🔶 #82: What's your Value Proposition?

Hello and welcome back to the News Alchemists newsletter!

And a special first welcome to new subscribers from Agog, ooto impact production, and The New School.

This is a no-7-links edition because I want to talk about a tool that I always find incredibly useful to share with the creators I coach: the Value Proposition.

The Membership Guide describes the value proposition as a statement of the value a product or service creates to address a particular user need. It continues:

Your newsroom value proposition guides your organisation’s overall strategy and direction. It is not a summary of everything you do. Instead, it articulates what your newsroom uniquely exists to do, the value it creates, and why it is distinctive. It connects what your audience needs to what your newsroom creates. A clear value proposition will help your newsroom to focus on consistently doing what it does best.

You should define a value proposition for your organisation, but each product or service you create should also have a value proposition of its own.

There are various templates online that you can use. I find the one suggested by the Membership Guide to be very effective:

A value proposition is not a static artefact. It should evolve over time along with the products or service it defines.

Evolving it does not mean broadening it though.

As Leonie von Elverfeldt explains in a recent blog for Fathm: "A value proposition has to exclude things. You do not find a strong value proposition by adding more. The moment you add a second thing, a third benefit, a broader audience, you will have weakened the value proposition instead of strengthening it."

Do you want to give it a go?

Try to define a value proposition for your organisation or for a specific product/service you offer, and let me know what you come up with. Or let me know if you find it hard to come up with one, and let's talk about it together.

I'll do the same. I had a value proposition for this newsletter when I started it, but I haven't reviewed it since (shame on me). It's about time.

Take care,

Mattia

P.S.: I'm spending the next few days with my wife in the gorgeous Peak District, to celebrate our 'old' anniversary – do you stop celebrating the when-we-got-together anniversary after you get married, or celebrate both? 🤔 – and my birthday (a few days ahead of time). Will I find the time to write next week's newsletter? We shall see...

And the most clicked link from the previous edition is... 🥁

Judging by the number of clicks, you looooved the idea of a 'Stop-Doing' list:

How the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel focused on prioritizing with a "Stop Doing" list

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel created -- and continually updates -- a list of newsroom activities that don’t contribute to its audience-centric strategy in an effort to find time and resources to devote to more meaningful tasks.

Better NewsTim Griggs

⇲ The LinkedIn Corner

A section of this email in which I highlight LinkedIn posts written by newsletter readers that, for different reasons, may not make it to the main section, but are still interesting to share.

Usually two or three links. Sometimes none. This week: six!

1. Roxana wrote about asking people to financially support your journalism "in a way that treats them as someone who can make a difference, not as a wallet or a statistic."
2. Sarah reflected on what many newsrooms don't understand about putting up a paywall: "Your free articles aren't just content you're giving away, they're how people discover your journalism, experience its value and decide whether they want more."
3. Lars wrote a nerdy post about "automated user needs tagging in Google Sheets". I love nerdy posts and I love Google Sheets 🫶
4. Liz is asking for recommendations of what to include in a new class on entrepreneurial journalism that she will start teaching next year. Any thoughts?
5. Khalil quoted the research by Shirish Kulkarni that I shared last week to invite us to "move from building things for passive people to delivering service and value to proactive members of society."
6. Jazmín announced that the Pulitzer Center has opened a new call for proposals for the Impact Initiative Grant Program. Check it out.

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