News organizations will support product leadership » Nieman Journalism Lab

News product management is no longer niche. Over the past three years, organizations of all sizes have adopted methodologies from the tech industry by establishing product roles and teams, and the News Product Alliance’s community has grown to more than 3,000 members.

By participating in training courses and engaging with a like-minded community of change agents, NPA members have been able to advocate for themselves and secure new product management positions.

“Joining the NPA community helped me put a name to the fact that I was doing product-related work and led me to learn more about this side of the industry. I was able to advocate for myself at my organization and ask for a title shift to product manager,” said one of our members.

However, there is a need for more institutional support and understanding of product management as a discipline to implement transformation effectively. In NPA’s recent community survey, over 70% of respondents said that news organizations do not provide sufficient resources and support for news product initiatives. While the majority said their news organization has a product team, only 10% said their organization has product roles on an editorial team — typically, the seat of power in a news organization.

News product thinkers are the ones who can connect the dots between technology, journalism, and business, lead strategic decision-making about investing the organization’s limited time and resources, and deliver quantifiable business results by systematically focusing on audience needs.

But even with the progress made, product remains a relatively young discipline in the digital news ecosystem compared to tech. Teams and roles look and operate differently in every news organization, and there is no clear definition of what constitutes a healthy news product operation or a roadmap to become one.

Furthermore, we hear from our community that at smaller news organizations, executives and editors might realize the importance of product management but are struggling to figure out how to better support product thinkers without the resources to create a new division or incorporate these processes fully. Even for organizations with well-incorporated product teams or roles, creating a “product culture” remains challenging.

This reality can make the work of these change agents isolating and difficult.

That is why our hope is that in 2024, news organizations will develop stronger product teams and operations that give product leaders greater authority.

Structural changes are required to ensure product leaders receive more support from leadership, set a clear vision and goals, foster collaboration, encourage ideas from every part of the organization, provide clear and consistent communication, and follow through with iterative and data-guided processes.

Expanding and improving product operations will increase news organizations’ ability to enhance new and existing products quickly and efficiently, guided by a deep understanding and connection with their audience and strategic business sense.

The News Product Alliance will be there to support them in this journey. We are committed to providing accessible training, community, and connection to support individuals working toward organizational transformation. Our mentor network program, which focuses on supporting emerging product leaders in their career development, has already shown compelling evidence of the impact of offering a network of support for change agents: 42% of participants reported that their team or organization experienced a change in workflow and/or structure that helped them work toward becoming more product-centered by the end of the program.

We will further focus our efforts on understanding how we can help organizations establish product management functions and become ready to face constant transformation. A dual approach will strengthen the industry’s product capabilities and ensure sustainable, audience-centered news organizations for the future.