Why product thinking goes hand-in-hand with service-oriented journalism
Our previous series of posts cover the Gazzetta process as a model of service-oriented journalism. Our Audience Research and Reporting phases have led us to the stage in which we are ready to create news products.
We have researched and analyzed the different segments of our intended audience—who are not a monolith—and used that understanding to guide our data gathering on topics that will meet our intended audience’s information needs.
The data gathering process resulted a rich and diverse data set that we cleaned, analyzed, and verified, revealing patterns and trends. We then created and tested several reporting hypotheses and arrived at a concept to bring to the product idea phase.
In the Gazzetta product ideation phase posts, of which this is the first, we describe the methodologies, frameworks, and mindset shifts that guide our work. Our goal is to transparently share the process we follow in pursuit of service-oriented journalism in distorted information environments, so that others working on similar challenges can replicate and adapt these findings to their own news and information ventures.
In this post, we will discuss what we mean by a “product,” and how the previous phases support and interact with this concept and our goal of reaching people with information that is useful to improving their lives, and which inspires their trust.
Jump: WHAT is a news product | WHAT is your value proposition | HOW to distinguish content and products | WHY products better meet info needs | HOW to transform your workflow | WHY trust must be baked in | WHAT we learned
Shifting from content to product in modern journalism leads to greater utility
For much of modern history, journalism focused on producing content: the writing, editing, and reporting of stories. These stories were discrete, stand-alone, and occurring periodically within a broader collection. For example, the town crier, radio news, and television news all follow this model.
News organizations, especially in the late 20th century, operated with a stable, one-size-fits-all model, rarely looking beyond journalistic intuition for what people needed. Journalists asked what was newsworthy and gathered information starting with that inquiry. However, this began to change with the digital disruption of the 1990s and 2000s, which stripped away captive audiences and advertising revenue streams.
In response, forward-thinking organizations recognized a need to adopt product thinking. At its core, product thinking means viewing your news offering not merely as journalism with intrinsic value, but as a product or service specifically designed to fulfill a defined audience's needs and sustain a viable business model. This mindset, adapted from the technology sector, is rooted in reconciling classic journalistic values with the service-minded approach of product thinking.
Imagine two people creating a structure and different approaches they could take:
- Traditional journalism may focus on creating something intrinsically valuable to society—a monument, museum, or cathedral—based on expert instinct, visions, and principles. The inherent quality is sufficient, regardless of the practical need for the structure or how people will use it.
- Product thinkers will focus on designing a structure to suit the needs of those who will use the building. They will gather information about these needs, test different layouts, and collaborate with other professionals to ensure the structure is sound, and that the space is usable and affordable. The value results from the utility.
A concise definition holds that product thinking is a mindset emphasizing data-based decision making over instinct, valuing testable insights over closed processes, and fostering collaboration across traditional newsroom teams. It’s about creating offerings that are not just usable and profitable, but also deliver trustworthy information and uphold public service values.
Your newsroom’s value proposition requires understanding your intended audience
Product thinking transforms the focus of a newsroom, shifting attention away from mere content creation and toward people’s experience, the delivery, and feedback.
This represents a shift from a content-output focus to a holistic product perspective. In the past, newsrooms asked, "What do we want to say?" The product approach compels us to ask, "What does this person or group of people seek from us, and how can we deliver that in a compelling way?"
Borrowed from the business world, a value proposition for a newsroom succinctly articulates the unique value it provides to people and why it is the distinctive source to meet that need.
The value proposition acts as a guiding star for all product decisions, ensuring that new features or editorial projects align with fulfilling that core promise to users. It connects what your intended audience needs to what your newsroom creates.
In a previous post, we walk through the social science literature on audience information needs models, covering the shift over time from functional needs to fulfilment needs.
For example, Sanda Erdelez's work has focused on unintentional information discovery through serendipitous encounters with useful information while engaged in other activities or searches.
Uses and Gratifications Theory shifts focus from how media affects people to how people actively use media to satisfy specific needs. This user-centered perspective can be combined with social cognitive theory—examining what people benefit from the media they consume—to understand, for example, how echo chambers are formed.
These theories and others help explain the complex contexts of emotional, social, and cultural factors that affect information needs and information seeking behaviours.
We can use these frameworks to craft research that sees the whole person, and dissemination strategies that get our information to them.
Distinguishing content from products
An individual article is not a news product. Rather, a news product is a scalable, sustainable solution that can be improved iteratively, is technology-enabled, generates revenue or strategic value beyond individual articles, and serves defined information needs.
A product can be a digital platform, a content offering, or even a physical event, but it is always designed with a clear understanding of who it is for, what problem it solves, and how it will support the organization.
News content (e.g., an article, a video clip) is an individual piece of journalism that exists within a broader product framework. Articles are merely the building blocks, while the product is the complete structure that delivers ongoing value.
- A news podcast is a product. It likely has a dedicated team, may generate its own revenue, and serves as an audience development tool. An individual episode of that podcast, and the article on which an episode may be based, are both content.
- A newsletter series with its own branding, reader relationship, and business model is a product. Sending a website article to subscribers via email is a delivery method for the content, not a product.
- A video series on an investigative report is a product. A reporter's one-off video accompanying an article is not a product; is a format choice within standard content production.
Now that we understand the difference between content and products, we will illustrate why product thinking addresses people’s information needs in an ongoing manner and in a solution-focused way, as compared to the fleeting and partial nature that content provides.
Product thinking better utilizes your research to meet people’s information needs
Our audience research and data gathering efforts in restricted information environments has consistently revealed that comprehensively meeting information needs requires product solutions, not just individual stories.
Our research into the information needs of workers in a major city revealed that while they could easily find scattered job postings, they couldn't answer the question: "Where can I work safely and with opportunities for growth?"
A single investigative article exposing wage theft or workplace safety violations might be valuable content. But what workers needed was a product: a continuously updated, searchable resource comparing working conditions, verified wage information, and advancement opportunities across districts and employers.
This requires ongoing data collection, verification systems, user interface design, and regular updates—all hallmarks of a product rather than episodic content.
Similarly, our research on internet shutdowns in another region identified that people need more than news coverage of when restrictions occur. We found that users struggled with three interconnected challenges: understanding which tools were currently functional during a shutdown, learning how to use circumvention technologies effectively, and verifying whether information about available tools was trustworthy or a security trap.
An article explaining Tor or VPNs, for example, addresses only one of these needs, one time. The product solution requires a different architecture entirely: real-time testing infrastructure to verify tool functionality, step-by-step tutorials that update as technologies evolve, community verification mechanisms to build trust, and multiple distribution channels to reach users regardless of current restrictions.
This represents a sustained commitment to meeting an ongoing need, not a one-time publication.
The core criteria used by product professionals to define a true product include its capacity to address a large market, provide subscription-worthy value, create habit-forming potential, and offer differentiated value that is not easily replicated.
Both examples from our work in two different contexts illustrate why investing resources in genuine products rather than content initiatives creates meaningful impact. A story about job opportunities or circumvention tools might reach 10,000 readers once. A product that helps users consistently access information they need creates ongoing value and sustained engagement. The former demonstrates the problem; the latter solves it.
Transforming the workflow requires breaking down newsroom silos
Implementing a product strategy requires significant cultural change, particularly dismantling the traditional silos that separated editorial from technology, design, and business. The success of modern newsrooms rests on establishing cross-functional teams and embracing iterative project workflows.
Instead of a linear process where content is conceived, tech builds the delivery mechanism, and business tries to monetize afterward, product development is integrated. Multidisciplinary working groups—including journalists, developers, designers, and business strategists—contribute from the start. This ensures the final offering is editorially sound, user-friendly, and marketable by design.
For example, many teams have adopted Agile project management, working in short "sprints" to build prototypes, gather user feedback, and refine the product. This rapid, iterative cycle of developing minimum viable products (MVPs), measuring impact, and tweaking as needed is essential for innovation. This requires a shift from viewing involvement in audience data or user experience as "not my job" to understanding that thinking holistically about the audience, mission, and technical execution is everyone's shared accountability.
For smaller teams, this transformation can in many ways go more smoothly than for large newsrooms. Smaller teams may have the advantages of collaborative environments where roles often overlap and shift, absence of silos, rapid decision making, and direct engagement with the intended audience, among others. A culture shift from content to product can be readily adopted by individual team members and applied to the work as a whole in a collaborative way.
This culture shift moves the organization toward constant experimentation and learning. The ultimate goal is to move beyond content production to enabling superior audience understanding and agile execution. By embracing this integrated, audience-centric approach, organizations ensure their information is not just produced, but delivered effectively and sustainably, earning people’s time, money, and trust.
The role of trust in product thinking for distorted information environments and for remote newsrooms
In the contexts in which we work—physically separated from our intended audiences and navigating authoritarian information controls—we not only prioritize information access, but center our intended audience's need for trust and verification. In distorted information environments, trust is not assumed. It must be deliberately architected into every aspect of our products.
Our research in our various projects reveals systematic patterns in how information controls erode institutional trust. In our research on jobs in a major city, workers consistently reported skepticism toward official sources, government platforms, and even established media. When asked about their primary barriers to finding reliable information, 25% cited distrust of online sources as a core challenge. This skepticism isn't paranoia—it reflects learned experience with misinformation, state propaganda, and platforms that have previously exploited or misled them.
In another context in which we work, we see an additional dimension: audiences must evaluate whether information sources themselves pose security risks. During our internet shutdown research, users described a constant calculation: "Is this VPN recommendation genuine, or could it be a surveillance tool? Is this news channel actually independent, or a trap?" In environments where information access can carry legal consequences, trust encompasses both accuracy and safety.
These trust deficits create what we call "confined information circulation." Our jobs research found that workers overwhelmingly rely on immediate social circles—colleagues, neighbors, and family—for information validation. While 34% used short video platforms and social media for job information, they verified findings through peer networks before acting. This pattern emerged not from technological limitations but from systematic distrust of unfamiliar sources. Workers described filtering all information through personal networks, creating echo chambers that inadvertently limited their access to opportunities and protections.
Given the trust dynamics at play, we design trust as a product feature rather than treating it as an editorial virtue to be assumed. This requires specific architectural choices:
- Transparent sourcing and methodology: In authoritarian contexts where audiences rightly question information origins, we make our research processes visible. For our jobs research, we documented exactly how wage data was collected, which districts were surveyed, and what our verification methods entailed. This transparency helps audiences evaluate our credibility using the same peer-validation logic they apply to personal networks.
- Progressive trust building: Rather than expecting audiences to immediately trust comprehensive claims, we structure products to allow graduated engagement. Users can verify small, falsifiable facts first—a specific employer's wage range, a particular district's working conditions—before relying on broader analyses. This mirrors how trust develops in personal relationships and respects audiences' learned skepticism.
- Community verification mechanisms: Where possible, we integrate peer validation directly into product design. This might mean highlighting which information has been confirmed by multiple workers, or creating spaces for audiences to share their own experiences that corroborate or challenge our findings. This approach recognizes that in restricted environments, horizontal trust (peer-to-peer) often exceeds vertical trust (institution-to-individual).
- Consistent presence over time: Trust in distorted information environments requires demonstrating reliability across repeated interactions. Our product strategy prioritizes sustained, regular engagement over viral reach. A news source that appears sporadically—no matter how accurate—cannot build the trust necessary for audiences to act on sensitive information about rights protection or circumvention tools.
- Acknowledging limitations and uncertainty: Paradoxically, expressing appropriate uncertainty enhances credibility in contexts where audiences expect manipulation. When our internet shutdown research noted that certain circumvention tool effectiveness varied by region and ISP, this acknowledgment of complexity signaled expertise rather than weakness. Audiences accustomed to propaganda recognize that reality is nuanced; oversimplified certainty triggers skepticism.
In our product thinking mindset, we explicitly evaluate our offerings against competing information sources, primarily state-aligned media and the misinformation that flourishes in information voids. This means asking: When people encounter conflicting information from official sources, what specific product features help them evaluate credibility? How does our value proposition differentiate from state media that might address similar topics? We share more on this in a forthcoming post on evaluating impact.
Trust considerations also fundamentally shape distribution decisions in restricted environments. Even the most valuable information fails if distribution mechanisms themselves seem suspicious. Our research found that workers were more likely to engage with information shared through their existing social networks than through unfamiliar platforms, even when those platforms offered superior functionality. This insight suggests product distribution must prioritize integration with trusted channels over technological optimization.
Similarly, in our internet shutdown research, distribution through established circumvention tools—platforms users already trust for secure access—proved more effective than creating standalone applications, despite the technical limitations this imposed. The trust transfer from tool to content enabled engagement that would otherwise require months of credibility building.
What we learned
Our audience research and data gathering process have both supported the need for product thinking as the best way to deliver useful information to people, based on their stated information needs. This requires a change in mindset across the functions of the newsroom, which is often easier and faster to implement on smaller teams.
Ultimately, product design for distorted information environments must assume audience skepticism as the starting point. Rather than viewing this as an obstacle, we treat it as a design constraint that drives better products. Skeptical audiences demand clear value propositions, transparent methodologies, and consistent performance. These requirements—when met—create products that genuinely serve needs rather than simply broadcasting information.
The newsrooms and media ventures that succeed in authoritarian contexts will be those that recognize trust not as a precondition for engagement but as a product feature to be deliberately engineered, tested, and refined based on people’s behavior and feedback.
Building on this foundation, the next part of the Product Ideation phase will detail how we develop our value proposition using the Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) framework to precisely address intended audience needs.
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If you have feedback or questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch at hello@gazzetta.xyz.