In my last post, I wrote about audience loops and how local news needs to move from a one-way broadcast to a system of continuous listening and response.
But a loop is only as useful as what you’re actually trying to learn.
And that’s where the user needs model comes in.
Enter: the user needs model
There’s a concept in journalism and product thinking called the user needs model.
At its core, it asks a deceptively simple question:
What job is the audience hiring this piece of content to do?
Not “what should we publish?”
Not “what will perform well?”
But: what does someone actually need right now?
The shift that changes everything
Once you start thinking this way, content stops being defined by topic and starts being defined by purpose.
A single story might exist to:
Inform someone about what just happened
Help someone understand why it matters
Give context they didn’t have before
Offer guidance on what to do next
Create a sense of connection or shared experience
Or simply give a moment of relief or curiosity
Same newsroom. Same story ideas. Completely different intent.
And that intent changes everything downstream: what you measure, what you prioritize, and what “good” actually means.
Dmitry Shishkin, a veteran of the BBC and former CEO of Ringier International, introduced the user needs model now used by many news orgs.
I highly recommend listening to The Rebooting Show’s “Journalism’s Product Problem” episode for more on this topic.
Where this meets audience loops
This is where my last post connects directly. Audience loops are how you learn from your audience over time.
User needs are how you define what you’re trying to learn in the first place.
Without that clarity, a loop just tells you things like:
This got opened
This got clicked
This got shared
Useful, but incomplete.
With user needs in place, the signal gets sharper:
Did this actually help someone understand something?
Did it solve the problem they came in with?
Did it meet the need they had when they arrived?
Now the loop has direction.
What this looks like in practice
It means you start making different decisions. Not just: “What should we cover today?”
But:
“What need are we consistently under-serving?”
“Are we over-indexing on informing and under-serving explaining?”
“Are we giving people help when they actually want guidance?”
It’s a subtle shift, but it changes the entire operating system of how editorial and product decisions get made.
The quiet tension
Most organizations already think they understand their audience. They have surveys. Analytics. Comments. Research decks.
But the gap isn’t data. It’s interpretation. Because data tells you what happened. User needs tell you what it meant.
And meaning is what actually drives loyalty.
Where this is heading
If audience loops are about building the system, and user needs are about defining what the system is for…
Then the next question becomes unavoidable: What has to change inside organizations for any of this to actually stick?
That’s where I’m headed next.