Your Newsroom’s Hidden Superpowers
How internal asset mapping helps you stop looking for what you need and start using what you already have.
“Hey, does anyone speak Spanish?” “Does anyone know an Excel formula for this?” “Does anyone know anything about cars?”
I remember hearing shouts just like these in newsrooms I worked in over the years. Sometimes someone would stand up and have the answer. But it never had to work that way.
Those shout-outs were just ad hoc asset mapping. We just never made it formal. Never captured the information. Never used it strategically.
Internal asset mapping gives you a formal process to surface what you already have before you start looking for it elsewhere. The concept itself isn’t new. It dates back to the early 1990s and was pioneered by John McKnight and Jody Kretzmann at Northwestern University. The concept was a direct response to the old “needs-based” model of community development, which always focused on problems and deficits. McKnight and Kretzmann felt that the approach was disempowering and created dependency. They wanted to start with assets: the skills, talents, organizations, and tools that already exist in a community.
Internal asset mapping takes that exact same idea and applies it inside an organization. You’re mapping the assets of your team or newsroom to see what you can leverage to meet your strategic goals.
What to Map
So, what are you actually looking for? It usually breaks down like this:
Human capital: This is all the skills, expertise, relationships, and institutional knowledge your staff actually has beyond what’s on their job description.
Content and IP: Existing articles, datasets, source networks, or archives you could repurpose or build on.
Infrastructure: What tools, platforms, systems, or processes are already in place?
Relationships: Audience segments, community partners, funders or collaborators you’re already connected to.
Cultural assets: This is the stuff that’s harder to measure but critical: the trust you have with your audience, your brand’s reputation, and the editorial credibility that actually sets you apart.
This approach is especially powerful for resource-constrained newsrooms. And let’s be honest, that’s most of us today, regardless of our business model. It’s particularly valuable when you’re trying to plan something new, like a product launch, a coverage expansion, or even just an org chart change.
It helps you shift from asking, “What do we need?” to asking, “What do we have that we’re not using?”
Here are a few real-world examples of what newsrooms have found:
The reporter covering city hall used to be a CPA. Suddenly, investigations into municipal finance became far more feasible without hiring outside expertise.
The managing editor grew up in the immigrant community the newsroom was struggling to reach. It turned out she had family connections and cultural fluency no one knew to tap into.
Three different staff members had been quietly keeping their own spreadsheets of local business closures, eviction filings, and zoning changes. When combined, this became the foundation for a whole new data-driven beat.
An audience engagement coordinator ran a popular bilingual parenting blog on the side. This became the template for a new community newsletter strategy.
An editor had 15 years of archived contact lists from a previous job, giving the newsroom access to sources they didn’t even know existed.
How To Actually Do It
Okay, great. But how the heck do you actually do this?
First, decide on your goal.
There are two legitimate reasons to start mapping assets:
Baseline mapping: You just want to get a handle on what you have. This helps you understand your organization better, prevents those “does anyone know?!” moments, and creates institutional knowledge that doesn’t walk out the door when someone leaves. This is a worthy goal all by itself.
Strategic mapping: You’re trying to solve a specific problem or launch something new. Maybe it’s a beat expansion, a new product, or closing a coverage gap. Having a specific goal makes the results of your mapping immediately actionable.
Both are valuable. A baseline map is your foundation, while a strategic map creates urgency.
Next, choose your method.
How you do it depends on your team.
For smaller newsrooms (under 20 people): A structured conversation is usually best. You can schedule 20-30-minute one-on-ones or hold a single 90-minute workshop where everyone participates. Just make it feel like strategic planning, not HR paperwork.
For larger organizations: Use a combination. A short survey can capture the basics, but follow it up with smaller group chats or workshops to get real depth.
Ask questions that get real results.
Don’t just ask, “What are you good at?” You’ll get generic, résumé-style answers. Instead, you need to use targeted questions that help people surface their hidden experiences:
Past Lives: What did you do before journalism? (Former teacher? Bartender? Campaign staffer? This stuff matters.)
Deep Knowledge: What topic could you talk about for an hour with no notes?
Community Access: What communities or networks do you have authentic access to? (Don’t assume; the intern might be deeply connected somewhere your editor isn’t.)
Language Skills: What languages do you read, speak, or understand conversationally?
Hidden Talents: What technical skills do you have that aren’t part of your current role? (Think coding, audio editing, graphic design, data analysis, etc.)
Untapped Resources: What sources, datasets, or archives have you built that live on your hard drive or in your head?
Passion Projects: What coverage have you always wanted to do but never had the time or mandate for?
Capture the info in a way you’ll actually use it.
A shared spreadsheet is often the easiest place to start. If you need something more advanced, a simple database in Airtable or a page on your internal wiki works well, too. Whatever you choose, make sure it’s:
Searchable
Updateable
Accessible to the managers and editors who need it
Address the awkwardness upfront.
People are going to have concerns, so get ahead of them. They might think this is:
A precursor to layoffs. It’s not. Emphasize that you’re trying to use the talent you already have in better ways.
Going to add to their workload. It might, but it also might free them up to do the work they actually want to do.
An audit designed to expose them. Frame it as a way to discover what they bring to the table that the organization isn’t using.
Make it a conversation, not an interrogation. If people feel like they’re under a microscope, they’ll clam up.
Do something with it immediately.
Once you’ve mapped everything, act on at least one insight within two weeks. Prove this wasn’t just a performative exercise. Move someone to a beat that fits their expertise. Launch a small project using that archived data someone mentioned. Connect two people who didn’t realize their source networks overlapped.
Update it regularly.
This isn’t a one-and-done deal. People gain new skills and build new relationships. Revisit the map annually or whenever a new person joins the team.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Let’s say you’re a regional nonprofit news site. You want to expand your education coverage, but you can’t afford a dedicated reporter. Your asset mapping process reveals a few things:
Your cops reporter used to be a substitute teacher.
Your engagement editor has a kid in the district you want to cover.
Your freelance photographer is on the PTA.
You’ve published 47 stories about school board meetings in the past year but have never synthesized them.
Suddenly, you have options. Instead of hiring someone you can’t afford, you can build a coverage strategy around the expertise and access you already have. Maybe the cops reporter shifts to cover education part-time. The engagement editor can help with community input, and you can package all that archival coverage into a new resource guide.
That’s asset mapping doing what it’s supposed to do. It reveals the options you didn’t even know you had.
Internal asset mapping is really just an act of seeing your organization clearly. It’s a shift in mindset, moving from scarcity to possibility. Before you look outside for the next grant, the next hire, or the next big idea, just look within. The answer you’re looking for might be sitting at the next desk over.
What’s the most surprising or useful hidden skill you’ve ever discovered a colleague had? Share your story in the comments!
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