Targeted content is “the ultimate starting block” to transform operations, Doug Smith tells publishers, looking back on experience across 60 industries.

Currently head coach in WAN-Ifra’s GNI-supported Table Stakes Europe change management initiative for local and regional publishers, he was a speaker at last month’s Digital Media Africa event.

“In the 21st century, the newsroom is the business,” he told delegates.

Smith (pictured) says good journalism and good financial results “go hand in hand… regardless of the so-called business model or revenue sources that you have.”

He stresses, “the bottom line is that, while all other functions matter, you have to work with the newsroom to be successful.

“It’s just no longer the case that the business side is the business; the newsroom is the business.”

Looking back on lessons from work he and colleagues had done for more than 15 years – primarily in the US and Europe, “but actually with news organisations everywhere around the globe” – the message is that good journalism is the key to good economics of journalism organisations.

However, he says good journalism today requires a different, more well-defined strategy than that adopted by news organisations up to a decade or so ago.

“We have to move away from providing general news content to the general public to providing targeted content and experiences that are crucial to targeted audiences,” he told delegates.

“Fundamentally, economic sustainability and journalistic sustainability rely on audience habits. If people out there don’t visit and use your content as a habit, you will not be able to sustain yourself economically.”

In a session aimed at helping newsroom leaders build teams that will seize opportunities, align with audience needs, set objectives, and measure results so they become better at what they do, he explained the logic of the RAOOI “tool” – for Resources, Activities, Output, Outcome, Impact – he crafted with Charlie Baum. It was  developed to help newsrooms effectively navigate change, and as key to the Table Stakes performance-driven change management initiative.

“Performance results are the primary objective of change, not change,” he says. “Getting people to commit to performance results, not to commit to change, is key – and that’s what RAOOI is all about.”