Trust Tip 44: Use newsletter A/B testing to test trust strategies

Published on December 3, 2019December 3, 2019 by Mollie Muchna | Reading Time: < 1 minute

Something that gets us VERY excited at Trusting News is when a newsroom is willing to use its newsletter to build trust. That’s partly because newsletters often use an informal tone and voice that are ideal for talking directly to readers about how and why the news is produced. But it’s also because of how simple it is to test two versions of something and see how audiences behave. Simple is a welcome change because measuring opinions about a news product is hard, and so is isolating trust factors when news has so many variables. We get pretty creative about how we gauge success, and we rely a lot on our partner newsrooms to tell us what they observe about their audience’s responses to trust-building efforts. (We’re also grateful when we can partner with academic researchers.) More from this edition can be found here and to receive the tips in your inbox each week click here.

Mollie Muchna

mollie@trustingnews.org | + posts

Project manager Mollie Muchna (she/her) has spent the last 10 years working in audience and engagement journalism in local newsrooms across the Southwest. She lives in Tucson, Arizona, where she is also an adjunct professor at the University of Arizona’s School of Journalism. She can be reached at mollie@trustingnews.org and on Twitter @molliemuchna.