The Missing Role in Your Newsroom
When audience development gets fragmented across teams, everyone owns a piece—and no one owns the outcome
Who's responsible for your audience?
I'll be honest: having worked in both large and small media organizations, I'm not sure I've ever been able to answer that question.
Who was responsible for technology? Sure. Content strategy? Definitely. Sales? Of course.
But audience? Every organization cared about it — just not quite enough to hire someone to own it. And that led to the classic outcome: when audience is everyone's job, it often becomes no one's job.
But wait — what do we even mean by "audience"? Are we talking about engagement? Development? Retention? Community? Loyalty? Conversion?
Yes. All of it.
Because audience isn't a single department or KPI. It's the connective tissue — the thread that runs through editorial, product, revenue, and trust. And yet, because it touches everything, it too often belongs to no one.
Some organizations silo it as engagement — mostly social or comments. Others see it as development — top-of-funnel growth and SEO. Still others treat it as a loyalty challenge, or fold it into fundraising and membership.
But the truth is: healthy organizations need someone — or multiple someones — connecting all of these audience touchpoints across teams. Someone to close the loop between what we make and how people respond.
I remember one moment that brought this home. At Philly.com, we tried to hire someone to "run audience." I think the job was called something like "audience development," but I honestly couldn't tell you what the actual responsibilities were. I'm sure a job description exists somewhere, though lord knows I couldn't find it now. What I do remember? At least a few of the interviews.
Here we were, one of the fastest-growing news websites in the country, and we were treating audience as a shared concern — which in practice meant everyone sort of dabbling in it, but no one truly driving it.
The Framework We Ignored
Back in 2012, Ben Elowitz — co-founder and then-CEO of Wetpaint — called this out in what might've been one of the earliest frameworks for audience as a standalone discipline. He challenged the idea that "content is king":
"Advertisers don't pay to reach content. They pay to reach an audience… Everyone has an Editor-in-Chief or Chief Creative Officer. But how many have a Distributor-in-Chief? Or a Chief Audience Officer? A Head of Digital Programming?"
He argued that smart media companies were reimagining audience development not as an afterthought tucked into editorial or marketing — but as a core strategic function.
They were hiring dedicated leaders to oversee it. Building processes. Creating systems. Connecting audience insights, channel selection, and performance optimization in the same way a TV network thinks about programming.
In short, they weren't just distributing content — they were programming for behavior. They weren't just counting clicks — they were shaping outcomes.
And just as media companies invested millions in CMS platforms, Elowitz said, they were starting to invest in audience strategy. Not just to understand the people they serve — but to reach them more effectively, and sustainably.
That was 13 years ago.
So… where are we now?
The Coordination Problem
Most newsrooms have accidentally created an audience development house of cards. Editorial owns "community engagement" (read: moderating comments and posting to social). Marketing handles "audience growth" (SEO, social distribution, maybe newsletters). Product manages "user experience" (site performance, subscription flows). Business development tracks "audience revenue" (memberships, donations, events).
Each team has their own metrics, their own priorities, their own definition of success. Editorial cares about engaged readers. Marketing wants reach and traffic. Product obsesses over conversion funnels. Business development measures lifetime value.
The result? You get newsrooms where the social media manager doesn't talk to the membership team, where editorial decisions get made without input from the people who actually track reader behavior, where product changes get rolled out without considering community impact.
The Silo Tax
This fragmentation has real costs. I've seen newsrooms where:
Editorial launches a new vertical without coordinating with the audience team that could tell them what readers actually want. Marketing drives traffic to stories that don't convert to subscriptions because no one connected acquisition strategy to retention goals. Product changes break community features because user experience and engagement teams don't coordinate. Business development runs membership drives without understanding what content actually drives loyalty.
Each team optimizes for their own slice, but no one's optimizing for the whole relationship with readers.
The missing role isn't just about having someone "own" audience—it's about having someone who can see across all these silos and connect the dots. Someone who can translate between editorial instincts and user data, between community feedback and business goals.
Someone who understands that when you fragment audience development across departments, you're not just creating inefficiency. You're breaking the feedback loop that tells you whether what you're building actually serves the people you're trying to reach.
Maybe that's why, thirteen years after Elowitz made his case, so many newsrooms are still asking the same question: Who's responsible for our audience?
The answer might be simpler than we think: Someone needs to be.
If you're hiring for audience roles right now, what are you actually looking for? Let's start building a clearer picture of what this missing position should really do.