From favorite diners to long-shuttered dance clubs, readers of all ages love waxing about the way things used to be. Nostalgia is a beat that can work for any newsroom.
Question: What problem were you trying to solve, and why was that problem strategically important to your organization?
A: Newsday is a legacy newspaper-turned-multiplatform news organization based on Long Island, New York, where there’s a strong local identity and an affinity for hyper-local news. With a subscriber-based business model and a hard paywall, Newsday is aware of which coverage topics our readers/viewers are the most plugged-into.
Newsday’s home delivery audience is loyal and passionate about their communities; many have subscribed to the newspaper for decades. Meanwhile, niche content has been an effective way to convert new digital subscribers. The newsroom continues to look for fresh ways to grow our reach online to grow our subscriptions.
Readers had shown burgeoning interest in notalgia stories since early 2019 but it was during the height of the pandemic when our lifestyle-entertainment team began to treat this coverage as a beat.
