[PDF] personalization in news

Is personalization still possible?

While marketers have been employing forms of personalization for the last two decades, meaningful personalization—which involves testing ideas with customers and quickly iterating—wasn’t possible until recently. The stark reality is that the tools simply didn’t exist to deliver truly relevant content and offers to customers across channels.

How can newsrooms use personalization?

“There are potentially ways for newsrooms to use that personalization [data] in a useful way,” says the Berkman Klein Center’s Donath. It largely depends “on what you think the mission of the newsroom is. Is it to inform people as well as to possibly to have its own model of what’s important information that people should be aware of?

How can news organizations personalize their news feeds?

Personalization extends beyond how and where news organizations meet their readers. Already, smartphone users can subscribe to push notifications for the specific coverage areas that interest them. On Facebook, users can decide—to some extent—which organizations’ stories they would like to appear in their news feeds.

Should we customize our news?

When users can customize their news, and customize to these political and social extremes, civic discourse can suffer. “What’s important is how people use the news to have a discussion,” says Donath. “You may have friends or colleagues, and you read the same things in common. You may decide different things about it.