FINANCIAL TIMES, Соединенное Королевство, международный уровень
In addition to tracking gender balance and raising awareness internally, the FT has also launched several content-related initiatives to boost engagement among women subscribers. With its Long Story Short newsletter, the FT targets women subscribers with stories that interest them in a format that they have said they enjoy. Tailored to be a catch-up newsletter for busy women, it is sent out every Friday and combines the biggest stories and best reads in one email. For each edition, a different woman journalist from the FT handpicks the story, sharing her personality, expertise, and interests while offering a ‘behind the scenes’ look at FT stories and the reasons they have caught her eye. The choice of stories is also informed by data on what women have been reading during the past week and includes both news and features on a range of topics. The reason for broadening coverage areas features is that the FT heard from women readers that they perceive the brand to be ‘just about finance’. The tone of the newsletter is deliberately distinct from that of the core FT brand, more informal and conversational.
It also differs visually from the core product, featuring a different logo and colour palette as well as a more diverse range of people in the images used. It is not, however, explicitly branded as a women’s product. So far it has proved successful among the FT’s women audience, while also engaging men subscribers. Data from the third quarter of 2019 showed that it has a bigger audience among women than the FT average, and has higher open and clickthrough rates, up 3.5 percentage points year on year and 1.8 percentage points, respectively.
SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST Международный уровень
Еще одна инициатива, выросшая из хакатона SCMP, фокусируется на создании целевого контента для женщин, поиске инновационных способов его распространения и создании вокруг него сообщества с помощью разнообразных платформ. SCMP запустила проект Lunar. Он демонстрирует контент со всего отдела новостей в виде подборки «с новостями, интервью и подробными очерками о женщинах, написанных женщинами и для женщин». В соответствии с характерным для инициативы SCMP по гендерному балансу подходом, который вовлекает все отделы, команда, ответственная за Lunar, также поощряет сотрудников отдела новостей думать о разработке историй, подходящих для платформы, и формировать их таким образом, чтобы они могли повысить вовлеченность женщин.
SCMP провела исследование аудитории, чтобы лучше понять, какой тип контента привлекает женщин-читателей. На первое место вышли такие области интересов, как дипломатия, региональные новости и общество, которое охватывает широкий спектр социальных вопросов, включая образование, вопросы равенства и культурные тенденции. «Женщины интересуются действительно разнообразным контентом, – говорит Уорн. – Мы не хотим ограничивать их или применять узкий подход. Мы ориентируемся на контент, который не только показывает женщин, но и интересует их и влияет на них. Мы хотим быть очень широки в нашем определении этого».
LUSAKA SUN Zambia
Creating engaging content for women is also a priority at the Lusaka Sun in Zambia, a standalone publication targeted at the country’s lower income class, and launched by the Daily Nation in January this year. Rather than focusing on political coverage, which is common among other Zambian news outlets, the Daily Nation’s executive editor Mary Mbewe says The Sun set out to highlight topics such as social issues, injustice and trade. Some 70% of the paper’s staff are women and one of the publication’s main audience category are traders, the majority of whom are women. Having such a high number
of women employees was a deliberate decision. “I feel that women are more empathetic to what is happening in the areas that we are targeting,” Mbewe says. “It’s easier for them to talk to fellow women in the compounds, for instance, or at the market, and for those people to open up, and tell their story and their struggle, and how they are managing to make it.”
As part of one of The Sun’s policies aimed at increasing gender balance, they publish at least one positive and inspiring story per week which features a woman as the main subject. The initiative has generated good readership, according to Mbewe, and led to more women coming forward to share their stories. To further encourage women’s participation and visibility, The Sun also launched a platform where they can share their stories, images or leave their information to be contacted in the future. In addition to the website and an epaper, which is currently under development, The Sun is working on a platform for mobile which will make it easier for its audience to access the paper’s content.
ARA Spain
At ARA, a Catalan daily newspaper, three journalists launched ARA Feminismes, an initiative aimed at creating and distributing content with a focus on gender perspective. Wanting to find a broader audience for the gender balanced stories they were already producing,
the three journalists behind the idea, Lara Bonilla, Marta Rodríguez and Thais Gutierrez, started work in the months leading up to 2019 International Women’s Day on March 8 and timed the launch to coincide with the event.
Now, ARA Feminismes actively distributes its content on ARA’s website, a weekly newsletter and via a Twitter and Facebook page with some 3,500 and 7,500 followers respectively. The grassroots initiative has garnered support from management and the trio behind it, who are leading the project in an unofficial capacity in addition to their other work, offer advice to colleagues on how to write gender balanced content. They encourage the newsroom to submit stories that would fit the ARA Feminismes brand. As part of the project, the team also launched several calls to action on the website in a bid to solicit input for stories from women. One of these led to a successful interactive article about problems and issues new mothers are experiencing, giving them an opportunity to voice their opinion about a rarely discussed topic in mainstream media.
Having found that women experts are more hesitant to speak to the media, regardless of their competency compared to their counterparts who are men, they next want to put together a database with women sources which the entire newsroom can draw on. Another company-wide initiative includes an analysis of gender balance in the newsroom and content, conducted by an external company.
