Let your users tell you what they value and are willing to pay for
The International Fact-Checking Network at the Poynter Institute held its Global Fact 8 conference this past week. I was on a panel that discussed the question, “Fact-checking as a product: Why can’t we sell it?”.
The moderator was Gilberto Scofield Jr., marketing and relationship manager at Agencia Lupa in Brazil, and the other panelists were Patricia Torres-Burd, managing director at Media Development Investment Fund; Giovanni Zagni, director at Pagella Politica/Facta.news in Italy; and Rahul Namboori, co-founder and editorial head at FactCrescendo in India.
The following is a summary of my comments.
Gilberto asked me for my recommendations about revenue streams and business models to make fact-checking sustainable. These were my comments.
It’s a marketplace
I would ask you to think of this digital media world that you’re working in as a marketplace. It’s a marketplace of information subject to the laws of supply and demand. I know that many of you will cringe at that word marketplace. You probably think of yourselves as a public service, not as a business. But you are a business.
In this marketplace of information, you have a product, you are competing for the attention of people, and you are competing for financial support from various people with money.
The title of this panel is, Why can’t we sell it? Well, I think you have to answer three basic questions first.
- Who are your customers? (There isn’t just one type; there are many different segments.)
- What do they need and want? What do they value? (Do you really know? Why do you think you know?)
- How can you create products they value and get them to pay for it?
The customers. So, what do we mean by who are your customers? You might think of your target market as everyone who can benefit from trustworthy, reliable information about issues in society. But really, you have many different potential customers for your information, various segments of the population, different education levels, income levels, races, ethnicities, and so on.
And then there is another potential group of customers. You are competing for people with money, and that could be foundations, and nonprofits, and NGOs within your own country. These organizations might value your product.
Customer needs. So, what do we mean by what do customers need and want, what do they value.
It’s a process of finding out what’s really on their minds. You need to ask them. You need to interview them. And then you need to test various products in the media marketplace. Don’t assume you know what people want. Ask them. Find out.
Another way of framing the question is to ask them what they are passionate about. What cause would they carry a sign for, as Irene McKisson of Arizona Luminaria likes to describe it.
Much of fact-checking focuses on the debates going on among members of the political class, who select the issues they want to talk about, and who spend time pontificating about their own views and attacking their opponents.
If all you are doing is fact-checking the political class, you may be missing a huge part of your potential market. If covid-19 taught us anything, it’s that fact-checking can be more of a public service by providing information about what vaccines are, how they work, where can I get vaccinated, and so on.
Create value. And finally, what do we mean by creating products that your customers value. It’s a process of research, experimentation, and testing. After doing your research, you have to create products that might satisfy your potential customers’ demands. Put them out there in the digital marketplace. Measure the response. Make adjustments. Try again.
I know from working with Agencia Lupa that they found a market for news literacy programs. Many ordinary people and many media development organizations with money wanted to know, how do we identify disinformation or misinformation. And Agencia Lupa discovered a big market for news literacy training, and that has become a big source of revenue for them.
So to sum up, if you want to get people to pay for your product, you first need to identify who your potential customers are, then you need to find out what they really want and need, and then you need to create products to satisfy those needs.
Fact-checking is an important public service. And there is a huge demand in the information marketplace for trustworthy, reliable information. If you can be the supplier of that scarce product, you can find customers willing to pay.
In Italy, “the lucky ones”
The moderator, Gilberto Scofield Jr., asked Giovanni Zagni of Pagella Politica if he is worried that many fact-checking organizations are too dependent on grants, such as those from Facebook’s Third-Party Fact-Checking (3PFC) program. Facebook has contributed $84 million since 2016 to various fact-checking initiatives.
Zagni said he is concerned but sees fact-checkers “as the bright side” of the “generally sad story” of news media finances globally. “We’re mainly young, small newsrooms in a growth phase. We are at the center of a hot topic everyone is concerned about. So we’re the lucky ones among the unlucky ones.”
“We are granted a super long grace period of perhaps three or four years where we can build sustainable organizations with several pillars, or revenue streams.” Among the strong points for fact-checking is its extremely clear mission, he said. Also, people in politics and business in Italy are very interested in trustworthy, fact-checked news, which could attract sponsorships.
One new revenue source Zagni sees for Pagella Politica is a membership program. “The challenge for fact-checkers is to build a strong community around their project. You have to be open and attentive. It’s very hard and very time consuming.” A key unresolved issue, Zagni said is how much to charge for a membership. It needs to be enough to provide meaningful support, but not so high as to discourage participation.
India’s vast diversity
Scofield asked Rahul Namboori how readers might help provide financial stability to his organization, Fact Crescendo. People are so poor in India that a membership or subscription model wouldn’t work, Namboori said. Also, fund-raising in India is complicated because there are so many distinct audiences.
India has 28 states, each with their own language, and Fact Crescendo publishes in nine languages, Namboori said. Much of the fact-checking work has to do with tensions between different ethnic, religious, and socio-economic groups. India has 1 billion hindus, 172 million muslims, 28 million christians, and 21 million sikhs, he said.
Many people have no access to social media or the internet, so Fact Crescendo is working to have fact-checking reach the offline population. Its website has extensive disclosure of its methodology and is self-funded by its directors.
The government has issued a new digital media policy whose impact is uncertain but could lead to suppression of media organizations, possibly even to criminal charges for non-compliance, Namboori said.
He sees the need to develop revenue streams from programs like media literacy, tutorials, and licensing of content.
The investor perspective
Patricia Torres-Burd of the Media Development Investment Fund said her organization provides debt and equity financing to support independent media around the world. Many of the media in their portfolio have fact-checking units.
She commented that membership and subscription programs require “tremendous time and effort”. So she complimented Scofield on Agencia Lupa’s having reached 11,000 members.
To be effective at attracting financial support, she said, a media organization needs to have a clearly stated value proposition: what value are they providing to society as a whole and what value to a specific audience segment.
“Listen to your audience, build a community,” Torres-Burd said. She emphasized the importance of identifying the specific wants and needs of various segments of the public and then developing products that meet those needs.
Opportunities exist for audiences who can’t find trustworthy news and information from existing sources about topics they care passionately about, such as politics, business, and public health. Be open to conversations with those who question your credibility, she said. That can be the start of building trust.
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Fact-checkers need a marketing mentality