Cecilia Campbell, Senior Strategy Advisor at UnitedRobots and Co-founder of WAN IFRA Innovate Local, brings over 20 years of experience as a media journalist and thought leader in audience engagement. She offers invaluable insights into how local journalism can create lasting value in communities by focusing on being indispensable to readers. A powerful message of hers? “Democracy starts locally.” Cecilia emphasises that true audience engagement isn’t just about producing journalism—it’s about producing journalism that matters to people’s lives, and ensuring newsrooms reflect the diverse communities they serve.
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
So Cecilia, thank you so much for agreeing to have a little chat with us. And how about you start with a little intro, please.
Cecilia
Happy to be here. I’m Cecilia Campbell. I am a journalist originally, and I’ve sort of been a meta journalist because I’ve been working for the World Association of News Publishers since the late 90s, basically, writing about the industry, also being very involved in, particularly in a reader revenue group during the 2010’s, where we had publishers from all over the world and we would have two meetings a year visiting people like the New York Times, we went to build in Germany, all over the place.
So I got a lot of input then about where publishers were at. I lived in England at the time, I have moved back to Sweden now. I have been working with United Robots in Sweden.
We provide automated content for local newsrooms specifically. It’s quite a niche thing. When we started in 2016 (and I started in 2018), when you said robot journalism, people did not want to know. We don’t call it robot journalism anymore because it really isn’t. It’s about automating community information.
We use the old school AI, you could say. We take big data sets and we use natural language generation to turn them into small news texts, but it’s not a robot writing. It’s more like a very sophisticated template system, you could say. So all the text segments have been written by humans first, not by robots.
Anyway, so many of my answers will probably reflect what we do.
Then a year ago, I also co -founded a new group within WAN IFRA called Innovate Local, because I have been working so much with local newsrooms and you see all the, there’s a lot of challenges, but there’s also very many unique opportunities, I think, which excites me a lot. Democracy starts locally and local journalism needs to reflect that.
And in some quarters, we kind of lost our way a little bit, but I think there is such a major opportunity for local if it’s done right. And audience engagement is, of course, a big part of that, I think.
Francesca
You’ve got such a variety of experience because you’ve obviously worked with Next to National News, but also Hyperlocal. So I’m really excited to hear your insights in terms of that audience engagement piece. What does audience engagement mean to you?
Cecilia
To me, because I look at the local angle, it’s about being valuable and relevant to local people. That’s what I think. But it’s not, about what you as a publisher, what you do for the audience.
It’s not about what the audience does for you.
In a way, you talk about audience engagement, it’s sort of something that you want. Readers are engaging with you so that you can do this and that and the other.
But you have to look at it from the reader’s point of view, I think. It’s about what you can do for them. And to me, it’s about creating journalism that kind of brings them back and creates real value in their life. And answer their user needs.
To talk about another very sort of recent development in newsrooms. I think it’s audience engagement. You need to think about what you can do for readers. That’s where it starts.
Francesca
That user -centric model is something that keeps coming up. It’s a word that’s talked about again and again, especially now. I’m guessing your definition of what audience engagement is might have changed in the last few years, or has it not at all?
Cecilia
It kind of has a little bit, I would say, but then I think about it and I kind of come back to the same point again. I mean, I’ve seen it, if we go back 15 years, I’ve been seeing it very much through the lens of reader revenues and the customer journey there. Because of course, if you don’t create engagement, you’re not going to drive conversions, you need to drive retention by creating engagement with your readers.
Now with Innovate Local, I think it becomes a little bit more profound in a way. I mean, you know, in a certain sense of that word. It’s about actually becoming indispensable, an indispensable part of your local readers lives, you know, to prove your value.
Being in your readers lives and actually having a place there that they value.
Francesca
In your experience, what aims would you say that this audience engagement delivers on? Why should news brands be doing more engagement?
Cecilia
I mean, ultimately, I think it’s sort of existential for media. If you don’t engage local people, again, local, what reason do you have to exist? I mean, what is the point? And how are you going to survive? I really think it’s existential.
I just think journalism is all about engagement. You still want to provide something that is of value to them. Engagement and value are very closely connected.
Francesca
I might go down the hyperlocal route really quickly, just because it gives us a bit of context. In terms of engagement, what would you say the hurdles are? What do you think is stopping news brands from engaging with their audience better? In your definition of providing that value?
Cecilia
That’s a good question. I think first, there’s one thing to say first, I think, and because I’ve thought a lot about this over the years, so often you see these new reports about consumer research, or even like the Reuters report and things like that. And it shows that people are unwilling to pay for news. But to me, why are you stopping there?
Why are you throwing your hands in there? They’re not willing to pay for local news. I mean, clearly there must, there’s probably something that they would be willing to pay for. Start looking at what it is you could provide that they would be willing to pay for.
That to me is like, I think, I don’t think that question is being asked often enough. I think one a big hurdle is there’s too much inside out thinking in this industry.
Like, okay, we have these journalists, they have these egos, they want to do this or whatever. Obviously that’s just a huge generalisation. You need to have senior management that are really willing to look at things in a new way. You know, you can’t do it the way it always has been done.
And I think newsrooms that really reflect the communities that they serve in terms of diversity, equity and inclusion, you know, that should not, DEI should not be an activity, it should really be at the core. I think that’s a major starting point for engagement.
Francesca
It’s interesting because based on what you just said, I could almost argue that maybe there’s a place for people who aren’t journalists in our industry to come in and mix the stuff up a bit. I’m kind of hearing that from you a little bit, but maybe I’m wrong.
Cecilia
There was a really interesting guy at Newsguest, which was one of Google’s events last year. And we did a local conference session there. He was from Italy and he said, when we hire people, the main point is that they have to live in the community. So not that they’re journalists, that’s secondary.
So they’d hired a real estate agent in one village just to cover that community. I mean, that’s not exactly DEI, but you know, there are new ways of thinking about things right? It’s crazy, but it makes sense.
Francesca
That’s a fantastic example.
He must have approached every single job in such a different way.
Cecilia
I mean, I’m sure you know, you still have to really be careful with the journalistic standards and everything like that. Needless to say, I mean, I am a journalist.
But I do think and it’s the same thing, you know, when you hear a 45 year old, senior editor saying, we’re doing stuff for young people because we’ve set up a tick tock channel. It’s not about the channel. It’s about how you speak to people who is running that channel.
If it’s a 35 year old, you’re not doing it. Yeah, technically it’s there, but it has to come from people. You have to be with the community that you’re serving. I think that’s super important locally. Because it’s a harder sell in some ways because the main news of course, is covered by lots of other people.
But there are things as a local news outlet or as a local journalism outlet that obviously will be unique to you. And the more local you are, the more unique you will be and the more valuable and engaging you will be, I think.
Francesca
There’s definitely a niche in the hyperlocal and that is their personalization in a sense. And what about in terms of strategies, let’s look at strategies – best practices. Have you ever seen any that have proven more effective in your experience?
Cecilia
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
I think it’s the same theme, of course, again, get closer to your readers. There was an interesting case by a Norwegian group called Amedia. They were part of our eREV group, Reader Revenue Group for many years. And they had really re -examined how they did local journalism.
A concrete example was instead of going and reporting on the local council meeting in the town hall. Well, of course you can report on that, but the main story is not that. The main story is about the end, the person who is really affected. Get as close to the source as possible. Don’t write about the political decision, write about the people, the story about how it affects the people in your community.
They have hard figures on driving conversions and engagement. So I think get closer to your readers is a really important one.
Francesca
There’s a bit of two way engagement for you to be able to do that. You have to know your community really well. You’re broadcasting out, but you’re also trying to find ways of bringing those stories and that interaction in, which isn’t easy to do, especially now that we’ve got less and less journalists a lot of the time.
Cecilia
Absolutely.
Francesca
I think in this world where we are looking at this two -way engagement, what would you say is the point, at what point in the process should we be considering the audience? And how does that take shape in your ideal world?
Cecilia
It should just sort of be done from the point of where you start to plan the stories. You think about the user’s needs and how you cover the stories from very early on. It should never be an afterthought. Like, we have to cover this now… and how should we drive engagement? No – How should we write about this for what different groups are affected in what different ways and how can we cover it for them? It’s not a point in the process. It’s part of everything.
Francesca
You’ve worked with a lot of brands, do you have any successful initiatives or can you think of any that significantly boosted engagement? And what did you think made it successful?
Cecilia
I mean, my absolute favourite case ever, I think, is a Norwegian title called Stavanger Aftenblad, they are part of Schibsted in Norway. So it’s a regional title, a pretty big Norwegian, for Norwegian standards, big city, but like, you know, it’s still local.
They decided to start covering local football, like it’s the Champions League. Okay. That was the reader’s promise. All the divisions, including junior football.
So what they did was they built a text robot similar to ones we use at United Robots, but not with us, with the Norwegian news agency who had the data.
They had all the results. So that meant that they could cover every single match.
And most of them were written by the robots, but they were all there with the names of the scorers and the coaches and all of that. They had two full -time journalists who then were out at the matches doing interviews, streaming some of them, like really visible in the community. And they set up a whole vertical.
So if you go on their website, there is one called “goal” in Norwegian “mål”, it’s called. So when you go there, you see all the matches. And it’s really created a community around this vertical.
It really improved engagement because for every match, although you don’t have loads of audience, you have some very, very, very engaged people who are, you know, the grandfathers and the best friends of whoever is playing.
And so you get really involved readers. Plus the fact then that all the automation meant that these two journalists were out in the community, they were visible. So they’re helping build the Stavanger Afterblad brand for the future. And they actually drove conversions with much younger people than the average subscriber was.
It’s an all around fantastic case, Elin Stueland, who was the project manager, and well, she’s still looking after it now. She was our first webinar at the Innovate Local series this spring. And there’s a whole write -up on the Innovate Local website. I recommend it for anybody who thinks about community journalism.
https://www.innovate-local.org/stavanger-aftenblad
Francesca
I’ll make sure I put the link in so that anyone can find that because that’s such a beautiful story. It touches you. I think that’s part of, as humans, we make our decisions based on emotion, even though we don’t think we do. We do. And that’s the kind of thing that makes it feel so special. I was a normal person playing football and all of sudden now I’m in the local newspaper every week and I’m a star. And my granddad thinks I am and everybody does.
Cecilia
Isn’t it? So good.
Francesca
If we can create that in more areas and not just sport, I think that would be really exciting, especially when it comes to local.
Cecilia
I mean, that’s why local news has so many opportunities that you can’t get on a national level. There are other opportunities nationally, obviously, but yeah, that one is a good one.
Francesca
Do you have any examples of audience engagement that has surprised you the most?
Cecilia
This shouldn’t be surprising, but I have to say, one of our other webinars this spring was about good old fashioned investigative journalism. And it’s not even done in any particularly fancy way, where I was teaming in Sweden. They have a team of three women reporters on the investigative team.
And I only mentioned the women because they actually think it makes a difference because female sources are probably opened up to more than men. Cause some of these cases are about sexual harassment. They dig up big stories.
Generally speaking in Sweden, investigative journalism is really on the up in local media. And people are finding (and I’ve heard this from several publishers), it’s really helping them drive conversions.
So I think, even with young people, I think it’s a really good starting place because I mean, Gen Z especially (and I have a son who’s 17), they are idealists. They believe in right and wrong and things like that.
I think that could be a really good starting point for somebody who wants to get more serious about reaching younger audiences.
Francesca
That’s fascinating. There’s a whole world of documentaries. There’s a whole world of investigation. It’s a different side to it, isn’t it? And in what way do you think we should be personalising content to increase engagement among different audiences? You mentioned your 17 -year -old son.
Do you think that we need to be personalising the content in a different way? When you imagine him, what does that look like in your mind?
Cecilia
If we’re just gonna mention him, he gets everything from TikTok, but it’s not like he’s on the New York Times on TikTok. You know, there are so many people who kind of act as journalists on TikTok. And I mean, from what I’ve seen, it’s not all bad.
I do think at United Robots, it’s not personalization, but again, it’s that hyper local that if you can really get the stories closest to home to the right people, then that’ll drive engagement a lot.
For example, with…(which is a huge) buying and selling property, is a big, big thing in people’s lives. And if you can talk about properties that have sold in their neighbourhood, you know, that really becomes valuable to them and relevant to them.
And I’ll tell you another one that we have which, unfortunately, we were only able to set up in Norway and Sweden because of data issues with United Robots. But we write summaries of annual reports from local companies. And in both Norway and Sweden, it doesn’t matter how small your company is, you still have to publicly declare your books. And so suddenly there is a stream of stories which often the newsrooms have not heard of half of these companies.
But if you look beneath the numbers, you can find these really amazing stories and it’s always somebody’s employer or your own company or it’s actually your local shop or whatever. It touches everybody.
And that’s not exactly personalised, but it’s very tightly knit to the small local communities.
And there’s another example I have, which we did during the Innovate Local session at World News Media Congress in Copenhagen, which is Crosstown – I don’t know if you’ve heard of them?
They came out of the Annenberg School of Journalism at USC in Los Angeles. And basically, it was a couple of journalism professors plus a PhD engineering student who built the platform. They took publicly available data and they built a platform which basically turns any journalist into a data journalist.
It can slice and dice the data in any way you want, which is half of the solution.
And the other half is that they have created a newsletter platform. So they’ll write a newsletter and then the data is filled in on neighbourhood levels.
There are 114 different neighbourhoods in LA and each of them receive a newsletter with COVID data, traffic data, crime data, whatever it is, specifically for them.
They achieved over 90 % open rate on those. That’s another one. It’s also on our website, we had them at Congress. It’s super interesting.
Because it’s only your neighbourhood, and of course you want to know.
They also flipped it around. There was a story about Lady Gaga’s French bulldog getting kidnapped or dognapped or whatever. And they asked the question, is this part of a bigger trend? They started looking at dognapping data, you know, kidnapping data for dogs.
And they could see that actually, particularly French bulldogs went missing a lot. So that story is really interesting. And they’ve now decided to, they’ve been nonprofit, but I think they’ve kind of put themselves up for sale. And if I had the money, I’d buy them, I tell you.
It’s a really amazing platform.
Francesca
Well, let’s see if anyone listening to this kind of turns around and goes, Hmm.
I guess you’re leading onto my next question, which is around tech because you know, we talked about the data, we’re talking about engagement, but the technology that we use plays a key part in dealing with all of this. What role do you see? You’ve talked about AI, but what role does technology and analytics and data analytics play in this audience engagement efforts? Do you think that we’re there? Where do you see it going?
Cecilia
I think Crosstown is a fantastic first example of how, you know, building this tech can turn every local journalist into a data journalist. I mean, data analytics is the gold mine for local stories. I mean, it’s the kind of local stories that local publishers have been covering for years, but just not in a very systematic way.
And now, you know, with this type of platform, they can look at. It turns out that there are news deserts right in LA, areas, neighbourhoods that don’t get covered because not the right people live there. It’s about inclusivity again.
Access to local data and turning that into stories, that would be a fantastic start I think.
Francesca
Even within that, there is a lot of data, there are some parts where the data is not necessarily telling the story or the right story. And part of that is the feedback from the audience to understand, where does that go? How would you integrate that feedback and the interaction with the data that’s being received within that content creation process?
Cecilia
Yeah, I mean, I don’t know how Crosstown does it really. I know we have one client, McClatchy in the States, and they started doing automated real estate content from us. And they sent an email out saying: ‘Please give us your opinion about this’. And the email went straight to the senior vice president of the company, because she was like, this is important stuff.
I think they put it there just in case people were upset about it or, you know, always why are you using robots and that kind of stuff. But what it turned out was that most people were very enthusiastic about it because suddenly they were seeing there was high school sports as well from their local high school. But what about this other high school? Can you cover that as well? I mean, people were asking for more things through that.
But I do believe, like you say, the two -way communication with the communities, there’s a lot to be done there still. And if you don’t, it’s no good sitting in the newsroom deciding that you’re gonna do these stores. You need to be out there finding the stories and communicating with people. And that’s where automation comes in.
If we go back to tech, you can use automation to free up journalists like Amedia does in Norway, all of our clients do that.
They can spend more time actually out in the community away from their desk. And that has to be an ultimate goal for engagement, I think.
Francesca
I love that example. I think that one would be one of my surprising examples – people coming back and saying, we want more. Look, you’re not giving us enough. It’s great. And straight up to the vice president, that makes a huge difference. That’s, that’s dedication. Senior vice president now, that is dedication, really.
Cecilia
Yes. Yeah. She’s senior vice president now. I think they were very serious about that. For sure.
Francesca
So, let’s talk a little bit about the future of audience engagement. Where do you see the future of audience engagement heading? I was going to say between the next five to 10 years, but 10 feels a bit much. Maybe in the next five years, where do you see it going?
Cecilia
I mean, I think, like I’ve said in the beginning, you know, I really think it’s about being valuable in people’s lives. And I do think that quality journalism, like service journalism, impact journalism, is a thing that people talk about now, actually showing how our journalism is changing, what’s going on in your local community or the decisions that are being made.
And investigative journalism. I do think that they will win the day, including for young people, you know, creating journalism with and for your readers. Then I think the next step is, as we’ve discussed as well, how can you then, having gained that trust and being an important part of people’s lives, how can you start actually taking things back in from them and, and including them in a more active way, which isn’t just comments or whatever.
In America, they’re almost in a sort of a post newspaper world, they are heading that way. There’s so many digital new startups that are more about community in a way.
The contrast in America is extreme with the big groups or some of the big groups that are owned by VCs, and every site looks the same no matter where you are. There are a few local stories but then there’s all the other stuff that’s the same all across the country. It’s a very big contrast to the newer, smaller digital news outlets that actually are of their communities in a different way.
Francesca
I keep playing back what you said earlier about any journalist becoming a data journalist. And in that case, they didn’t need the skills to do it necessarily, but skills is something that we need to talk about when we talk about journalists all the time, especially when we’re going into using tech for audience, for the data side, for audience engagement side. What skills do you think media journalists need to be focusing on in this new future that we’re going into?
Cecilia
There are a lot of things that probably are useful. And I do think, just really the core journalism skills and including working with data. I really feel like and I’m just trying to think of my own journalism training. It was quite formulaic in a way. But I feel like it’s all about imagination, listening skills, and empathy, understanding people.
And again, I think it’s very key that newsrooms reflect the communities they serve, because journalism is about people. It’s about the people who produce it, it’s about the people who consume it. And when there’s a real connection, you get engagement. And I think that’s what it’s all about.
It’s a lot about human skills in a way. That’s where, also, I mean, with generative AI, this is where you differentiate yourself. It’s on that human connection. That’s where, that’s something robots can never do.
Francesca
I think so many people think it’s about the digital.
That’s such a fantastic answer because it’s so opposite to what everyone would potentially expect. Everyone expects you to need to be better at digital and better at data. But actually the creativity and the differentiation is that human. I totally agree. I couldn’t agree more.
And especially now that young people are always on their social media, they’re probably not engaging as much. And it’s a skill that’s so needed in the outside world, talking to people in a bar, just being able to do that without any issues.
Cecilia
Seriously, face to face, you know, at least my 17 year old is good at that.
Francesca
And one last question for you. If you had to give a hack to anybody that’s going into the media world or going into trying to start engaging with their audience, what would be the hack that you would give?
Cecilia
Be yourself, be a human and dare to connect with people. Of course you have to have journalistic integrity, but I don’t think that means you can’t be a fellow human being. It’s not a hack.
Don’t try too hard, actually listen to what people are saying. I think that’s so important.
Francesca
I love that. Thank you so much, Cecilia. That was fantastic. I really appreciate your time.