The User Needs Model in Journalism and its impact on PR

What are newsrooms doing to keep audiences engaged in the news? Back in 2016, Dmitry Shishkin (who was working at the BBC World Service at the time) came up with the user needs model – six categories for why people consumed news. The 2.0 version adds two more user needs and alters a few of the previous ones.

For what these updates mean for the PR and journalism relationship, here are key points from a recent Journalism.co.uk webinar with Sofia Delgado, audience growth director at Metro.co.uk, Rutger Verhoeven, co-founder and chief marketing officer at Smartocto, and Dr Richard Fletcher, director of research at the Reuters Institute.

The importance of user needs and what newsrooms are focusing on

A 2024 survey from the Reuters Institute found that over half of respondents felt that all four basic needs (knowledge, understanding, doing, and feeling) were important. However, they didn’t necessarily feel that the news media were doing a good job at meeting them, as Richard explained:

‘People tend to think that the news media does a pretty good job of updating them but some of the other needs – in particular, “give me perspective” and “inspire me” – emerged as the two areas which audiences thought were important, but were perhaps less likely to think were being fulfilled.’

Sofia said that ‘the era of “update me, update me, update me” is over’. Rutger agreed that a more balanced output of user needs articles results in more attention time, engagement, and returning visits from the audience.

The impact on PRs? Journalists are increasingly looking to write ‘inspire me’ and ‘give me perspective’ articles. This means a move towards more positive news and constructive journalism. The media will be looking to PRs for inspiring case studies, and research and information, to fulfill that ‘inspire me’ need. They will also be looking for experts to help with that ‘give me perspective’ need.

Less is more

Sofia explained how Metro.co.uk has been doing desk by desk focus weeks with training on SEO, storytelling, copy clinics, and using data to understand user needs. The most difficult part? Journalists understanding that less is more:

‘It was difficult convincing people that you can get more by writing less. For the last ten years we’ve been told to write more, write more, write more and now we’re saying let’s not. The first few days, traffic would go down and people would say “what you are doing?”. You have to convince people to have that patience and show them the data at the end of the focus week.’

Impact on PRs? A lot more outlets are cutting down the volume of articles they ask their journalists to write. This fits in with the ‘slow journalism’ approach that organisations like Tortoise Media have taken. With journalists given more time to work on articles, they will (hopefully) have more time to connect with PRs about campaigns and initiatives. There is less of a rush to get press releases or comment over quickly, and you can better explain how your information fits in with the piece and the user need it fulfills.

Brand specific user needs

While there are eight main user needs, Journalism.co.uk senior reporter Jacob Granger, the event host, felt that there were niches within this:

‘Although there are the user needs, certain publications actually within that develop very specific brand user needs and specific to their own audience.’

This will especially be the case for trade titles or outlets that have a specific focus or community in mind for their content. For a national title like Metro, Sofia said the needs would be wider but specific needs work well for certain sections or teams.

‘“Give me perspective” has come up really nice and high for us in terms of average page views and sports has worked really well with this. While for our lifestyle teams, “educate me” has worked quite well, because it includes topics like real life.’

Impact on PRs? While not all media outlets will be practicing the user needs model, you can still identify what needs they are fulfilling with certain articles and sections. Pitch ideas and experts that fit in specifically with the need for that area. It will show the journalist that you understand what they are trying to achieve, and will more likely result in coverage.

For more on the ways journalism is changing, download our Vuelio white paper ‘TikTok Journalism: The platform’s impact on news audiences‘.