Events are not a money-making strategy

I thank Mr. Tofel for his recent skeptical discussion with my former boss and event collaborator Evan Smith, The Texas Tribune, Example or Exception?: A Candid Talk with Evan Smith About Earned Income. While neither Evan nor I have been able to help organizations replicate our success from The Texas Tribune “at scale,” this conversation gives me a springboard to share what I’ve been working on.

The elements of our past success are laid out in the interview: understand your target audience, low-cost production including in-kind trade partnerships, an understanding of corporate sponsor priorities and a great seller, an on-stage personality that can lead an interesting conversation, and I'll add to Evan’s list, staff in charge of production. As Evan notes, organizations should be able to take these elements of the Tribune’s secret sauce and find their unique blend to produce results. So why isn't that happening?

I often get calls from news leaders who have heard Evan speak and hear my name as someone who might be able to help them figure out their plan. Here's the format of those calls:

• What audience are you trying to reach with your events? 🤷🏽‍♀️
• Do you have selling capacity for sponsorship? 🙅🏻
• Who would be a great person from your organization to lead conversations? 😶
• What local organization has a venue that you might use for low or no cost? 📇
• Do you have staff in charge of events, or a person who can take on that role? ⛔

Guess what? They don’t call me back. I get it. An event strategy takes time to develop, production can be expensive, and they require a level of coordination that traditional newsrooms don’t necessarily have, but that is true for most new news products. The American Journalism Project exists because newsrooms don't have the business chops to turn products into revenue, or event staff that can drive the task list on event production. Let's be honest, events aren’t rocket science but they require a plan, an investment of time and money, staff commitment, and rigor to find the right fit for the target audience.

In the time I was director of events at The Texas Tribune, our team produced over 350 events and what we did is widely cited as a model, but the impetus for Mr. Tofel to write this piece shows that our leaders don’t think it’s replicable. Like Evan, that bird won't fly for me because events are a multi-billion dollar industry and growing. Like the problem-solver I am, I want to help newsrooms tap into events as a source of revenue and engagement while overcoming the barriers to entry.

I've got ideas, and I'm in the Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators Program at CUNY to develop my plan. In the meantime, we need to have some serious conversations about how to power the press, because we can all agree that it's becoming more critical every day.

Do you want to produce events? Are you already doing it? Consider taking my survey to help me understand where your org stands, and subscribe to learn how to power the press with events.

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