36 Product Management for Journalists
by Cindy Royal
INSTRUCTOR NOTE: This chapter was added for fall 2018, and is not yet reflected in the print edition.
What Is a Digital Product?
The first step to defining the role of a product manager is to understand what is meant by a digital product. With technology’s influence, there are many digital products that a news organization might be developing and maintaining at any time. In the 2016 research paper, “Managing Digital Products in a Newsroom Context,”[1] one interview respondent succinctly articulated this newfound complexity.
“We used to know what a media product was. It was a newspaper or a television broadcast. Now it’s much broader.”[2]
Stories themselves can be digital products when they have interactive or data components. For example, organizations like ProPublica and Texas Tribune have made it their mission to present and visualize data in the service of their stories. ProPublica’s Dollars for Docs[3] project provides an interface to explore financial contributions physicians receive from pharmaceutical companies. Texas Tribune has developed projects that allow users to explore state employee salaries,[4] public schools [5] and Texas prison inmates. ProPublica and Texas Tribune collaborated on the award-winning Hell and High Water[6] project, which used mapping and data to visualize the problem of hurricane preparedness, months before Hurricane Harvey devastated Houston.
But interactive journalism projects aren’t the only digital products a news organization might develop. Some examples of digital products include:
- Mobile applications, like The New York Times Cooking app[7]
- Bots, like the Quartz app[8] that facilitates a conversation with the news
- Special project and event sites, like the Hook ‘Em website[9] developed by Austin American Statesman to highlight sports news about The University of Texas
- Social media engagement products that solicit user input, like ProPublica’s project to monitor online political ads[10]
And there are internal projects like content management systems, subscription services, and analytics products that help an organization more efficiently manage their operations. These are just a few examples of the range of digital activities managed by news organizations, with new applications being introduced all the time.
Digital products require a different set of skills than those of a traditional reporter or editor. The complexity and breadth of digital products have elevated the need for managers with unique skills and perspectives. That role falls to someone with a product manager capacity, whether the job title specifically states that or not.
Since 2016, articles have been written and summits convened on defining this new role of product management role as it relates to journalism [11][12][13][14] The role of “journalist” used to be synonymous with “reporter” and “editor.” But now, a new realm of functions and responsibilities has emerged in the service of