A new premium content team for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age aims to create value for subscribers and show non-subscribers what they’re missing.

In an INMA ‘Satisfying Audiences’ blog, head of premium content Chris Paine recalls the aims of the team established last November.

“The role of journalism is essential to a thriving democracy,” he says. “For a 21st century audience inundated with so many options – some riven with misinformation – we are committed to delivering the best stories our readers deserve to know while remaining steadfast in our goal to attract new audiences."

Paine says there is much exciting work to do and many opportunities to enhance and showcase the wonderful stories produced every day by their journalists.

“Premium content, and its role in satisfying audiences, is anything from a high-concept visual story involving web developers, designers, data journalists, and editors, to a bold illustration and thought-provoking headline,” he says. “It can be a 17-minute documentary about AC/DC that finds a huge audience on YouTube or an explainer on cicadas that’s published at a time when our highly engaged app audience is most active.

“To produce premium content is to treat our audiences with the respect of being prepared to pay for our journalism.”

Subscribers know good journalism takes time and, therefore, money, but that’s not something to be taken for granted nor preached about. “Rather, it’s incumbent upon us to prove the value of what we deliver in return,” he says.

“We need to consistently signal why our content is worth paying for. That’s not just in special projects commissioned a handful of times a year, but in small and meaningful ideas that contribute to the reader experience.”

At the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, the visual stories team has built a presentation hub that can be accessed by every journalist and editor. The tool includes timelines, quizzes, embeddable charts, galleries, image quotes, images sliders, and the ability to embed audio clips and lengthy documents. “Enhancing content on a daily basis matters just as much as big, broad visual features,” says Paine.

The premium content team covers four key areas:

-video and audio (including podcasts);

-presentation (graphics, visual stories team, and illustrations);

-explainers; and

-data journalism.

“There’s a lot of variation between the teams, but among them is a core, unifying principle – to turbo-charge the journalism undertaken by the Herald and Age.”

The goal for 2022 is to be strategic about how the teams are utilised to tell great stories that engage readers, and show prospective subscribers “why we’re worth paying for”.

The strategic decisions begin with every news conference: How can stories be elevated in the daily news cycle? How to “zoom out” and take a deeper look at an issue as an explainer? How to mobilise the visual stories team to create a compelling experience for readers that engages, informs, and surprises them?

“The most important question we can ask in the process is this: Is this solving a problem for the audience,” he says. “A lot of factors go into determining the value of good journalism, and decisions are made by a team of experienced editors.

“In terms of satisfying audiences with premium content, the audience is at the forefront of my mind.”

There’s also plenty of talk about ‘reader service’, particularly when commissioning an explainer, data analysis or digital interactive. “If we’re providing a reader service, then we’re providing readers with a reason to trust us,” says Paine. “It can be as deep and complex as spending months poring over electoral data and presenting it with a bespoke interactive that tells each person reading that story something about themselves, their postcode, their seat or local member, and their neighbours.

“Or it can be as simple as the interstate travel planner that we built in December to help readers navigate the myriad (and frequently) changing requirements of each state and territory government when travelling interstate.”

Paine says the goal for the mastheads is to “constantly challenge ourselves and our readers with how we tell stories and where we tell them.

“Of course, a lot of this work revolves around new and emerging platforms, social media, and distribution models. But just as much of that work begins on the pages of the Herald and Age."