Redefining Engagement – Feeding Curiosity & Improving Neutrality with Jesse Beentjes
Journalist, Coach, Strategist, Writer and Editor, Jesse Beentjes, shares his unique experiences and examples on all things engagement including how engagement is crucial for journalists to understand what matters to their audience and to gather input for their stories.
If you are too busy or not a big fan of watching recordings, here is a slightly edited transcript that you can browse through at your convenience:
Francesca
Hi Jesse. Thank you so much for giving me some time today. As you already know, I have been delving deep into engagement, audience engagement, especially around the news, local news, national news, any kind of publication really. And it is a fascinating topic.
We had a quick conversation and you had some amazing opinions. So I really wanted to have a conversation with you and explore your thoughts on the topic since there have been so many different opposing views and similar views. I really wanted to get yours as well.
So would you mind sharing who you are? Tell me a little bit about your background.
Jesse
So I’m Jesse or Jesse, as you say in Dutch – Jesse Beentjes.
For one and a half years I’ve been an independent journalist and editor on the one hand, and on the other hand, a newsroom strategist and in a way a consultant, even though I don’t really like that word. But I have a background in local news reporting and financial opinion editing.
I used to work for Het Parool, which is a local newspaper in Amsterdam, in several positions, the latest one being the head of the opinion section in the newspaper, which is in a way, one of the legacy ways of communicating with your audience.
It’s the closest thing to audience engagement, I think you would get, like a legacy medium before everything with the “internet” started.
I also worked for the Dutch Journalism Fund for two years, which is state run, so it’s funded by the state, but is an independent fund, investing in newsroom development, innovation for journalists, capacity building, knowledge building – these kinds of topics. And I have all that now combined in my day-to-day practice.
I write and edit 25% of the time, and then for the rest of the time, I work with local newsrooms all around the Netherlands, both public and private. I’m also slowly looking to other newsrooms or even single journalists, to work with them, to see how I can help them. And I’m also in the process of founding a new foundation with two other Dutch journalists for knowledge sharing among journalists themselves. So not to have their bosses talk, but have them talk themselves about topics in journalism and problems around it. So that was a brief summary (I tried to be brief) about me.
Francesca
What a breadth of experience you have. I love the fact that you’ve gone from newsroom to almost consultancy in a way.
What do you think, in your opinion, is the biggest challenge that you’ve been seeing in the industry of late?
Jesse
There are a couple of them. But I think the biggest challenge is divided into two parts. I think there are too many people in journalism, not enough money. And journalists don’t like to talk about money or business, it isn’t an important part of their identity, money is a boring part.
I think if you want to innovate and try to, in a way, save journalism or change journalism to what its potential is, at least in the Netherlands, there’s just, even though the Netherlands is blessed with a large media landscape, there’s actual government money flowing into journalism in several ways. We have some big media companies. And still, if you want to achieve the full potential, then actually I think there’s just too many small scale businesses operating, and in order to achieve something, you need a certain skill to do that.
And for me, working with local journalists, that is a bit of a paradox, I think, because on one hand, you want to be local and invested and close to your audience because that is your USP, I would say as a local journalist or local newsroom. On the other hand, if you want to build on something more sustainable and try to experiment with other ways to grow your brand and do your public interest task (because that’s what we’re talking about here), then you need a certain financial skill too.
And in order to have that financial skill, you need to search for ways to scale up. And I think that discussion, for me personally, is the discussion that I want to have with people. And I think lots of journalists are not ready for that discussion and find it awkward.
Francesca
They’re like teachers. They don’t want to talk about money. They want to get on with the job of holding onto account. And it’s a huge paradox. It’s so difficult to have a conversation because it needs to be at scale, doesn’t it? And I guess one of the pieces around that of diversifying the revenue is engagement.
Jesse Beentjes
Definitely. Yeah.
Francesca
So what would you describe in your experience as audience or reader engagement? What does that mean to you?
Jesse
In a way, I think that it has several parts of it. I like to think, although maybe it’s a bit cold to say so, of journalism in a way as a product with a consumer. Someone who has something to offer. And if you look at that, then there is a transaction going on.
And I think historically it has always been, we, the journalists, we will tell you what the world looks like and we will explain it to you and we will say, this is important, that is not. These are the facts, these are not the facts. And the transaction is: we have this to offer, you pay.
That’s what it used to be like.
And I think that with that said, legacy media had some audience engagement, especially with more liberal countries, the op-ed section and opinion section used to be where you could send letters to the editor and that used to be the only interaction you would have with your audience.
And it was again, very one way. People would write a letter to the editor, and then it would be published – full stop. Done. Discussion done.
But now, as journalists, especially with the rise of social media – Facebook and Instagram, Twitter, even LinkedIn, in a way, these are interesting platforms for specific kinds of journalism… People do not need the journalist anymore to explain what the world looks like and what is important, because if they want to know, they will use Google or search for it.
So in that sense, the role of the journalist is slowly changing from the teacher to more of a facilitator of civil discussion about what is important, what should democracy look like, what matters to people.
And in that sense, the transaction has changed from offering news for money.
Now it’s multifaceted; and here comes audience engagement – in order to be able to do their job properly, the journalists need the input from their audience.
They need the audience to tell them what matters in their life. What do they see? What do they perceive? What are the questions that are raised in their day to day life?
Especially with local journalism. For example, I live here in Amsterdam, if I look out of my window, I can see the University of Amsterdam, where last week there were lots of protests about Gaza and Israel.
My experience may be: “The way to my supermarket is blocked and I encounter this problem on a daily basis.” This would be an interesting story or angle for local journalists related to such a big topic. This big issue has created infrastructural challenges for people who live in a certain location. You can use that in a story, to tell a story, however you will need their input, tip, picture or video…
And that is where the transaction gets a bit weird because legacy companies are still used to us consumers paying for what they have to offer. It’s difficult because if I were to give a tip to the newspaper, then the newspaper needs me, so there is a transaction there. You, as the newspaper, have to at least show appreciation.
I think we don’t need to be mysterious about the fact that people like to see that they have a certain influence or that they are appreciated.
But then on the other hand, if you need your audience’s input, then why would they pay for that? I don’t know.
Francesca
Yeah, it’s flipping that on the head. That is a very difficult question.
I guess another question could be, why is that not natural for journalists? Where do you think the challenges are? Why do they find it difficult?
Jesse
I think it is especially difficult with journalists from a certain generation that have not been raised with social media and understand what social media actually is. I think when I was still working in the newsroom, we had to publish every article that was published on the news site. We had to put it on Twitter, just the link. Done.
Again, very one -way sending.
I knew this because I am a digital native – this is not the way social media works.
It is always a two -way street. You can talk. It’s a facilitator for communication, or at least that’s the way it works best.
It promotes interaction and not just sending.
And I think that is such a new oracle, over the last 20 years, it has become part of more and more generations’ day to day lives. But it’s not in the self perception of the journalist to think of themselves as this facilitator or someone who is part of this interaction. Instead, they think “I need this interaction to promote my article”. Saying this, the way we educate is changing, the way student journalists are being educated or even journalists are trained.
But still, the people who make the policies (this could be my personal view), I think they still don’t fully understand what it actually means to be in a digital environment as a journalist, which is so, so different from what it used to be.
And I think that hasn’t landed quite yet. It is a challenge.
Francesca
There is that challenge. One of the things that I’m always playing around with is, what does this audience engagement (the strategy behind it), actually deliver on? Why should news brands be engaging?
Because if you understand the why, then you’re potentially more likely to think about the how. So in your opinion, what is that delivering on?
Jesse
Well, I think it depends. Do you want to know what it could be or what it mostly is?
Francesca
I’d love to know both.
Jesse
I think for most (although there are some exceptions), internationally (you used to work for The Guardian for example), the way The Guardian uses pictures as an act of journalism, which becomes part of their content and their editing process, that is very smart, I would say.
And I think there are some examples where user engagement becomes part of the daily newsroom routine. But I would say that still 90% of day -to -day routines in a newsroom or from individual journalists, the why is still – I need a stage to promote my piece. I need readers. I need members.
So sending it out instead of looking at what the potential is of actually using the platform that you have, which is not… It’s not a stage vs audience situation. It is a marketplace.
And if you look at that and think, this is actually a valuable source of information. Information about communities that you don’t necessarily understand or encounter on a daily basis.
Curiosity is the reason why I chose this job so, it can also feed your curiosity. You can use it in your day to day life. You can promote your articles if you know how to do it well and get the audience in.
And I think if you look at it from a longer strategic point of view, engaging with your audience can have the ultimate goal of having them subscribe to your medium as soon as they start to feel that they belong and they are a valued source of information. It becomes part of their identity.
That is not the same as … your audience starts to decide what should be published or not. However, they do become part of the process. And I think that is what it could be. But as I said, I think in most newsrooms, they would like something like that to happen, however, older teens are already there.
Francesca
Yeah. I totally agree. It is so important that we remember, we are talking about humans at the end of the day, everybody’s experience is different. I always say we’re in a world now where there are more ways of communicating than ever before, yet we don’t necessarily feel listened to.
And if we are expecting people to be spending money, actually engaging with us, well, we need to create a way for them to feel valued. And that’s the important bit. You’re not going to come back if you don’t feel valued.
Jesse
In a way, I think if you do user or audience engagement well, it becomes a very empathetic deed to do. Maybe legacy journalists don’t like to think of themselves as very empathetic people, but I think if you listen and see your job in a way as a service, and in a way that you are helping your audience to understand the world that they live in, or even address topics or problems that they encounter in their lives, well, that’s a very humane thing to do. That is nice.
Francesca
As a journalist, you’re naturally quite suspicious, I would say. And I think we almost create suspicion about our readers. “Why would they want to get involved?” “Why wouldn’t they just want to listen to us?”.
And actually, if we open up that dialogue, there is so much that comes out of it. So it’s almost like taking away that suspicion (that we naturally have), and then opening up this place where curiosity lies.
Jesse
And there is so much information in that curiosity. You understand people so differently. But it can be vulnerable as well.
When I was head of the opinion page here in Amsterdam at Perot, I sometimes forwarded letters.
Certain articles were published with criticism where people would say: “You wrote about my neighborhood, but it not only has gun and drug -related violence, it is also the place I live”. Some people could take that well. For others, if they look at their job as an ‘art’ for example, or see themselves as an ‘artist’, that can be vulnerable.
Because then people will start saying you didn’t do your job well, although, I think in most cases people don’t mean that necessarily. They may mean, if you want to interact with me, you need to do it differently. And that is vulnerable.
To look at yourself in that way, in order to interact well with an audience, you need to reassess what matters to you as a journalist and who you are as a journalist.
Francesca
And culturally, I think it also is the team, the individuals within the team and within the organization. What is the aim? What are we trying to do? Could you give me an example of what measuring engagement looks like for you? What should that be?
Jesse
That is a good question because I think that we are finally, luckily, moving from just metrics and data. We’re moving from data -driven to data -informed. Metrics are just part of it because you need some way of showing the way you are interacting.
Some newsrooms have these daily newsletters to the people who work there which show the top most read stories and the highest interaction rates on social media for example. Which is nice, but it’s still very dependent on social media.
Here in Amsterdam as another example, I know that in the newsroom I used to work with, we always had a shortage of stock photos of the city. Something that you could use, if there’s news about something which covers the entire city.
You don’t want the same pictures of the same canal houses all the time. You actually want to see different parts of the city and it is expensive to make new stock photos for a medium.
However, if you ask your audience, could you help us out here? And then actually report back to your audience, stating ‘we used your stock photos’; they engage with it.
They will be motivated to give more and do it again.
And then also, that’s something you can show funders or investors: “We engage with our audience in more than just talking to them, we give them something back”.
I’m actually experimenting with just keeping track with an audience clicker. How many people did we talk to in a week? And report on that.
Francesca
I love those examples. I feel like the stock photo just makes so much sense. We found that 51% of people who have their image or their story published, are more likely to come back and become loyal to that brand. And something so small like that makes such a huge difference.
Jesse
And it’s also because it’s a stock photo. So I think with user -generated content or audience -engaged content, you always have to be very careful of not stepping into the professional’s boundaries.
I can imagine that if you are a professional photographer who is already struggling to pay rent in this really expensive city, you wouldn’t really enjoy seeing user generated content all the time.
On the other hand, if you say, we have good photographers to take portraits of people, or you need real straight photography, we would always use it from a big database. So it’s not personal.
You only use your audience as a database for knowledge and vision.
Francesca
Farmers weekly use their audience’s photos as part of their social media (Instagram). They get three times more likes comments and shares when it’s an actual person’s photo versus a stock photo and and it makes such a difference.
Jesse
Here in the Netherlands it’s not journalism but there’s this shared car brand that I use a lot called My Wheels. They are really good. They have good social media strategy.
It’s always very on brand, low key, not professional, they use emojis etc. It’s actually well done. And recently I saw they had a call on Instagram asking: “Instead of using very professional photos of our nice cars in nice streets, we want photos of you eating behind the wheel. We want to show the real deal.”
I don’t take pictures that often, but I can imagine that it’s actually something I would very easily do if I rented a car this afternoon. Maybe I would have a coffee and take a photo of it, which is such a smart thing.
Francesca
I definitely would.
In your experience, what would you say are the strategies that you found most effective when engaging audiences?
Jesse
I think there were some really good examples during COVID, actually.
I was working with the Dutch Journalism Fund and we were investing in local public broadcasting in the Netherlands.
There was this one project that I remember very vividly in Rotterdam, our second largest city, in which the local broadcaster started asking their audiences – What do you see now? What’s your life like at the moment? What do you do with your free time? What do you do to have fun? They made special reels on Instagram in which I also answered questions that were being raised by them, asking: “If I don’t have a garden, how can I go out?”.
They had a huge interaction with that. In a way, it was a service because they did something else than just mention numbers all the time (ie. X amount of people dead). It was hopeful in a way but also very journalistic because they did something with it.
Francesca
They are not just asking to ask. It’s about that engagement.
Jesse
Also, a group of local Friesland newspapers and I are setting up a readers panel as a source as opposed to a readers panel that are there to judge.
We’re using the readers panel to ask about parking, for example, which is a very local newsroom subject. What do they encounter with parking? They are very willing to give their opinion.
And then now the challenge is not to have just a bar chart next to an article which states what our reader panel says, but actually have it become part of your journalistic process, to already start thinking, when you get a press memo from the local city hall about parking, what do our readers actually think about that? Do they agree with this?
That is growing and it takes adaptation for these newsrooms to think differently. The useful part is, they are small newsrooms, so they can change their routines very quickly.
Francesca
It’s a massive positive to be able to do that. You actually went straight into my next question, which was, at what point should we be thinking about our audience? And I love that you just, yeah, is there anything you’d want to add to that?
Jesse
I think because that’s why you’re there, right?
You should be thinking about your audience all the time, because you’re there for the audience. Even if some people like to have their names printed. For example, I’m writing a book. I’m not ashamed of that. I want to have my name there. But then… if that is so important to you, if that’s the only thing that matters in your job, I don’t know if you’re doing the right job.
Francesca
Jesse, tell us a bit about your book really quickly.
Jesse
It’s a book which reflects another way of looking at masculinity, that I wrote and researched after I was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 2020.
I call it a journalistic historical book, but it’s also very much about self discovery. I raise questions about who gets to decide who is a man and who isn’t, because I’m worried about the very strict frames of what is considered a man and what isn’t with all the implications for young boys growing up now, and having, as an example, Andrew Tate to look up to.
Francesca
I was actually going to say, are there any engagement pieces that you did while writing the book as well? Was that something that you considered along that process?
Jesse
Actually, yes. I put a question out on conquer.nl, which is the big forum for cancer patients in the Netherlands.
And I mentioned that I was writing this book, I have my own personal experience of it, but I really need other people’s experiences and points of view.
I actually had a lot of people messaging me. I met up with a lot of guys who told me their experiences. And some of their experiences ended up in the book, others didn’t. However, I told them whether I did or didn’t use what they shared. And it helped immensely, to get a bit of what the same diagnosis can mean for different people.
Francesca
It’s so important for relevance as well, that you’re giving those other points of view that you’re not just putting your own bias on it. Other people’s experiences are so different.
And it really is that curiosity piece again, isn’t it?
Jesse
I think over the last few years, there have been a lot of questions regarding how neutral journalism is. I think if you are a person, you cannot be neutral. You are never neutral. You have your point of view. You have your experience. You have your identity.
However, if you can show you understand your way is not the only way of looking at things, actually, audience engagement or user engagement is a way to deal with a big journalistic question, like neutrality.
And I think then you can show, we are not neutral, but we are open and curious.
Francesca
And on that, have you ever had any engagements in your experience that surprised you?
Jesse
That’s a good question. I wrote a story about LGBTQ couples on holiday a couple of years ago. It came from a certain personal experience. Once my partner and I refused to sleep in the same bed in the Netherlands, which was odd. So I wrote a story about it.
I interviewed some people and that story got so much feedback not only on social media, but people also sent me emails saying that they recognized it and that they felt seen. And I was so surprised by that. I did not see that coming.
It was a couple of years ago, and I still sometimes think I should have done something with that in that moment.
I should have done something with that because apparently it was big. And that was actually surprising.
If I were to do this again, I would think about it immediately before putting a question out there, and it could have been even more.
Francesca
I love that idea that we are self reflecting as well within our industry, because I know for myself, my view of engagement has developed so much in the last few years.
The fact that you’re looking at a story that might have happened in the past that is massively personal, and looking at it again and saying, well, how would I have done engagement now? Is a huge piece to that.
Another piece to that engagement is also the technologies we use.
What role do you see technology like AI, for example, or data analytics play in audience engagement efforts? What do you see there?
Jesse
I think there are multiple.
I struggled with a chatbot recently to get a package delivered to a friend. It was very bad. That’s something that you see happening with AI and user engagement or customer engagement. I think if you choose to offer a service like that, you don’t take your customer seriously.
For journalism and newsrooms, technology is still considered as something scary.
I’m working with a local newsroom at the moment and their information management system – in which they can see who are their sources, what are the stories they are talking about, what comes in, what goes out, and who gets assigned a task.
They actually went through an entire design thinking process before I came in.
And the result of that process was, well, the system that we’re looking for, it just doesn’t exist. So we’d better use what we’re doing now, which is all different kinds of Google Docs, Asana etc… and we have to do it consistently and write down the workflow.
I would like for newsrooms to cut the time using all these different systems. I would like for AI to fulfill the problem of someone having to manage all these systems.
They are experimenting with this in the Netherlands.
For example, I heard that there is this insurance company who now has a social media AI bot for their social media posts. Someone still has to put the input in and get the input out. So there is still so much to process. When you look at user engagement and the DMs in Instagram, emails, people sending things on LinkedIn, even sometimes written letters – Someone still has to manage that.
So with that said, not enough people, not enough money. It’s always choosing between prioritizing making new content or managing what comes in.
And I think that Technology has a role to fulfill in this.
I was very surprised when I found out your example, Francesca, of good software being developed, and there are more examples. But then on the other hand, a big part of the daily news routine is that you don’t have time to learn a new system.
Francesca
That’s the challenge again. The technologies are trying to get there. It’s matching up that culture within the newsroom. Using new technologies is one thing, and then having the right technologies is another. Chatbots are awful. I completely agree. And what about going back into the challenges…
Because at the end of the day, the challenges are more human than anything else. What do you see as the common pitfalls or challenges in audience engagement initiatives that you’ve worked on in the past?
Jesse
The idea starts with, wouldn’t it be nice to? And then it’s always considered a bonus.
There are some newsrooms that I know are changing. In the Nensters, in Vondag, they do a lot with users. But that means they had to change budgets. Instead of audience engagement being something extra. Lots of local newspapers want to do more with audience engagement, however it’s always a temporary thing, because at the end of the day, we need to publish a newspaper or we need to publish an online newsletter, or we need to make a talk show.
So I think that’s the biggest pickle.
It starts with empty chat, and then sometimes it is a success, but someone has to run it.
Which might mean you have to stop doing something else if you’re limited in budget and time.
Francesca
There definitely needs to be a strategy behind it. It can’t just be a one -off initiative. And I think that’s something that I struggle with so much, working with different media brands.
How do we not only create that culture within the newsroom, but also the bigger picture when you’re talking about policymakers or the leaders within those newsrooms?
Understanding the why at the end allows them to continue it to make it a sustainable activity.
Jesse
I think for that change to happen as a reporter or as a newsroom or as a medium itself, learn how to report differently on the impact that you make. Show it.
If you can show what we talked about before, what user engagement or audience engagement can actually do for your brand, then I think it’s a no -brainer to change.
But people who are stuck with the old ways, they need to see it before they believe it.
And so I think that’s also a big challenge for people working with audience engagement at the moment, like showing you’re making the impact, that’s one, but then also showing it and being aware that you need to show it in order to make the impact.
Francesca
And it really helps, I think, to have real examples of when it’s gone right, but also when it’s gone wrong, so that we can help each other learn.
Do you have any examples by any chance of times where it’s just gone wrong or times where you feel like, wow, that worked really well?
Jesse
Well, I think Eendvandaag in the Netherlands do a good job. I also really like NuJay, which is a new .nl, a new site, a news site.
They reopened the comment section, and now they have people who run it. They publish weekly articles based on questions that are being raised in the comment section.
So they have people actually reading it and reporting on it and showing what they’ve done with the input. When I want to check the temperature in the country about a certain topic, I read the comments, because you need to go through a certain process in order to be able to give your opinion.
In terms of where it has gone wrong…
I don’t really like to criticize the industry because I think people are trying their best. So I will give an example of something I introduced when I was working as Opinion Editor.
We had a daily opinion page in the newspaper that people paid for. There were experts and letters to the editor. And I thought it would be nice on New Year’s Eve to open up a page entirely for the reader to engage. We ask questions like, what do you wish for Amsterdam’s city in the new year? What do you hope for? What are you looking for? Which in a way was nice. And then it was printed. And it was done.
However I now think, this is actually a moment where you could look back and reuse people’s hopes, and look at what actually happened, and you could make stories from this and use this as your follow -up strategy in your newsroom.
Following up on them, that’s the second part.
Francesca
I’m hearing three things that keep coming up in my opinion. Starting that conversation from the beginning, using the content and creating the loop. So I guess my last question is, if you had to name the top three benefits of why you should be doing this, or if you’re not doing it today, why should you start?
What are the three biggest things, biggest reasons you should be engaging with your audience so much more?
Jesse
The first one would be – it’s fun. It is more fun to be talking and interacting with the people that you work with. Secondly, I think the most valuable conversations I had as a journalist were with people who read the stories that I wrote or colleagues wrote.
Personally, it gives you a sense of fulfillment because it adds to your professional view as journalists to know what you’re doing for whom.
And finally, you can grow your brand with it.
Amsterdam is a good example. It is a big city with a fairly highly educated population, but not everywhere. And these people also are citizens of the city. They encounter a lot of things in their daily lives. If you are able to attach those people and give them the feeling of being valued and being seen and being heard, your brand becomes part of their brand or their identity. And they may not have the means right now, but maybe in a couple of years they get a new job. And they think, you know what, I’m going to go for this newspaper or for this online platform, because I feel valued by it. They have a certain way of ownership. So I actually think it’s also a very commercial way of growing your readership or membership. I see no reason why not to do it.
Francesca
So it’s fun. It’s essential as journalists and you’re future proofing the brand. You’re building the brand. You’re building that community.
Well, Jesse, thank you so much for your time!