Remember when newsrooms lived and died by clicks? For more than a decade, that’s all anyone cared about. The logic seemed bulletproof: more traffic meant more ad money. So we wrote headlines that would make search engines happy, chased viral moments on social media, and watched those real-time pageview counters like they were our lifeline.
Well, that whole system is breaking down.
Ad rates keep getting worse, even when more people visit our sites. The platforms we used to count on for traffic? They’re changing their rules in ways that hurt us. And here’s the kicker: people’s attention is all over the place now. They zip through their feeds, click on something, skim it, and bounce. No connection, no loyalty.
Display CPMs dropped by 33% year-over-year, and video CPMs fell by 39%, leading to an overall ~35% decline in ad revenue via open auctions.
Social referrals are in steep decline, zero-click search behaviour is rising, and readers increasingly get their news from snippets without ever clicking through.
INMA research shows loyal visitors (direct traffic) read about three pages per session and spend over a minute per page, while casual social referrals skim and exit much faster.
It’s not just about money anymore. When you’re constantly chasing clicks, something changes between journalists and their readers. Stories become click bait instead of meaningful content. People show up, read one thing, and disappear forever. Trust goes out the window, and without trust, you can’t build anything that lasts.
That’s reflected in reader revenue data too: in over 20 countries, the percentage of people paying for online news has stalled at 17%. A clear signal that trust and loyalty are the real bottlenecks.
That’s why smart publishers are asking different questions now. Instead of “how do we get more clicks?” they’re wondering “how do we actually connect with people?”
The answer isn’t rocket science, but it is different. Stop treating readers like anonymous traffic and start seeing them as real people who might want to be part of something. Build communities where people don’t just read your stuff but actually participate. When you do that right, people stick around. They share their information. Most importantly, they go from being random visitors to actual members who care about what you’re doing.
Publishers have a choice to make: keep running on that exhausting click treadmill, or start building communities that will actually support them long-term.
Why the pageview model is collapsing
Let’s dig into what’s actually happening here. The click economy didn’t just suddenly stop working. Three major shifts have turned what used to be a solid business model into quicksand.
1. The privacy crackdown hit publishers where it hurts most
For years, digital advertising worked because publishers could track users across the web and sell those detailed profiles to advertisers. That golden age is over. Apple’s iOS changes and Chrome’s cookie phase-out have stripped away most of that tracking power. When you can’t follow users around the internet anymore, advertisers pay way less for your ad space. Studies show that ad prices drop by 18-23% when tracking gets disabled, and news sites get hit the hardest.
2. Platform dependency is a killer
Facebook basically stopped showing news in people’s feeds, and referral traffic from social media plummeted overnight. Google’s new AI summaries keep people on search results pages instead of sending them to your website. You’re essentially building your business on someone else’s property, and they can change the locks whenever they want.
3. The content flood made everything worthless
When every publisher is pumping out dozens of articles daily, all optimized for the same viral moments, readers can’t tell one story from another. Everything becomes interchangeable. The more content that’s out there, the harder it is to capture anyone’s attention for more than a few seconds.
The numbers tell the brutal story. Click-through rates on display ads have collapsed from over 2% in the early 2000s to just between 0.5% to 0.46% today. Even subscription growth, which was supposed to be the saviour, has stalled at around 17% of audiences globally.
Here’s the bottom line: traffic is fragile. One algorithm change, one privacy update, one platform pivot, and your revenue can disappear. Publishers need something more stable than pageviews to survive what’s coming next.
Why community is the missing link
So if chasing clicks doesn’t work anymore, what does? The answer isn’t more SEO tricks or fancier paywalls. It’s getting people to actually participate.
Real participation goes way beyond dropping a comment on an article. We’re talking about giving readers genuine ways to get involved: helping shape your coverage, contributing story ideas, connecting with other readers, and building actual habits around your brand. It’s the difference between treating people as anonymous traffic versus treating them as members of something meaningful.
That distinction changes everything. An audience just listens while a community actually interacts. With audiences, you publish something, push it out, and count the clicks. With communities, you publish, invite responses, actually engage back, and let things evolve based on what people want. The business impact is huge: audiences bring pageviews, but communities bring people who stick around.
And sticking around is where the money really is. Research from Bain & Company shows that boosting customer retention by just 5% can increase profits by 25-95%. In media terms, that means subscribers who participate in your community cancel less, renew more often, and actually recommend you to friends. Its a very well known fact that news subscribers who engaged with journalists through Q&As, events, or newsletters are more likely to keep their subscriptions and this is resonated through multiple studies over the years.
Look at what’s working right now.
- The New York Times Cooking section didn’t just publish recipes. They built a space where readers swap cooking tips, ask questions, and share photos of their meals. That participation helped make NYT Cooking one of their most successful areas and directly boosted subscriptions.
- The Guardian’s supporter program works partly because people believe in the journalism, but mostly because supporters feel like they’re part of a mission. There’s a collective identity that creates real belonging.
- Even smaller publishers are figuring this out. Local outlets are running Discord servers where readers debate local issues and suggest story ideas. These spaces might not generate millions of pageviews, but they create something way more valuable: loyalty.
Here’s the key insight: when readers feel like they belong to something, they stop being passive consumers. They come back regularly. They pitch in with ideas. They defend you when people criticize your work. They’re also much more willing to share their personal information, which strengthens your ability to build direct revenue relationships.
This shift is subtle but game-changing. Publishers who focus on participation stop playing that fragile numbers game and start building compound value. Every interaction isn’t just an isolated click anymore. It’s another thread in an ongoing relationship. And the more threads you weave together, the harder it becomes for someone to just walk away.
This is why community isn’t some nice-to-have side project. It’s the structural solution to everything that’s broken about the pageview model. Participation creates belonging. Belonging drives retention. And retention, more than any viral hit, is what’s going to keep publishers alive in the long run.
The revenue case for community-driven engagement
Here’s where it gets interesting. Community isn’t just a warm and fuzzy strategy. It actually changes the math on how publishers make money. Most outlets still throw tons of resources at acquiring new subscribers while their existing ones quietly slip away. Community flips that approach by turning casual subscribers into genuinely invested members.
Subscriptions get stickier
Subscription businesses live or die on whether people renew. You can spend millions getting new subscribers, but if half of them cancel after year one, you’re in trouble. Community fixes this problem. When subscribers interact with journalists, join Q&As, or participate in events, they become more likely to keep paying. That can save publishers millions in acquisition costs.
New revenue streams open up
When people see themselves as members rather than just readers, they become willing to pay for more than just articles. Membership tiers, exclusive events, merchandise, even specialized products suddenly make sense. The Athletic proved this with their team-specific forums and events, which built habits while creating natural opportunities to sell additional services. Local publishers are doing similar things with community events like town halls and meetups that generate sponsorships and ticket sales.
First-party data becomes gold
With third-party cookies disappearing, publishers are losing valuable audience data. Communities help fill that gap. People who feel connected to your brand are much more willing to register accounts, share their preferences, and give feedback. That first-party data is incredibly valuable for personalization, editorial planning, and targeted advertising. INMA reports that newsletter-driven subscriptions convert higher than social or search traffic because they come with that direct relationship.
Advertisers pay more for engaged audiences
Advertisers don’t just want eyeballs anymore. They want engaged, identifiable people who actually care about the content. A million anonymous page views are worth less than ten thousand active community members who log in regularly and interact frequently. When you can show advertisers real engagement rather than just traffic numbers, you can charge premium rates for sponsorships and native content.
The difference is clear: pageviews are fragile, but participation compounds. A subscriber who logs in daily to check forums, join polls, or chat with journalists isn’t just another dashboard metric. They’re a retained customer, a potential upsell, a data source, and someone who’ll advocate for you.
Community doesn’t replace existing revenue models. It makes all of them stronger. Subscriptions stick better. Events sell easier. Advertising becomes more valuable. And most importantly, your business becomes less dependent on platform algorithms that can change without warning.
What participation looks like in practice
Talking about community is the easy part. Actually building it into your daily publishing routine? That’s where things get real. Participation doesn’t just happen because you want it to. It requires intentional formats, consistent editorial habits, and smart product decisions.
Here’s how publishers are making it work.
Reader Q&As with journalists
The simplest way to get started is also one of the most powerful: let people ask questions. Whether it’s a live chat after breaking news, a scheduled AMA with a reporter, or just opening up the comments on your newsletter, Q&As transform your relationship from one-way broadcast to actual conversation. The Financial Times runs regular reader Q&As that give subscribers direct access to their reporters. That sense of proximity to the newsroom builds genuine habits and loyalty.
Let readers shape your coverage
Instead of constantly guessing what matters to your audience, just ask them. Outlets like ProPublica and tons of local newsrooms use callouts to drive their investigations. They ask readers to share tips, personal experiences, or questions that need answering. This isn’t old-school “user-generated content.” It’s collaborative journalism. When readers see their input reflected in actual stories, they become invested in a way that no amount of clever headlines can replicate.
Simple polls and surveys that matter
Participation doesn’t need to be elaborate. A basic poll embedded in an article asking “Which issue should we tackle next?” creates a feedback loop that readers actually notice. El País has used interactive polls around elections not just for engagement, but as genuine input for their follow-up coverage. When done consistently, these small interactions transform readers from passive consumers into active contributors.
Exclusive spaces for paying members
Give your subscribers a place to connect with each other, and you create serious stickiness. The Athletic’s team forums are the perfect example: fans don’t just read the coverage, they gather in dedicated spaces to debate, share insights, and connect directly with writers. That sense of belonging has been crucial to their subscription success. Smaller publishers can achieve similar results with Slack channels or Discord servers or better yet an all in one community platform. Low cost, high value spaces for real discussion.
Built-in social features
The strongest communities happen when participation is integrated into your platform, not tacked on as an afterthought. Features like member profiles, discussion threads under articles, and the ability to follow specific writers or beats give people reasons to keep coming back. The key is making these spaces feel safe and well-moderated. Clear community guidelines aren’t optional. Without them, your community space quickly becomes worthless noise instead of valuable connection.
So, how do you design participation loops
The publishers who succeed with this don’t treat participation like a one-off campaign. They build repeating loops:
- Invite participation with a specific question or clear format
- Highlight contributions publicly by featuring reader comments in newsletters or showcasing poll results in articles
- Respond meaningfully to show that input actually matters by adjusting coverage, hosting follow-ups, or thanking contributors directly
- Repeat the cycle so participation becomes an expected habit, not a rare exception
Each step reinforces the others. When readers see that their input genuinely shapes what happens next, the loop becomes self-sustaining.
You don’t need to overhaul your entire newsroom overnight. The smartest approach is starting small with a guided discussion around one beat, a monthly Q&A session, or a pilot forum for paying subscribers. Success comes from consistency, not flashy launches. Over time, these practices can grow into full communities that add real editorial value and business stability.
The bottom line is this: participation isn’t a “feature” you can just add to publishing. It’s a practice that, when you build it into everyday journalism, creates relationships strong enough to survive all the chaos of platform changes and traffic volatility.
Building participation into newsroom workflows
Here’s the reality check: participation only works when it’s built into how your newsroom actually operates, not when it’s treated like some extra project on the side. You need systems that can scale without losing editorial control or turning your reporters into full-time community managers.
Set clear boundaries upfront
- Start with what I call a “Participation Charter.” Keep it to one page and spell out exactly what you’re looking for and what you’re not. Tell people you want questions, tips, corrections, personal experiences, data points, and civil debate. Make it crystal clear that personal attacks, off-topic rants, misinformation, and spam won’t fly. Explain how their input might be used in stories, but don’t promise everything will make it into print. Set realistic expectations for response times, like reviewing Q&A threads within 24 hours.
- Create a simple pathway from reader input to actual stories. Use callout modules in articles, app notifications, or newsletter prompts to gather input. Have someone triage the responses, route the best ones to beat reporters with context and suggested angles, get editor approval, and always close the loop by crediting contributors and linking back in follow-up stories.
Train reporters without burning them out
- Your reporters don’t need to become community management experts, but they do need some basic skills. Teach them to ask specific, actionable questions instead of vague prompts. “What did your clinic charge for X last month?” gets better results than “Thoughts?” Show them how to seed discussion threads with 2-3 starter replies to set the tone, and how to summarize key themes midway through busy discussions.
- Keep it sustainable with simple rituals. Try the 10-10-10 rule on active stories: 10 minutes to seed the discussion, 10 minutes to skim for important signals, 10 minutes to summarize takeaways in a pinned comment. Rotate Q&A duties so each desk runs one 30-45 minute session per month instead of burning out individual reporters.
Staff the right roles
- You don’t need a huge team, but you need clear ownership. A Community Editor handles callouts, moderation quality, and highlighting good contributions. Their success metric should be participation quality, not raw comment counts. An Audience Analyst tracks who’s participating, how often they return, and whether participation correlates with subscription renewals. Reporters run scheduled interactions and use reader input in their stories, measuring story engagement and follow-up reads.
Practical systems you can implement immediately
- Keep your tagging system simple but useful. Tag reader contributions by intent (tip, experience, question, data point) and by beat to match your newsroom structure. Track participation depth from viewing to reacting to replying to replying back. That last one, where readers respond to your responses, is your strongest predictor of long-term engagement.
- Build a fast moderation system with clear categories. Remove and escalate anything involving threats, doxxing, or hate speech. Hide and review potential defamation or unverifiable claims. Publish on-topic, civil contributions and nudge people to provide sources. Feature the highest-quality contributions in article sidebars, newsletter callouts, or app highlights.
- Always highlight reader contributions that make a difference. Add “From readers” boxes in articles with smart insights. Include “What we heard this week” sections in newsletters with contributor names (if they opt in). Create rotating “Top reader take” modules on your homepage for relevant stories. When a story comes from reader tips, say so in the credit line.
Choose the right technology
- Own your participation surface instead of relying entirely on external platforms. You need authenticated user profiles, notification systems, the ability to pin staff replies, highlight modules, reporting tools, and ways to export participation data to your analytics system. Connect community behaviour with retention and subscription data to prove the business value.
- Use external networks like Twitter, TikTok, or Discord for discovery and bringing people into your ecosystem, but make sure the meaningful participation happens on platforms you control.
Managing risk and building trust
- Create separate, secure flows for sensitive tips versus public discussions. Have a pre-approved playbook for crisis situations with tighter moderation and live FAQ updates. Give moderators clear escalation paths and rotation schedules to prevent burnout. Actively invite underrepresented voices in your callouts and track participation patterns to ensure fair representation.
A weekly cadence you can test
- Monday: Post a callout asking readers for specific information or experiences.
- Tuesday: Have the reporter seed the discussion thread while your community editor sorts through early responses.
- Wednesday: Include a mid-week roundup in your newsletter and add “From readers” widgets to two current stories.
- Thursday: Run a 30-minute follow-up Q&A with the reporter addressing the top questions.
- Friday: Publish a “What we heard” summary and commit to specific follow-up reporting for next week.
The key insight here is making participation boring in the best possible way. Clear rules, small rituals, dependable loops. You maintain editorial control, build reader trust, and create a system where every interaction can become both reporting fuel and a retention tool. When it becomes routine rather than experimental, that’s when it starts changing your business.
KPIs that matter
If you’re building for community, you need to completely rethink how you measure success. Pageviews and unique visitors tell you how many doors opened, but they don’t tell you who stayed, who talked back, or who’s actually likely to pay you money.
Why traditional metrics don’t work for executives
Here’s the problem with relying on pageviews and uniques: they’re incredibly volatile and completely dependent on platforms you don’t control. Those traffic spikes from social media or search might look impressive on your dashboard, but they rarely convert to subscribers or create lasting relationships. INMA research shows that getting people to visit just two pages instead of one raises return rates from 9% to 22%. That’s way more predictive than raw traffic numbers.
Multiple studies from Northwestern’s Medill School found that visit frequency is the single biggest predictor of whether subscribers will renew. Not how many pages they read or how long they spend on your site, but how often they come back. This completely flips the script on what actually matters.
Meanwhile, Reuters’ latest Digital News Reports show that despite all our traffic-chasing efforts, digital subscriptions are stagnating and reader trust keeps declining. If your main metrics can be manipulated by an algorithm change, they shouldn’t be driving your strategy.
The new scoreboard for community-focused publishers
Here are the metrics that actually predict business success when you’re building for participation rather than just page views.
Contribution Rate: Are people doing more than just reading?
This measures the percentage of logged-in readers who actually contribute something during a given period. We’re talking comments, posts, questions, poll votes, tips, anything beyond passive consumption. Calculate it as unique contributors divided by unique logged-in readers.
Why this matters: A rising contribution rate tells you that your formats are working and people are moving from passive to active engagement. You can refine this with a “Featured Contribution Rate” that tracks how many contributions meet your quality standards.
Participation Depth Index: Are interactions building on each other?
Create a weighted score across the journey from viewing to reacting to replying to replying back. You might weight these as: view equals 1 point, react equals 2, reply equals 4, and reply-back equals 6. Tune these weights based on what you’re seeing locally.
The reply-back stage, where readers respond after you or other community members engage with them, is your strongest indicator of actual belonging. Track this by beat and by platform to see what’s working where.
Member-to-Member Interaction Rate: Is this a real community or just a help desk?
Measure the ratio of reader-to-reader interactions versus total interactions in your community spaces. High member-to-member interaction signals that you’re no longer the only connection point. Communities with healthy peer-to-peer exchange become more self-sustaining and require less staff time to keep active.
Habit Frequency: Are we building actual routines?
Track the percentage of users who visit at least every other day over a 30-day period. This aligns with industry research showing that habit formation, not depth of reading, predicts retention. Northwestern’s studies consistently show frequency beats pageviews as a retention predictor, so make this a core metric for each beat and product.
Return Visit Lift from Participation: Does participating actually change behaviour?
Compare 30-day return rates between people who participate and those who don’t, making sure to match them by how they originally found you. INMA data shows consistently higher return rates for users who engage deeply with content, so expect participants to have 2-3x higher return rates than pure lurkers.
Newsletter-Connected Conversion and Retention: Are direct relationships paying off?
Measure conversion and renewal rates for people active on your newsletter products versus those without that connection. INMA case studies show 25-30% higher conversion rates and up to 58% better retention for subscribers tied to high-engagement newsletters.
Making these metrics real without rebuilding everything
You don’t need a complete data overhaul to start tracking what matters. Focus on logging key participation events: the type of contribution (tip, experience, question, vote), the depth stage (view, react, reply, reply-back), whether it got highlighted, and where it happened (article, forum, app, newsletter).
Require lightweight authentication for participation so you can connect community behaviour to subscription and retention data. This lets you create cohorts and prove the business value of engagement.
Set up three different dashboard views. Give your editorial desks weekly reports on contribution rates, participation depth, and highlights by beat. Your product team should track member-to-member interactions, reply-back rates, and moderation performance. Executives need return visit lift, newsletter-assisted conversions, and lifetime value by participation level.
A practical example you can implement immediately
Here’s how to show leadership the money value of participation. Take all new registrants from a month and split them into two matched groups: participants who had at least one meaningful interaction in their first 14 days, and non-participants who took no actions in that same period.
Track both groups for 30, 60, and 90-day return visits and subscription status. Report the lift like this: “Participants retained at 38% versus 17% for non-participants at day 60. Newsletter-active participants retained at 58% above baseline.” This mirrors industry findings and gives you concrete business justification for community investment.
Setting realistic targets and avoiding common traps
For your first few months, aim for contribution rates of 3-5%, reply-back rates of at least 20% of all replies, habit frequency improvements of 3-5 percentage points on beats with active engagement loops, and return visit lifts of 10-15 percentage points.
Don’t game the system by incentivizing low-quality comments just to boost contribution rates. Use quality-weighted metrics to maintain standards. Remember that social media traffic spikes will always underperform on depth metrics, so don’t let them skew your strategy decisions.
The fundamental shift here is moving from counting clicks to tracking connections. When you measure contribution, depth, habit formation, and peer exchange, and tie them directly to renewals and conversions, you create a measurement system that rewards the work that actually builds sustainable businesses.
Why many publishers fail at community
Community building isn’t failing because readers don’t want to engage. It’s failing because publishers make predictable mistakes. Here are the big ones and how to avoid them.
Treating community as a marketing add-on
The most common failure is bolting community features onto existing workflows without changing anything fundamental. Publishers add comment widgets after publishing, run occasional Q&As as stunts, and give nobody clear ownership of outcomes. Nothing in the editorial calendar actually depends on reader input.
Instead, make participation part of your commissioning process. Every beat should have weekly callouts or Q&As tied to actual story plans. Give clear ownership to a Community Editor working with desk leads, and tie community insights directly into news meetings.
Weak moderation kills good discussion
Without clear rules and consistent enforcement, discussion spaces fill with harassment and bad-faith arguments. Good readers leave quietly, and the newsroom disengages.
Publish a one-page charter explaining what contributions you want and what you won’t tolerate. Create a simple moderation system: remove threats and hate speech, hide unverifiable claims, publish civil contributions, and feature the best ones. Staff a duty moderator rotation and hit basic response time targets.
Chasing metrics that don’t matter
Publishers get excited about long comment threads that don’t inform coverage, build habits, or improve renewals. When leadership sees hours spent with zero business impact, they pull funding.
Focus on quality over quantity. Score contributions on relevance, evidence, and civility. Track retention lift for participants versus non-participants. Route high-quality inputs into stories and credit contributors visibly.
Over-automating the human elements
Some publishers try to scale engagement with bots and generic prompts. Readers feel managed rather than welcomed, and participation becomes performative.
Use automation for safety and triage, not relationships. Keep humans involved for tone, thanks, and synthesis. Add reporter signatures to summaries and rotate voices to keep interactions authentic.
Launching too big without measuring success
Publishers launch forums across multiple beats simultaneously. Quality drops, teams burn out, and without clear metrics, leadership only sees costs.
Start small with 1-2 beats where you already have loyal readers. Set 90-day targets for contribution rates, reply-back percentages, and return visit lifts. Only expand when you hit those benchmarks.
Simple test before launching anything: Who owns this? What business outcome will change if it works? How will you measure success? Under what conditions will you shut it down?
Communities succeed when publishers treat them as ongoing editorial practices, not marketing features. Start small, set boundaries, measure what matters, and keep the human element at the centre.
From traffic to trust
The last decade taught publishers one brutal lesson: traffic is built on sand. What actually lasts isn’t the viral spike, it’s the relationship.
We’ve shown how lasting revenue runs through a simple chain: participation creates belonging, belonging drives retention, and retention is where the money lives. Communities make businesses resilient. Subscribers who feel part of something come back more often, cancel less, and are far more likely to pay and recommend you.
This shift requires trading volume theater for connection discipline. Bake community thinking into commissioning, workflows, and metrics. When you do this right, you stop praying for platform luck and start compounding value you actually control.
Start this week
- Rewrite your scoreboard. Move one metric from “how many visited” to “who returns and participates.”
- Name an owner. Give someone clear mandate to run callouts, close loops, and report impact.
- Pilot one beat. Launch a simple participation loop where you already see loyal readers.
- Publish the rules. Create a one-page charter that makes your space safer and signals stronger.
- Measure what matters. Log participation events so you can show retention lift in 60-90 days.
None of this requires moonshot thinking. It requires clarity, consistency, and genuine care for people who choose to engage.
Replace the adrenaline of chasing viral moments with the satisfaction of building habits. Create spaces where readers don’t just arrive, but belong. That’s how you future-proof revenue and walk into your next board meeting with numbers that tell a story worth funding.
The click economy is dying. The relationship economy is just getting started.
