previously at the Bristol Cable.
The Bristol Cable was established in 2014 through crowd-funding by the local community and is 100% owned by its members who have direct influence on its editorial decisions and direction. The title aims to become financially self-sufficient by 2030 primarily through reader revenue and, last year, launched a news and social media app to try and further embed the community it has established. The app allows users to consume the title’s content as well as connect with others, share news and access with other social channels such as Bluesky and Threads.
This approach is also being taken by the Leicester Gazette which operates under a similar model to the Cable. The title rolled out its app in March and Rhys Everquill, its community lead and co-founder, said: “This app is more than a news reader – it’s a space for Leicester voices to be heard, for local reporting to be amplified, and for community conversations to happen in a safer, more meaningful way.”
Batt says his company is supporting these new models for reviving local journalism as well as exploring new approaches such as helping new titles founded by community groups rather than journalists. These could be development trusts or local charities, and Batt says he is in early-stage discussion with organisations ahead of any formal launches. “They (these groups) realise that their community would benefit by having a publication, that (the area they operate in is) not well served at the moment and they want our support to help set something up,” he said.
Batt is keen to stress that such a model from community groups doesn’t have “amateur connotations” but would be rooted in rigorous research and a focus on delivering specific value to the local area that it serves. He sees a community-centred approach as focusing on what matters most in the area which means more than just news. “I think that’s exciting because it opens up the doors of opportunities to be like, we’re going to host an event or we’re going to do a walking tour or we’re going to have podcasts or whatever it might be. But it’s being creative about how you capture that value.”
Batt says the industry can learn from the creator economy where authenticity is crucial in building audience and engagement. “They (creators) are showing up as who they are and being the humans that they are in being transparent and caring,” he says.
Those brands who see ‘community’ as crucial strategically say the word can still be perceived as “fluffy”. B2B Marketing Chief Executive Richard O’Connor said his firm had dialled back from using the word “from a commercial perspective” but that the Propolis platform remained core to their business and they were investing it with new features. He said the value from users was from being able to interact and engage with both equivalent professionals as well as experts that B2B Marketing employ to offer individual support as well as deep knowledge on key marketing topics. “People are busy and do not have time to chat,” he said of typical behaviour on the platform. “They come in with a problem and they will engage (with the) rest of community which is very generous.”
Tips for publishers on making a success of community
In a workshop on community best practice, Venessa Paech gave a range of advice for publishers wanting to drive community amongst their audiences:
- Community vs social media: Communities have very different dynamics to social media. The former are more inward looking and purpose-driven and work over the longer term compared to social media.
- Focus on founding members: Paech says, getting the right people in from the start “is a really important part of your puzzle”. They can play a vital part in nurturing, developing and managing the community.
- Measuring success: Prioritise retention and sustained participation over reach and scale as markers of success. Also, focus on the health of the community and trust as well as social and communal impact.
- Skills and time: Invest time and in developing new skills such as community management in your teams to manage and nurture community.
- Platform last: Focus on the purpose of your community and getting the right people there before choosing a platform. Start small and grow incrementally. “It is ultimately an accumulation of small steps,” she said adding that initially the community “doesn’t need to be fancy, it doesn’t need all the bells and whistles.”
WAN-IFRA’s World Press Trends Outlook 2025-2026 report can be downloaded here.
This article was first published in InPublishing magazine. If you would like to be added to the free mailing list to receive the magazine, please register here.
