6 min read

Putting Your Reporters Front and Center

"New consumers want a personal, not institutional, connection." It's time to do something about it.
Putting Your Reporters Front and Center
Photo credit: cottonbro studio / Pexels
 

My name is Lars K Jensen, and I work with journalism, data and editorial insights as the Audience Development Lead at Berlingske Media in Denmark. 

Feel free to connect on LinkedIn and say hi.

 

🎧 Listen to this article:

As an experimental feature you can listen to an audio version of this article. It's read by an artificial voice generated by ElevenLabs:

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Putting Your Reporters Front and Center
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Let me know what you think: Both regarding the article itself and especially the audio version. Either in a LinkedIn message (here's my profile) – or in an email to lars@shadowplay.dk.

 

💡 Executive summary

(Written by AI and approved by the author.)

Audiences want personal connections with news, not distant institutions. Logos feel abstract, while individual journalists bring trust and authenticity. Publishers are being urged to amplify the people in their newsrooms, because faces—not brands—create conversations and lasting engagement.

Creators prove that building a personal brand doesn’t mean abandoning journalistic integrity. Many do serious reporting, serve communities, and operate with transparency. Supporting reporters in building public profiles strengthens credibility and loyalty, while ignoring this risks losing talent. Media leaders must also learn from creators’ ability to foster belonging and participation, rather than dismissing them as shallow.

The rise of “news influencers” reflects this shift. Research, industry trends, and even local experiments show that audiences increasingly follow individuals over institutions. Publishers should explore which reporters to spotlight, balancing authenticity with editorial values. For some veteran journalists, this may feel daunting, while younger colleagues often take naturally to it. The real question is: who do audiences most want to meet—and how can publishers make that connection happen?

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USE YOUR FACE, NOT YOUR LOGO. We have been talking about it for years. We've been talking about it since social media took hold and took over – heck, we even talked about it in the good ol' heydays of blogging back in 2005, twenty years ago(!).

Whether you are a news publisher, any other kind of publisher (or any other kind of business for that matter) you rely on connections with your audiences.

"Markets are conversations," as The Cluetrain Manifesto essay told us in 1999 (and later as a book in 2009). And you can't have conversations with logos and corporations; you have conversations with people.

(The manifesto website, alas, is no longer available, it appears – but you can read about it on Wikipedia.)

I'm reminded about all of this after reading a recent edition of the Newsroom Transformation Initiative newsletter from INMA, published by Amalie Nash.

Amalie has talked to (among others) Jeremy Gilbert, Knight professor in digital media strategy, Medill, Northwestern University. He is working on the second edition of the important 'Next Gen News' report with FT Strategies – you can read about the report on next-gen-news.com.

Based on early findings, Jeremy has some suggestions for publishers, where I particularly like this one:

"Legacy institutions need to figure out how to amplify the people in their newsrooms. New consumers want a personal, not institutional, connection."

Even if this isn't necessarily rocket science, it's important to remember – and is perfectly in line with the change we have seen happening since the early days of the World Wide Web, frankly.

Markets. Are. Conversations.

Not playing at journalism

Amalie has also reached out to Liz Kelly Nelson, founder of Project C which "empowers journalists and independent creators to build sustainable, credible media ventures through education, community and strategic support".

She has an interesting point about "creators" and reporters when asking Amalie's question; "What is the main question you get asked by people in legacy media about content creators? How do you answer it?":

"Are they journalists?' That's the big one. There's a deep-seated skepticism in legacy media about whether creators (especially those building personal brands and monetising their audiences) can uphold journalistic integrity.

My answer: The best creator-model journalists are journalists. They're doing original reporting, serving communities, and building sustainable models rooted in trust and transparency. They're not playing at journalism."

Liz adds that although publishers don't have to become creators, they do need to support their journalists in building public profiles within the publisher's brand – or risk losing them.

"Talent is your most valuable asset," she reminds us.

Before moving on, I'd like to share a point from the same newsletter – from Sophie van Oostvoorn, who is a media consultant and author of the Audience Dispatch newsletter:

"Rather than trying to copy their formats or dismiss their work as shallow, media leaders should ask: What do they understand about the public that we don't? How do they create a sense of belonging, participation, and usefulness in the lives of their audiences? The rise of content creators reflects what audiences have been trying to tell us for years: They want news that connects to their lives, not just content that meets our editorial standards.

This isn't about abandoning journalistic values. It's about rethinking how we embody them in a changing ecosystem. Content creators operate in the same ecosystem but with a fundamentally different logic: one that's conversational, not hierarchical. One that sees media as a shared space, not a one-way street."

Meet the news influencers

It is (finally) becoming ever more apparent across the media and publishing industry that something is changing.

The term "news influencer" has begun to pop up:

Here in Denmark things are happening as well.

Media analyst Camilla Mehlsen has published a book on news influencers (which has made both the news and LinkedIn), and newspaper Fyens Stiftstidende are hiring a news influencer to get closer to the audience and get more subscribers.

So we are moving in the right direction, albeit slowly.

But while looking at news influencers and "creators" as either external factors or new hires is somehow convenient for legacy publishers, it would make sense for a lot of them to build profiles and amplify some of the very skilled reporters that are already part of the editorial teams.

Remember:

  • New consumers want a personal, not institutional, connection.
  • Markets are conversations.

Having your audiences meet faces instead of logos is becoming something of a necessity if you want to engage the younger crowds – but I would be very surprised if it wouldn't resonate quite well with older and more established audiences as well.

Publishers would do wise in exploring who in their current newsroom it could make sense to amplify and let the audience meet – and how to do it best, in a way that is true to both publisher, journalist and audience.

For some reporters who have been longer in the game, this may feel like something altogether new and maybe a little bit intimidating – where as younger journalists who have grown up with a smart phone in one hand will find showing his or her face and appearing on videos, stories etc. more natural.

Using profiles like these is not new in marketing — but the trick is to make it more than that. And maybe the persons suited for acting as a “classic” brand profile will not work quite as well in a different context.

So remember to ask yourself: “Who do our audiences want to meet the most?” — and after that: “Who would we like them to meet – and where and when?”.

And take it from there.

 

My name is Lars K Jensen, and I work with journalism, data and editorial insights as the Audience Development Lead at Berlingske Media in Denmark. 

Feel free to connect on LinkedIn and say hi.