Product is for everyone: challenges and lessons from small and local news in operationalizing the audience-centric mindset
Sat 12 April 2025
16:00 - 16:50
Free
Calculating distance...
Small and local newsrooms are proving that product methodologies aren’t just for big organizations. In this panel, Ariel Zirulnick, Aron Pilhofer, and Aldana Vales will share their experiences as they integrated an audience-centric mindset to reshape their editorial strategies and drive innovation.
A close look will be offered into what integrating product practices looks like for small and local news organizations, what the challenges are, and how participants can overcome them with practical insights on building stronger community relationships and making audience data actionable, regardless of size or resources. Attendees will gain tools to implement sustainable, audience-focused change.
Moderated by Felicitas Carrique.
Modified more than a month ago
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Festival Internazionale del Giornalismo
Il Festival Internazionale del Giornalismo di Perugia è un evento annuale che riunisce professionisti dei media, esperti di comunicazione e appassionati di informazione da tutto il mondo. Si svolge nel centro storico di Perugia e offre conferenze, dibattiti, workshop e opportunità di networking sui temi più rilevanti del giornalismo contemporaneo.
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Felicitas Carrique
Felicitas Carrique is a product manager and leader navigating the intersection of journalism, tech, and media business models. She is currently the Executive Director of the News Product Alliance, a community of support and practice for news product professionals and product thinkers working together toward a more sustainable and ethical future for the news industry. For her leadership, she was featured as ""One to Watch"" in the News Industry by Amy Webb’s Future Today Institute annual Tech Trends Report. In her previous role as the Innovation Director at SembraMedia, she worked with news organizations across Latin America, Spain, and the United States to promote innovation. She led product design and systems development for the organization. She was also the lead analyst on the recent “Inflection Point International” report published by SembraMedia, which analyzed the innovations, challenges, and threats facing news entrepreneurs across Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Felicitas is also a Professor and guest lecturer in several universities, including Universidad Católica Argentina, where she co-created the first news product class in Latin America. She has led workshops about news product management and journalism business models for media-support organizations like the Google News Initiative, CUNY J+, and the Missouri School of Journalism.
Aron Pilhofer
Aron Pilhofer is Chief Product Officer at Star Tribune Media Company, Minnesotaâs largest media company. He is also co-founder and co-chair of the Sigma Awards, a competition to celebrate the best data journalism from around the world. Previously, he was the James B. Steele Chair in Journalism Innovation at Temple University. Before joining Temple, Pilhofer was Executive Editor, Digital, and interim Chief Digital Officer at the Guardian in London. Prior to joining the Guardian, Aron was Associate Managing Editor for Digital Strategy and editor of Interactive News at The New York Times and prior to that he was database editor at the Center for Public Integrity in Washington. Aron also co-founded two news-related startups: DocumentCloud.org and Hacks & Hackers. Launched in 2009, DocumentCloud.org improves journalism by making source documents easier to find, search, analyse and share online. Hacks & Hackers, also created in 2009, is an informal organisation that brings journalists and technologists together.
Aldana Vales
Aldana Vales is the Director of Audience Experiences at Gannett - USA TODAY Network. Specializing in understanding how people interact with journalism, she focuses on helping local newsrooms build direct connections with their readers, viewers, and listeners. Her efforts to enhance the overall on-platform experience and create a more intuitive and engaging digital environment reach more than 200 local communities in the U.S. Prior to joining Gannett, Aldana worked on audience and community research for The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic and Documented.