In most newsrooms, the word "product" gets used loosely, a shorthand for the website, the app, maybe the newsletter. But that definition undersells what product actually is, and why it matters so much right now.

The shift happening across media today isn't just about platforms or paywalls. It's a deeper rethinking of how journalism organizations operate, a move away from purely content-centric models toward something that puts the audience, the business, and the technology in genuine conversation with each other. That connective tissue? That's news product¹.

At its core, a product is anything that creates an ongoing exchange of value between a news organization and its users. A website. A mobile app. A daily newsletter.

The keyword is ongoing, unlike a project, which has a fixed start and end, a product evolves. It's never finished; it's continuously refined based on what users need and what the business requires.

But news product is more than just the thing you ship. It operates on three levels at once:

You may have heard of design thinking: the empathy-first approach to creative problem-solving. Product thinking builds on that foundation and adds something critical: business reality.

It asks uncomfortable questions that journalism cultures sometimes avoid. Why are we building this, and does it align with our actual goals? What are we trading off, given limited time and money? And perhaps most importantly: how will we know if it worked?

That shift from output metrics to outcome metrics is one of the most significant mindset changes product thinking demands. It's harder. It requires instrumentation, patience and a willingness to be wrong. But it's the only way to build something that lasts.

One of the most useful frameworks in product thinking is “Jobs to Be Done,” a way of looking at your audience not by who they are demographically, but by what they're trying to accomplish when they reach for your product.

A reader might "hire" a news product for any number of reasons.

When product teams understand these motivations, they build things people actually want to use, not just things that are technically impressive or editorially ambitious.

If you've ever struggled to explain what a product manager actually does, think of R2-D2. The business leaders are the pilots, the Luke Skywalkers and Poe Damerons, who have a mission to complete and a battle to win. The product manager is the droid plugged into the cockpit beside them: reading the instruments (data), navigating through asteroid fields (constraints and risks), and rerouting power to the right systems (technology) at exactly the right moment.

R2 doesn't fly the X-Wing. But without R2, the X-Wing doesn't make it to the Death Star. That's the product manager's role. They aren’t the hero of the story, but the reason the hero succeeds. Always present, essential, and the first one everyone misses when something goes wrong.

What makes this role so valuable is that it sits between everyone else, editors and engineers, strategy and execution, audience needs and business constraints. Product management breaks down silos, translates vision into a prioritized roadmap, and makes sure audiences (staff, members, clients, end users) never become an afterthought when timelines get tight.

The irony is not lost on me that some people will attempt to use AI to fill the gap of a product manager. But if you read this entire post, or try to do this repeatedly, hopefully you’ll quickly learn why that isn’t a viable solution.

One of the most common mistakes organizations make is treating launch as the finish line. In product thinking, launch is barely the midpoint. Every product moves through a continuous cycle:

In an era of disrupted business models, splintered attention, and ongoing existential pressure on the news industry, the future of journalism is product. Not because technology is more important than journalism, it isn't, but because the organizations that will survive are the ones that treat their relationship with the audience as something worth designing, measuring, and continually improving.

That's what product thinking offers: a way to make journalism not just indispensable but genuinely sustainable.

I’m grateful to have learned a lot simply from researching and doing, but also through a mentorship with Jim Bernard and the folks at the News Product Alliance who I first crossed paths with at ONA in 2024. In 2025, I completed the NPA’s News Product Management certification program.

For More on News Product: Check out the NPA’s educational article.