Briefing by Kristin Nolan and Lara Setrakian, Tow Fellows at Columbia University, delivered at the Digital News Revenue Summit hosted by The Texas Tribune and Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, April 3, 2014.

1. The Startup
Newsroom:
Lessons from the Single-
Subject News Project
Lara Setrakian and Kristin Nolan
Tow Center for Digital Journalism
@hypertopical #nichenews

2. News Deeply is an award-winning new media and technology company
that fuses news, information, technology and digital design.
Our vision is to simplify the user experience of complex information,
creating information products that serve a mix of media, enterprise and
institutional clients.
The News Deeply platform provides a single-subject design, allowing
clients to capture complex issues in a simple, unified dashboard, with a
highly engaging user interface design.
@hypertopical #nichenews
About Us: News Deeply

3. @hypertopical #nichenews
The Deeply Model
Geographies
EXAMPLES
Myanmar Deeply
Congo Deeply
Egypt Deeply
Strategic Issues
EXAMPLES
Oceans Deeply
Poverty Deeply
Disarmament Deeply
Science,
Technology,
& Public Health
EXAMPLES
Alzheimer’s Deeply
Brain Deeply
Robotics Deeply
Our First Platform: Syria Deeply
Syria Deeply was a crisis reporting project
that incorporated the latest technological
tools of the day, all to track an ongoing
conflict. The aim was to improve the art of
storytelling with user-centric design.
Our Next Project: Arctic Deeply
With our partner, the World Policy
Institute, we are incubating Arctic
Deeply, an exploration of an issue that
effects the planet and all people on it.
The Arctic story is a bell-weather for
climate change and its human impact.

4. Three Rising Trends:
• Hypertopical Publishing
• Niche/Vertical News
• The Journalist-Entrepreneur

5. Skills Required: A Fusion of Toolkits
Editorial Talent
• Integrity
• Eye for the Story
• Subject Matter
Mastery
Entrepreneurial Talent
• “Lean Startup” Methodology
• Management Skills
• Project Management Skills
• Financial Literacy
• Technology Literacy
• Sales Capacity
• Operational Grit
@hypertopical #nichenews

6. Who We’re Talking About
Our study captured a wide variety of single-subject news sites
covering specialized beats, from arts & culture to geographical
issues to science.
@hypertopical #nichenews

7. Common Cause: Shared Motives and
Execution Strategies
The majority of single-subject news sites are attempting to fill a gap
in mainstream media coverage while providing and maintaining
specialized knowledge.
“What I noticed with these outlets [entrepreneurial
start ups] were that they were still an insider’s
game…entrepreneurs that aren’t plugged into the
scene are ignored…”
-Brian Kovalesky, StartUp Beat
@hypertopical #nichenews

8. Contrasting Models: Target Audience,
Structural Setup, and Major Media Ties
TARGET AUDIENCE
Audiences are
niche, many sites
exhibited different
approaches for
accessing them
STRUCTURAL SETUP
Single-subject
sites come in a
lot of shapes,
forms and sizes
MAJOR MEDIA TIES
Some of our
case study sites
were housed
inside of or allied
with a major
media outlet
@hypertopical #nichenews

9. @hypertopical #nichenews
Shared Emphasis on Engagement and
Impact
Single subject websites value engagement and impact over traffic.
We’re not showing traffic numbers as evidence of our impact.
We’re pointing to things like our Reuters collaboration and we
developed others as we went along to show how we were impacting
the conversation [on climate change].
We found a way to have an impact on the conversation without
having to build a giant website with huge traffic. It’s very expensive
and difficult to do. So we found high-impact, low-cost solutions for
doing our work. That was attractive to funders.
-David Sassoon, InsideClimate News

10. Seed Funded
Bootstrapping
Like any Startup, They’re Either…
@hypertopical #nichenews
…and they’re all looking for revenue.

11. Diversified Revenue Streams
For the most part, single-subject sites seek alternative
revenue streams
Foundations
Merchandising
Live Events
Direct
Sponsorship
Earned Revenue/
External Projects
@hypertopical #nichenews
Corporate
Subscriptions
Market/Job
Boards
Crowdfunding
“Free-mium”
Paywalls

12. @hypertopical #nichenews
Startup Funding Map

13. What They’re NOT Doing for Money
@hypertopical #nichenews
Traditional
Advertising
Content
Syndication

14. What’s Holding Them Back?
@hypertopical #nichenews
Startup
Management
Skills
Marketing/
User
Acquisition
Technology
Skills

15. So How Did They Do?
@hypertopical #nichenews

16. @hypertopical #nichenews
Traffic

17. • Peak return rate was 60%; mean was 39%.
• Event drivers followed major new events or special
events within the niche.
• Between peaks, single-subject sites identify their
“super user”— the die-hard readers of their topic, the
community they serve and monetize.
Engagement Statistics
@hypertopical #nichenews

18. The industry is following us around. This season, for the first
time ever, ESPN has a reporter assigned to every single
NFL team. So they have 32 beat writers, and they never
had that before. And that’s something we’ve had since the
beginning… That’s the innovation.
- King Kaufman, Bleacher Report
@hypertopical #nichenews