User Needs - Voodoo or Truly Effective?

“We now have a pilot newsroom for User Needs!” the editor-in-chief of one of our Upscore clients recently told me – full of hope that this approach might finally help achieve the key digital goals: growing reach and subscriptions.

User Needs are currently the most discussed - and perhaps most widely used - concept in newsrooms and publishing houses to support digital transformation. In some places, I can even sense a bit of a FOMO effect (FOMO: Fear of Missing Out).

In short, the idea behind User Needs is this: readers don’t just want news (“Update me”), but also other perspectives such as “Inspire me,” “Explain it to me,” “Give me perspective,” “Help me,” or “Entertain me.” A great summary of this approach by our esteemed colleague Konrad Weber can be found here.

User Needs are therefore a valuable tool for integrating audience perspectives into daily editorial work, helping to structure topic selection and story development. Great! For far too long, newsrooms have relied on a mix of experience, gut feeling, and a bit of arrogance (“That’s what readers want!”). User Needs help serve real needs.

So, are User Needs the long-sought concept for digital success? Yes and no. They’re a tool – for a very specific purpose. If you have a hammer, not every problem is about driving a nail into a board. I also see, across the board and in our client work, that User Needs can be quite complex in day-to-day editorial practice. Often, there’s no accompanying concept for data analysis and interpretation – no immediate feedback loop to readers. Many newsrooms struggle with User Needs. The concept is powerful, but it requires practice, guidance, and coaching.

At Upscore, through our consulting program Upscore GRIP, we help newsrooms implement User Needs – and we’re happy to do so. But it’s just one tool among many. Personally, I believe it’s crucial to build feedback loops with users, giving them a seat and a voice in editorial meetings. That can be done using Upscore data and tools like Follow-ups, Top Topics, or Topic Clusters – and, of course, through User Needs.

These are the tools. On the toolbox, it says “Reader Loops.” This is the core principle: establishing daily feedback channels to users and deriving editorial changes from them. Personally, I’m thrilled to see that with Reader Loops, Upscore GRIP clients are significantly increasing their numbers. “No voodoo – it really works!” as one editorial lead recently told me.

Joachim Dreykluft is Head of Data & AI Strategies at Upscore.