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Build trust with your newsletter by sharing your mission and goals
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An effective way to build trust with your newsletter audience is to clearly explain why you’re landing in their inbox and how you hope to be useful. When readers understand the purpose behind your work and the values that guide your coverage, they are more likely to view your brand as a credible and reliable source of information.
Your audience notices the stories you choose to cover and the ones you don’t. Without insight into your decision-making process, readers might make their own (often incorrect) assumptions about your motivations. By proactively sharing what guides your coverage, you can prevent misunderstandings and incorrect assumptions.
What to articulate in your newsletter
Consider including these elements in your newsletter:
- Mission statement: Clearly state why your newsletter exists. What value do you aim to provide? Are you focused on investigative journalism, local news, explanatory reporting or a specific topic area? Explain what drives your work and how you aim to serve your readers. A strong mission statement not only reinforces your purpose but also sets expectations for your audience.
- Coverage priorities: Share how you choose which topics to cover, especially if your choices differ from the norm. Do you base decisions on audience feedback, data-driven insights, or a commitment to certain values? Explaining your story selection process can eliminate questions and prevent incorrect assumptions from users.
- Story framing: Let your audience know how you decide to frame stories. Whose voices are you centering or amplifying? What do you keep in mind when making decisions about sourcing? Articulating decision-making can help prevent misunderstandings.
Being transparent about your mission, story framing and coverage priorities helps readers see the intention and care behind your journalism. It reassures them your work is guided by clear principles rather than hidden agendas, fostering a stronger sense of trust and credibility.
Putting it into practice
Start by reflecting on common questions or feedback from your audience. Ask yourself: What do they often wonder about your coverage? Use these insights to craft explanations that address their curiosities. Remember, you don’t need to add transparency elements to every section or even every edition necessarily, but consider doing so when covering controversial topics or when deviating from your usual coverage patterns.
Think about where you could add standing language about your mission — on the newsletter’s landing page or elsewhere on your brand’s website. And you could link to that as a consistent element in your tagline or sign-off.
But even better — try weaving transparency into your newsletter. Explain how it relates to specific coverage. That helps your audience understand not only what you’re there to do but also how your mission and values relate to the specific stories they’re interested in on a given day.
At Trusting News, we learn how people decide what news to trust and turn that knowledge into actionable strategies for journalists. We train and empower journalists to take responsibility for demonstrating credibility and actively earning trust through transparency and engagement. Learn more about our work, vision and team. Subscribe to our Trust Tips newsletter. Follow us on Twitter, BlueSky and LinkedIn.
Assistant director Lynn Walsh (she/her) is an Emmy award-winning journalist who has worked in investigative journalism at the national level and locally in California, Ohio, Texas and Florida. She is the former Ethics Chair for the Society of Professional Journalists and a past national president for the organization. Based in San Diego, Lynn is also an adjunct professor and freelance journalist. She can be reached at lynn@TrustingNews.org and on Twitter @lwalsh.