Investment Needed for Distribution
The success of news companies in the 20th century was not merely a function of their journalism. It also was a function of their investment in and control over the distribution of information. Printing plants and paper contracts, fleets of delivery trucks, newsstands, broadcast slots, and complex logistics all contributed to the news landing in consumers’ homes. Mastering distribution all but guaranteed audiences, attention and revenue.
Distribution dynamics in the 21st century have fundamentally changed. Social feeds, app stores, search engines and now AI assistants act as the new conduits to information. At the same time this new landscape was forming, news companies were actively cutting costs associated with traditional distribution (newspapers, broadcast television) without necessarily reinvesting savings into new products, new formats, or new skills. Rapidly evolving market dynamics combined with news organizations’ response have left many in a precarious position.
The path back from this precipice is challenging, yes, but possible. One path news organizations should investigate is how to increase investments of money and time into emerging news products and distribution mechanisms — video, data, audio, apps, live formats, newsletters, interactive/scrollytelling and AI features. This may not equal the 30-40% of total costs previously allocated to printing and distribution, but it likely will necessitate a meaningful shift in investment and priorities.
The chart, based on data from the News Sustainability Project, illustrates this point across publisher types: the most sustainable news provider archetypes (such as: Scale Local, Regional Groups, National Challengers) allocate a materially higher share of their costs to Product and Technology compared to their less sustainable peers. Regardless of scale or market position, sustained investment in product capability and technical infrastructure is strongly associated with stronger long-term performance.
Invest in distribution and direct relationships
News producers should consider allocating and maintaining consistent investment in distribution capabilities, not individual platforms whose algorithms will change. In practice, that may mean an investment in video and audio production, platform expertise, newsletters or notifications, content partnerships or packaging.
They also should consider prioritizing owned destinations — their own sites, apps, newsletters — to encourage audiences to come directly to them for their content. Use of rented or semi-owned platforms (e.g., TikTok, Instagram, YouTube) should be to find and attract new audiences, but the clear objective is to convert those people to direct visitors.
Distribution should be a core part of every journalist’s job, and they should be encouraged to spend more time (e.g., 30-40%) bringing stories to life for audiences. For example, successful journalists will be those who collaborate with video teams on major investigative stories to maximize social media awareness and will record audio versions of their articles to make content more convenient for audiences on the move. While this may affect the number of stories published, if executed properly, it should not negatively impact engagement.
The distribution shift also means a hiring shift
As distribution shifts, the skills required in a news organization are evolving. What matters now is a blended skill set: storytelling craft with the distribution, product, data and audience skills that turn reporting into attention and habit. Emerging news organization roles include:
- Role: creating stories in new formats (video, audio, newsletters).
- Skills: on-camera/on-mic presence, scripting, packaging (titles, thumbnails, descriptions), editing, basic analytics.
- Role: overseeing and informing end-to-end content creation.
- Skills: creative direction setting, planning/ logistics, quality control, platform strategy.
- Role: building user journeys and experiences that increase direct relationships.
- Skills: customer journeys (including signup), app/tech development, user experience.
- Role: capturing, processing and delivering audio or visual content.
- Skills: platform pacing, visual grammar, audio/ video quality control.
- Role: producing interactive and data-led storytelling formats.
- Skills: collecting/cleaning data, data visualization, gamification, interactive design.
- Role: analyze and share audience data to inform the content strategy.
- Skills: data cleansing, data analysis, storytelling, qualitative research methodologies.
“For as many views as I have had on Instagram, I use that as a marketing tool, not as a place where I think I’m going to make much money. Substack is where we are making our money and through people who are angel investors from the outside of their chest saying, ‘Hey, we like what you’re doing. Here you go.”
“I see a decrease of production in terms of scale in basic text for us to try to make things in different formats and invest in visuals and audio and chat bots. We have to make choices and the choices that we have is to reallocate resources from one type of production that we had in scale which was text article to other types of formats and choose perhaps to make better decisions on what to cover and try to understand better what our audiences want.”
Optimize staffing into small, cross-functional channel squads
Social media teams who bear responsibility for multiple platforms and channels (e.g., video, podcast) often lack the resources or specialization required to regularly create meaningful content.
Mastery is channel-specific. YouTube is not the same as TikTok, which is not the same as newsletters, which is not the same as podcasts. Thus, optimization means reorganization around small, accountable squads aligned to a priority channel or franchise, each with clear goals and the autonomy to try new things.
A typical squad blends creators, a producer/ writer/editor, production specialists (video editor, motion designer or audio engineer), and commercial analysts. Squads own their schedules, KPIs, and an experiment backlog for their channel. While leadership sets standards and strategy, squads control tactics.
“I would say my franchise (‘Out There’) is very indicative of the path that is encouraged at Morning Brew and similar to Dan Toomey’s journey with Good Work. It’s basically that of someone who started doing something else, something tangentially related and then developed a style that we decided merited a full franchise and there are other people who have done that.”
Community as a distribution mechanism
Publishing is the start of a conversation, not the end. For younger audiences, part of the value is belonging and participation — asking questions, seeing them surfaced into coverage, joining live sessions, and engaging in a respectful comments space. The creation of such a community becomes a distribution function that drives habit and willingness to pay. Things such as prompts in videos and newsletters, recurring AMAs, live Q&As, clear codes of conduct with consistent enforcement, fast triage, and simple workflows that turn audience questions into reporting build participation into the work output. Editorial franchises can be tied to live and virtual events so the community has a home and a cadence.
“The comments can be a blessing and a curse but the ones which are a blessing are the ones where people are asking you to help them further their knowledge, where they’ve misunderstood something about the video and want more information or they have follow-up questions. So treating the publication of the video as the end of the journey and all that’s left to do is gather your stats and give yourself a pat on the back I think is also a massive mistake. I think treating communication as a conversation from start to finish rather than a lecture I think is the essential thing.”