It’s been a while since my last post. Thank you to everyone who has subscribed so far! I’m back from summer break and have new posts in the works. Let’s start with one of the most high-profile news events since last summer’s DealBook Summit interview with Elon Musk.

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Nearly two weeks have passed since the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) interview with Donald Trump on July 31, allowing us time to reflect on its significance. This event, combining a controversial subject with skilled interviewers in front of a live audience, offers valuable lessons for newsrooms nationwide. As an event producer, my heart is full for the organizers and their amazing work.

What we witnessed wasn't just an interview; it was live journalism at its finest. The NABJ annual conference setting added crucial context, with the audience composition and on-stage dynamics forming integral parts of the story.

Tia Mitchell, co-chair of the convention, echoed [NABJ President Ken] Lemon’s explanation and said she had helped organize the Q&A “to create opportunities for journalists to interview the potential next President.” — NBC News

Interviewing presidential candidates has long been a feature of the conference and it is critical for journalists to practice their skills with presidential candidates. Tia Mitchell from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution had a hand in inviting Trump so I needed no further guidance on the wisdom of the decision. I can understand why others might balk but journalists are courageous soldiers bringing us reports from the front lines. It is their job to ask hard questions, and for Black journalists, to represent their historically marginalized community in questioning a candidate for the highest office in our government.

This live journalism event showcased the power of bringing newsmakers face-to-face with an engaged audience. The live setting added layers of accountability and energy. As a virtual audience member, I found myself reacting in real-time along with others in the room. The resulting clips continue to dominate news cycles, offering insights into the political landscape of the 2024 Republican Presidential campaign. It was NABJ’s responsibility to host this interview and the results were informative for us all.

While not every newsroom can secure a presidential candidate, the NABJ event demonstrates a model that can be scaled and adapted (see Getting started with News Events). Local media outlets can organize similar events with mayors, state representatives, or influential community or business leaders. The goal is creating a space where journalism happens live, with the energy and immediacy that comes from a present audience.

📓 Key Takeaways for Newsrooms

1. Identify leaders interested in hosting live, high-profile interviews

2. Use events as newsgathering opportunities

3. Leverage live audiences to create impactful moments

4. Ensure accessibility through livestreaming

   What takeaways would you add from this event? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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💡Resources: API’s Live Events Playbook

For organizations inspired to develop their own event programs, the American Press Institute has a new resource: the Live Events Playbook. It is a Google Slides presentation that you copy and use like a workbook. It includes templates for production like an event brief and run-of-show, as well as exercises for must-do processes like team building and event design.

Remember, perfection isn't the goal when starting out. Getting started is your goal and then with repetition and refinement, your organization can quickly establish a powerful live journalism practice. Your team will feel the impact from your very first event and be jazzed to continue.

Take the first step in organizing their own live journalism event. The rewards - in terms of audience engagement, impactful reporting, and community connection - are well worth the effort.

• Journalism has many roles. It’s time to embrace the role of convener. by Samantha Ragland and Kevin Loker for API

Today marks the end of CUNY’s Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators Program for me and my amazing cohort of colleagues. To keep us moving forward, we’ve been asked to publicly share our progress, so here’s where Power the Press stands after 100 days.

🌟 Ideas Festival

Face-to-face engagement is crucial for building trust in communities, making events an essential tool for modern newsrooms. While I’ve heard repeatedly from potential clients a desire to host events like The Texas Tribune Festival, they face common barriers such as a lack of event development know-how, connections to high-profile speakers, effective sponsorship pipelines or production resources. 

My initial idea was to create a national ideas festival that would partner with media organizations interested in co-programming and hosting a large community gathering. These ideas festivals will feature renowned speakers, sponsorship to cover production costs and lower media partner risk, as well as guidance for partners in programming, selling sponsorships, and engaging their communities around ideas and policy discussions. The model allows partners to host impactful large-scale events while minimizing their research and development investment.

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🎲 Few to Many

The fatal flaw in this idea is how many events like this can be reasonably produced in a year. Sponsorship of independent news-related events isn’t impossible but it’s not easy either, and many newsrooms wouldn’t be good candidates for partnership if they don’t have some capacity in the areas outlined above. Also, parachuting into a community once, or even annually if we mutually decided to keep doing a joint event, isn’t likely to be sustainable. How can we serve more organizations?

📚The Template Solution

Collaborating with my long-time partners at Panacea Collective surfaced scalability challenges in producing multiple large-scale ideas festivals annually. They already have a robust client base and scaling up for multiple events would be difficult without impacting their current work. I love operations challenges and have worked with the Panacea team long enough to understand the pain points of scale.

I won’t go too far down this rabbit hole but it’s worth mentioning that most event technology focuses on attendee management, from posting event webpages, taking RSVPs or selling tickets, to managing speakers and sponsors and the on-site experience from check-in to digital displays to livestreams. Few reasonably priced tools are available to support the behind-the-scenes work of producers. We’re using project management tools built for software engineering or marketing projects with minimal breadcrumbs in the “event management” templates.

You know after reading my post on templatizing events that having a way to rinse and repeat an event is the surest way to gain efficiency and event efficacy over time. When I finally landed on a tool that we could use as a team to support better event production management, the lightbulb 💡 went off in my head. Anyone who can follow a project management template can follow an event production template if that template has the details and expertise built into it.

Thinking of providing templates got me thinking about outsourced services like Newspack or Indiegraf that prove the case for bundling pre-built tools. With built-in expertise and a team to provide guidance as needed, we could provide actual event templates along with production management tools that make events possible for more organizations.

📰 Newsmaker Event Example

In a previous post, I laid out a simple newsmaker conversation event. Imagine if you went into your project management software today and instead of a generic “Event Management” template, you pulled up a Newsmaker event template. It includes a suggested budget, task list, sample sponsorship deck, and a webpage and RSVP tool with marketing assets that you need only add a few details to to launch.

Even better, what if you don’t know what kind of event would be best to accomplish a specific goal like adding newsletter subscribers or cultivating new members? After filling out a short questionnaire, our tool suggests options that are proven to meet your goals based on data collected over many iterations. You select a template from the narrowed list of options and get started.

I mentioned a sponsorship deck template, and further imagine the conversations your sales team might have. Questions about what audience to expect or ways to activate their brand are easy to answer because they are armed with previous event samples. How much revenue might you be able to earn with a proven event template? This deeply researched suite of offerings will enable small and medium-sized organizations to execute high-quality, effective events efficiently.

⚡What is Power the Press?

My North Star has always been lowering the barriers for organizations to use events as a tool for audience engagement and revenue generation. Currently, you can hire me to produce an event or consult on strategy, sponsorship, budget management, or growth. But I want to “power the press” by offering a range of event solutions, from DIY playbooks pre-built within a project management tool up to and including custom, bespoke productions.

In short, Power the Press will offer a DIY tools that allow teams to quickly get up and running with proven event formats and out-of-the-box technology. We’ll offer a knowledgebase with experience and data to help organizations choose the best event types for their goals, featuring short videos and case study guides. Additionally, we’ll host a community of practice for event producers, providing connection and shared information sources.

⏭️ Next Steps

The journalism industry needs innovative solutions like Power the Press now more than ever. We need new tools and revenue streams so news outlets don’t have to figure everything out on their own. Does this idea intrigue you? Let me know if you’d like to be part of this work.

• Research and product development: Have an event format to contribute that will help fellow media outlets accomplish a specific goal? Reach out to add to the initial template library.

• Partnerships: Interested in being a beta partner to pilot our template solutions? Contact me at agnes [at] powerthepress.com

• Community of practice: Subscribe to this Substack to receive an invitation to our community platform when it launches.

Power the Press aims to democratize event creation for media organizations by providing robust yet accessible template solutions. Combined with our expertise, knowledgebase, and community, we lower the barriers to executing revenue-generating, audience-building events without extensive overhead. Our goal is to equip more organizations with these vital tools to build connections and sustainability.

Recently, I reposted a job opportunity for a director of events at a large media organization on LinkedIn, noting that the position was situated within the marketing department, which I editorialized as “not my favorite” without context. I didn’t think about it until I was reading Civil Eats’ series on the Walton family, specifically, Walmart Heirs Bet Big on Journalism by Bill Lascher. The article caught my attention because The Texas Tribune Festival was sponsored by the Walton family and Walmart for several years. I have no concerns about the Walton family's lack of editorial influence on TribFest, but taking these two thoughts together, I’m prompted to suggest that as you plan your event strategy to (re)consider the implications of having journalism events situated within a business operation.

✅ Dissecting the org chart

The [Texas] Tribune accepts corporate sponsorships, underwriting and, within permissible limits, advertising that does not compromise its editorial integrity. All such support, including “sponsor content” — the digital equivalent of “advertorials” in newspapers and magazines — must be clearly and obviously distinguished from editorial content. Any sponsor or advertiser messages that contain false or unlawful content, or that the Tribune believes undermines its integrity, mission or brand, may be removed at the Tribune’s discretion. All corporate support will be solicited by the Tribune’s business staff, and no sponsored content will be produced by Texas Tribune employees. Present and past corporate sponsors are listed by amount and by year here. — The Texas Tribune Ethics

When I served as director of events for the Tribune, the division between editorial and business operations was clear yet collaborative. I reported to the editor in chief and the events were programmed by the editorial team, but I also worked closely with fundraisers to ensure we were delivering value to funders. The key to collaboration was cross-departmental conversations; everyone understanding that it was our fundraising efforts that paid our salaries and kept the lights on, so our task was to “make it work” in the inimitable words of Tim Gunn.

But the idea of “church and state” separated by a firewall was there. Sponsors were prohibited from influencing content, with rules against sponsor representatives taking part in panels, sharing questions, putting logos on-stage, or giving away registrant information. Communication to sponsors about what was allowed and what wasn’t was framed as part of the value of working with our team — our audience trusted us to uphold journalistic integrity.

🧾 Transparency and ethical sponsorship

The Texas Tribune model emphasizes radical transparency. They disclose all funding sources on stories, maintain a detailed donor list, and ensure that their audience knows sponsors had no editorial influence. This transparency has given the organization talking points to navigate sponsorships ethically. But events without clear guidelines and situated within marketing, could blur these lines, making it challenging to prioritize integrity over revenue.

🤷🏾‍♀️ Who is the client?

The business operation is about making money to support the journalism. Sales teams leverage the organization's products and audience to promote corporate messaging and products to readers, and media organizations have bent over backwards to develop brand marketing, sponsored content and native advertising to serve client goals of influencing readers by seeming editorial. The state of the news business means many are willing to play ball:

Reuters Events also offered to help corporations hone their “climate narrative” at COP28, via opportunities to secure “exclusive interviews,” seats at high-level roundtables, coverage on the Reuters website, exclusive dinner invites, and a Reuters presence in corporate pavilions at the Dubai expo center where negotiations are held. —Reuters, New York Times Top List of Fossil Fuel Industry’s Favorite Media Partners by Amy Westervelt and Matthew Green

This sort of pay-to-play was never part of our event planning. But if the role of advertising and sponsorship sales is obvious and avoidable, the role of marketers may be a little murkier.

The term “marketing” is about sales, but we often use it interchangeably for promotion, lead generation or “top of the funnel” activities, meant to introduce our work to new audiences with the hope that they will become members, subscribers, ticket buyers, or continue to follow us so we can eventually convert them into financial supporters. Marketing is about selling an organization to potential buyers and why many organizations situate their events within this job function, which is usually situated within the larger sales operation.

We want new readers, we want them to pay for journalism and there’s nothing inherently unethical about having our marketing team produce events, especially if we have guidelines in place that guide understanding by all—readers, sponsors, advertisers, grantors as well as staff in all departments. So what’s my point?

💡Programming: editorial vs. marketing

The event program is where the rubber meets the road. Who is deciding what events we will produce? Who is deciding what topics will be covered? Who is deciding what speakers will be invited to the stage? I sat in a client meeting with a head of marketing who told me that the topics the editorial team wanted to cover were too boring. They were looking for big names, catchy topics and attention-grabbing headlines.

While marketers may gravitate towards attention-grabbing topics and big names for revenue purposes, journalists understand what is genuinely important and relevant to their readership segments. An event about local school board happenings may not grab broad attention, but for the engaged community, it could be precisely the kind of conversation that attracts new readers to that coverage area.

The editorial team's expertise and community relationships should drive the core event programming decisions, from their deep connections to the stories, potential speakers, and target audiences across different beats, they are positioned to curate events that truly resonate with communities being served. The role of marketing, in my view, is to support and amplify the newsroom's event vision, from helping with formats, production management, promotion, follow-up to convert attendees, and facilitating aligned sponsorships and partnerships.

With some experience, newsrooms can leverage events to attract new readers by tapping into their frontline pulse on relevant speakers/issues, aligning content and community with support, both financial and promotional, with the aim of delivering value to readers—the true client.

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🕊️ A word on co-existence

There is a place for events driven by marketing—think awards shows, “Best of,” tradeshows, fun runs, golf tournaments, and any other number of ways your organization might show up in the community and be a part of bringing people together with an eye toward brand-building. The editorial team may have little input into this type of event as it’s not their highest and best use to weigh in.

I suggest that attendees of those marketing events still need to find value in the organization's journalism content if they are going to become engaged readers or subscribers. How will you deepen their engagement? What plan do you have to tap into their interests and connect them with your organization’s core work? Developing a strategy for taking advantage of those types of marketing events means that each team is working to serve readers, not just to make money.

🤠 Resources Round-up

• Walmart Heirs Bet Big on Journalism by Bill Lascher

• Reuters, New York Times Top List of Fossil Fuel Industry’s Favorite Media Partners by Amy Westervelt and Matthew Green

• Sample: The Texas Tribune Ethics Statement

• Sample: NPR Sponsorship Guidelines (Updated September 2023)

• Sample: The San Diego Sun Sponsorship Policy

• Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Sponsored Content

My son is learning how to play the piano. His teacher reminds him weekly that he has to practice the same movements over and over again to strengthen his finger muscles and to subconsciously memorize the position of his fingers. After much practice, his fingers will fly over the keys with confidence. We call this developing “muscle memory” and I use the idea to describe what I want you to achieve with your event productions, or other products you produce regularly.

I produced 50-60 events per year at The Texas Tribune, including The Texas Tribune Festival (get your tix now!) between myself and one direct report. How? By templatizing the Tribune’s event formats and production protocols. We might call these standard operating procedures (SOPs) or playbooks but whatever you call it, the idea is a standard task list, production schedule and team workflow that has been executed enough times to reduce any friction in the process, allowing the team to move easily through the necessary steps to accomplish the production.

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While there are 8 formats on this slide, they are actually variants of 4 main formats. The variations were tweaks of well-used formats that served specific purposes. Let’s break down the “OG” Trib event template — the free morning conversation — as an example of why templates are important to your event strategy.

The morning conversation 🌅

Nearly half of our annual productions were morning conversations in the Tribune’s home-base of Austin, TX. This format was developed before I landed at the Tribune in 2012 and it continues on with variations today.

The Tribune partnered with a topically-relevant venue, political-types like to hang out there, which happened to be across the street from our offices. On Thursday mornings, I would trek to the office at 6:30am, grab our materials and head over to the venue with my cart. I would prepare the room and folks would start arriving around 7:30am. They would grab coffee and chat while the room filled up. At 8am, we began the program, which was usually Evan Smith interviewing one to three lawmakers about legislative topics. The interview ended promptly at 9am and audience dispersed back to their offices for the start of the workday.

We used Basecamp to manage our teams and tasks so when we confirmed a speaker and an event date, I copied the task list template, added due dates and assigned tasks. Because we’d done this before, no explanation needed. Everyone knew what they needed to execute and by when. We had templatized artwork with known production timelines. Our relationship with the venue required minimal touch points for confirming details. I sent reminders to our on-site team to set their alarms. Wash, rinse, repeat. Muscle memory.

The benefits of an event template 📒

From this outline, you can see that producing these 25-30 events per year didn’t require burdensome hours of staff time, but the template was also a boon for our audience. These conversations averaged 100 attendees, about 25% were “regulars,” i.e. those that attended regularly no matter who was speaking, and the balance with a topical interest in the speaker, e.g. education, healthcare, legislative forecasting or discussion of hot-button topics in the news. Even if they only attended when it was topically relevant, I saw the same loyal faces year after year. Our audiences developed muscle memory for attending these conversations.

We usually hosted a membership table so folks could sign up or renew on the spot. Sometimes we had swag to give away during a drive, and whoever was there on behalf of membership would chat up attendees, contributing to our welcoming space. The data showed that members who attended an event were more likely to renew, and when we emailed people asking them to become members after an event, the join rate was high. We had a good showing of members at our events and events helped drive membership sales.

Regarding corporate revenue, potential sponsors knew what to expect, reducing the time and effort in selling sponsorships. Some sponsors supported the entire series, others came on board to support specific conversations. Through ongoing consultative selling, the chief revenue officer April Hinkle knew what her clients would want to support. When an event was added to the schedule that might interest them, she quickly sent out proposals. Clients had likely attended this series at one point or another, they had relevant proposals in their hands so they could make quick decisions. Muscle memory.

Have I sold you on the idea of an templatized event format yet? I’ve included some additional articles below about other organizations that may inspire you on how this could benefit your organization.

Developing your template 📓

Now for the challenge, the hard bit. Too many teams get hung up at this early stage. If the process I outlined above was 20 hours of total staff time, and that was maximized, streamlined and rote, how do you get from not doing events to developing a format that works to event ninja?

Research and development is the up-front investment you make for any product and events are no different. You will spend time and money designing and testing to get to the template stage, but the end game as outlined above, is why you should stick with it. Consider getting inspired by researching what other news organizations are doing. Most have past videos to watch; take notes on what works and doesn’t.

Because events are a team sport, include everyone who will be involved in production in the R&D process. What do they like? What would they add that is unique to your community or organization? Come up with an event format and then test to optimize it and streamline the workflow. Once you get to the final template, you’ll be amortizing the investment by reaping benefits from creating something that works for your organization’s audience and team. Use this Event Plan Guide to facilitate team discussion.

If you don’t have a compelling program, it won’t matter what else you do.

Read "Getting Started with News Events"

🛠️ Testing and failing

I encourage you to develop low cost events and to deliver them multiple times to streamline delivery, maximize staff time and find the sweet spot for your audience. Testing allows team members who will be responsible for execution to weigh in on how best to fit it into their workflow. After some number of repetitions, you’ll have a task list, event run of show, budget and post-event strategies incorporated into your workflows, project management tools and yes, muscle memory. You’ll also be able to tweak the standard format into off-shoots like I did in the slides above so you aren’t developing whole new events. Doing one-offs is a sure-fire way to spend way more time on events than is likely advisable and will be frustrating for your team.

As for failure, you aren’t likely to fail Fyre Fest-style so don’t sweat it. The things that don’t go as expected or don’t land the way you had hoped or unexpected things that wind up being really cool, all are learning moments. As Jay Allred of Richland Source says, don’t expect A+ work; shoot for a solid B then take what you learn and apply it to the next version. I can assure you that dealing with unhappy attendees isn’t as bad as you think. Smile and thank them for attending and providing feedback, and promise to do better next time. That’s usually all that is needed to settle ruffled feathers.

There is a deep sense of satisfaction that comes from bringing your community together. I always felt accomplished when I spent my Thursday mornings providing space for civic conversation, all before the work day started. You’ll be hooked!

🤠 Supporting Articles

Here are some experiences from other organizations that reinforce my point. Have some war stories to share? Drop me a line!

• How Radio Ambulante has made community building routine by Ariel Zirulnick, The Membership Guide

• After Hours: Reflecting on this zany, live music, newsroom concert series by Dillon Carr, Richland Source

• How Scalawag is using events to diversify audience and grow membership by Cierra Hinton and Alysia Harris, Better News

• Designing Effective Community Events, World Bank Collaboration for Development

Thanks for giving this a read. If you found it helpful, share with your team!

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P.S. AI in action: I used YESEO to generate a headline for this post. One of the suggestions was “How Templating Texas Tribune Events Streamlined Production: Insider Tips,” which I liked but tweaked into the headline and subhead you see. What think? 😉 iykyk

A colleague reached out to me noting that her organization is producing strong, relevant free conversations but some events have high levels of no-shows resulting in an embarrassingly low crowd. Since most of The Texas Tribune’s events were (and continue to be) free to attend, I’m familiar with this dynamic.

Pros 👍🏽

If your journalism is of the public service variety and your mission is to be as accessible as possible, making an event free is the clearest signal that all are welcome. It’s standard to see 50% drop-off for free events; don’t get discouraged, plan for it.

1. Most people will give you an email address to attend a free event.
   Free events are a top-of-funnel activity. Collect their email addresses and start building a relationship with those who sign up. Even if they don’t attend, they’ve expressed an interest your work and have left the door open to being engaged. Using an event registration tool that allows you to check in people that attend (and hopefully capture email addresses from walk-ins), you will have a list of those who actually attended and those that didn’t.

2. Craft customized post-event follow-up messages.
   Having a communications plan for each group allows you to strategically engage them. I suggest a post-event survey to those that attended followed by a pitch for money, assuming the event went smoothly and they’ll want to pitch in. For those that didn’t attend, perhaps a link to a video or story from the event, an invite to sign up for a related newsletter, or another action that you’ve found engages casual readers.

3. Track your total RSVPs, final actual attendance and compute your no-show rate for each event.
   Your attendees are giving you usable data to better understand your audience. Your no-show rate will help you plan for future events and should give you ideas about event characteristics to test to lower the no-show rate. You can try tactics like sending more reminders, using a more accessible venue, changing the time, or other creative ideas for generating FOMO next time. Conversely, if your no-show is 30% and starts to slide, review what changes you’ve made that might account for the difference. Outliers aren’t the same as a trend, but you can’t tell that unless you track the data consistently.

4. Target double the number of RSVPs to get the audience size you want.
   If you want 100 people in the room, you need 200 RSVPs. If you have 10K on your invite list and you typically enjoy a 30% open rate, then 3K will open the email; assuming 10% click through, you have 300 people checking out your event. If 50 of those folks RSVP, your conversion is 16% (high and unlikely, another metric to track and work to improve). Not enough to fill the room, you’ll need another 150 RSVPs. So, presumably you’ll send more email to the same people and promote across your organization’s ecosystem, provide partners with promotional materials, and good old fashioned outreach, the elbow grease of event work. Improve conversion through better subject lines, more compelling CTAs, etc. using testing practices you’ve learned for newsletters and membership.

5. Sell sponsors on the value of making your event accessible to all.
   As Evan Smith liked to remind Tribune audiences “Events are free to attend but not free to produce,” or when he was in a salty mood, “This sh*t doesn’t pay for itself.” He spent a fair amount of time at the top of every event thanking corporate and foundation sponsors, in-kind donors, and members, whose financial support made it possible for us to host free events. I also communicated at every touch point that sponsors didn’t play a role in determining event content, speakers or questions. While Evan was comfortable in the business and editorial aspects of this, your organization might decide to separate these functions, but your audience will appreciate transparency in how the event is funded and reassurance that sponsors aren’t calling the shots.

6. It’s easier to promote free events.

   Most people at most organizations will be happy to spread the word about a free event. As soon as there is a ticket price attached, their spidey-sense goes off that they might need to get paid to promote it if you are making money. While I know it’s tough (or impossible) to cover event costs with even modest ticket prices for civic events, that nuance is lost on those we beg for favors. It’s an easier ask and an easier favor if the event is free.

Cons 👎🏻

1. Be very flexible, organized and communicative with vendors
   I would typically plan an event for 150-200 attendees, but I would mark the final date to confirm the room set-up and catering numbers. If I got to that final date and I had 200 RSVPs, I’d have to take the numbers down. I’m now expecting 100 people so I would reduce seating and catering accordingly. Remember that if you have 200 seats and only 100 people in the room, it’s only half-full. If you have 100 seats and 90 of them are full, you have a sell-out. Weirdly, people don’t notice that you could have fit double the number of tables in the room. Instead, everyone feels like it was a success. Trust your understanding of your no-show rate and don’t be above tactics that paint the right picture. Sometimes, more than 100 people would show and I’d have to pull out extra chairs. AWESOME! Nothing feels more like success than standing-room-only (just don’t let it happen regularly).

2. Disappointing speaker or sponsor expectations
   Less so for elected officials since they are used to speaking to groups of varying sizes, but in general, speakers want to know that their time is valued so you want to fill the room on their behalf. Sponsors who were promised 200 people and get half that may likewise be disappointed. The pitch for our events were between 150-200 because that was our average, but if we knew we were going to a rural area or the venue capacity is only 100, or some other factor that might limit the audience, that was communicated so the sponsors’ expectations were appropriately set. When they saw our “oversold” room, they were happy (see Con #1). Our motto was “underpromise and overdeliver.”

3. Perceived value and uncertain ROI
   I never thought that someone RSVPing and then no-showing was because they didn’t think we did good events (I may lack humility). I assumed that life got in the way and without skin in the game, their commitment was low. If you’ve set realistic vs. fantasy goals, this shouldn’t sink you, especially if you are basing assumptions on your tracked data. A post-event review of quantitative and qualitative metrics will hopefully prove you’ve hit your marks. If you’ve fallen short, you’ll need an honest assessment about what went wrong. It’s a learning opportunity and only an issue if you continue to miss the mark. But I’ve seen newsrooms pull the plug on events because of perceived low value or ROI, which is why I started this Substack. I want you to be successful with your events!

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When to have paid tickets 🎟️

It looks like more pros than cons for free events and while I enjoyed producing free, open to the public events, there are times when paid tickets are more appropriate.

1. A ticket price higher than $10 is an investment with an intention to attend. When they’ve paid for a ticket, they are also adding it to their calendar and likely to attend. In my experience, less than $10 will still see a good turnout but there may still be a fair no-show percentage because the investment isn’t high enough. If your event requires everyone to show up for one reason or another, it must be paid. Consider longer promo timelines and modest paid promotion, if necessary.

2. Celebrities will completely throw off what you know about your audience.

   I did several free events with high-profile speakers and every time, I lost, as in way fewer people than even standard no-shows. Everyone will RSVP for a celebrity but most of those people aren’t your normal readers/event attendees and are unlikely to show. Trust your normal trends to your regret. I can talk more about this if it’s of interest but bottom line, paid tickets for events including celebrities.

3. Production costs require ticket sales as part of the revenue pie.

   The Texas Tribune Festival falls into this category and is one of only a few paid Texas Tribune events. In the early years of the event, the Tribune distributed a lot of comp tickets aiming to build the event audience, but once a comp, attendees don’t want to switch to paid. As the event got bigger, the production costs went up accordingly so when I took over as festival director in 2016, one challenge was to convert comps to paid tickets. I utilized various strategies and it took two years, but ticket revenue rose significantly, along with the production budget. I’ll write another post on the anatomy of TribFest — I’d love to have your questions in comments or send me a message.

4. High dollar = high quality

   While we can likely all agree in principle that free events can and should be as high quality as something you’ve charged for, it’s human psychology to see value in things that are expensive or exclusive. For events where the direct public service mission isn’t as clear, for example a one-on-one with a business executive, you may sabotage perception of value by making it free. Pricing too low or too high can torpedo this type of event so do your market research on similar events in your area and test the waters with a median value. If tickets sell out quickly, you priced them too low. If they don’t move, too high. If you are sheepish about charging, consider adding some value, like free drinks or snacks, a swag gift, or something else than helps justify the ticket cost beyond the great program. You can also consider charging a higher price for reserved seats vs. general admission if you still want to have an accessible price point. I’m always surprised at how fast reserved seats sell out so price them high!

Final thoughts

• If you need another reason to track event trends, consider that if an event isn’t filling up at a similar rate to events in the past, there may be something wrong with the program. Are the speakers a mismatch for the topic or audience? Is the topic framed correctly for the target audience? If you notice sluggish pick-up, i.e. your not converting at your normal rate, review the program.

• A concurrent virtual option may eat in to your in-room audience. I noticed at the end of 2019, the Texas Tribune’s average in-room audience was on the decline while the average livestream audience was trending upwards. If you are offering a livestream, spend time building that audience, and plan to reward those who show up in person by ensuring extra benefits like networking time or catering.

• There can be significant differences in regional audience profiles. In a few communities in Texas, people just won’t RSVP at all or they’ll do it a day or two before the event. You’ll get to know your community well but if you travel, tap into local producers’ knowledge to set your expectations for any variance from your norms.

• Events are a team sport. Everyone at the org should own their relevant piece of the work outlined above, because events aren’t separate from the work, they are the work if you want events to benefit your organization. Don’t expect a part-time freelance producer to make any of what I’ve outlined above happen for you. If it means you can only host one quarterly event to accomplish what I’ve outlined, so be it.

By now, you might have guessed that I have a high tolerance for anxiety; I admit that I spent many sleepless nights worried over having full rooms. But over time, I learned to trust my understanding of how things would play out. Being an event professional means rolling with the punches of unexpected issues on the day of the program, so someone who can deal with their anxiety and stay calm and flexible on show day are your best bet for staff in charge of events.

I hope this helps frame your thinking around free vs. paid events, but please add your comments or questions.

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Related articles

Please note a lot of information about events comes from tech companies drawing us to their software. I’ll be talking about event tech in coming posts but a link does not imply endorsement of the product, just the article content.

• How to reduce no-shows at free events by Francesca Balit, The Events Cast

• 13 ways to avoid the dreaded event no-shows by Mike Fletcher, Cvent

• 15 ways to set the right ticket price for event tickets by Maria Waida, Social Tables / Cvent

• A guide to event ticket pricing strategies for in-person, virtual and hybrid events by Bizzabo

Besides the question of how to earn revenue producing events, the second most frequent question I’m asked, and arguably the more important one, is how do we decide what to do? “Events” are ubiquitous so in a world of infinite possibilities, how do we zero in on what will be most effective for generating the revenue we need?

✍🏼 Live journalism

The Texas Tribune’s mission is to report on the state legislature. When I joined the team in 2012, I didn’t know any state legislators and many in our audience didn’t either. That lack of name recognition of representatives making statewide decisions, who are arguably more pertinent in daily life than national policymakers, proved the case for the Tribune's existence and provided a natural event hook. We traveled around the state hosting conversations with legislators in their districts.

In the spirit of using Evan Smith’s excellent recent interview as a springboard for a deeper discussion:

“You have to have people who are comfortable on stage in front of an audience, asking hard questions of the powerful and influential.”

In the early days, more often than not, people came to see Evan. Having been a leading figure in Texas media for decades before co-founding the Tribune, people knew his name and that he was an excellent interviewer, so that helped bring people in the door. We also targeted political and civic types who likely did know their representatives but did not have many opportunities to hear them being interviewed on the record.

Conducting real-time journalism for your audience is low-hanging fruit if your newsroom has someone who can command attention and conduct an interesting interview. This type of event is mission-driven and serves to deepen your audience’s relationship to the stories and topics your newsroom is already covering; it’s live journalism and an extension of what the newsroom does daily. And not incidentally, speakers, elected officials in particular, aren’t paid for their appearance as you wouldn’t pay for a story source. Speaking fees are more complicated with other event types but starting here keeps costs down.

🌟 It’s all about the program 🌟

If you don’t have a compelling program, it won’t matter what else you do. We regularly averaged 200 people over boxed sandwich lunches to hear Evan grill elected representatives, and over the years, we went back to those communities every two or three years. When we added livestreaming in 2016, we increased our real-time audience by 50% or higher because someone from Amarillo but living in Houston could tune in to hear from a legislator they followed.

Over hundreds of events, I never heard feedback like “the speakers were awful yet I can’t wait to come back.” Whatever minor mishaps may have happened in the production, or how spend-thrift we were, a great discussion won the day every time. We organically built audiences because they knew it was going to be time well-spent. And for the record, “program” can be interpreted loosely. Even for events focused on networking rather than speaker presentations, attendees should leave feeling they gained significant value that exceeded their expectations.

Expenses 💸

“I actually think there's a strategy for putting on events at a relatively low cost. And I preach this all over the country.”—Evan Smith in Second Rough Draft

Here’s a sample budget for an event like those outlined above:

Venue rental $1,000
Boxed lunch $2,500
Printing $300
Staff travel $500
Livestream $1,000
Total $5,300

I can’t overemphasize the importance of trading to lower costs. We asked colleges and universities to be host sponsors, i.e., donate in-kind venue rental, which included A/V support, a planning contact to help us navigate needs like parking, catering and furniture, and on-campus promotion. For similar events we hosted in Austin at the historic Austin Club (before the Tribune had their own venue, Studio 919), we negotiated a very low venue rental rate based on utilizing a morning time slot that wasn’t typically sold; there was no travel and only light beverages, so those events typically came in under $1,000 each.

You don’t see a marketing line item because we spent a lot of time reaching out to organizations asking for help with promotion to political parties, civic organizations, local government, etc. We asked local media outlets to help us promote events in exchange for benefits like tabling at the event or distributing their publications, our assistance in setting up interviews with speakers or plugging into our feed so they could create their own content, and sometimes, their journalists were tapped for moderating conversations when it made sense. We traded site underwriting for hotel rooms, airfare vouchers, and sometimes even food, to defray event costs.

Check out the Tribune’s media kit for ideas on how to present opportunities. It helped that we were a nonprofit so donations could be acknowledged for tax purposes, and the events were free to attend. Keep your expenses low to make an event profitable even with smaller contributions.

Revenue 💰

As Evan notes, the Tribune’s chief revenue officer April Hinkle is one of the best sales people in the country. She’s particularly skilled at crafting custom sponsorships based on client needs and she knows how to integrate brands into the Texas Tribune’s ecosystem. I’ve worked with a lot of organizations that haven’t yet mastered this kind of sales. It’s not ad sales and the people who do ad sales seem to have a hard time with sponsorship. I won’t pretend that building a revenue program is easy, and everything I might impart on this topic is included in the Nonprofit News Guide to Earned Revenue.

Understanding client needs and matching them to an event series or single events based on topic or geography, forgoing exclusive sponsorships, and being willing to craft custom activations (i.e., how a business is incorporated into the experience) are not beyond any outlet. It takes time to build relationships and it helps to have a body of work to point to as samples of what their presence at an event might look like, but consider the budget above and recognize that small sponsorships can cover costs, and trading defrays cash outlay. And therein lies the major selling point: contributing businesses enable important conversations with lawmakers in their community.

Each event is a development opportunity to connect with major donors and philanthropic funders related to topics or geography. We often asked speakers if they would be willing to come to an event a few minutes early to shake hands with our VIPs before the program. They would frequently agree because politicians want to know money people too. Sponsors and major donors always had reserved seating and any other perks we could manage to make sure they felt our hospitality.

We also thanked members from the stage and asked for attendees to become members during the program and in email follow-ups. When we used (free) Eventbrite for registration, I added a donation option to the registration flow and you know what? People frequently donated to that very passive ask. If they had been to a Tribune event before, they knew we served lunch and people told me that they wanted to cover the cost of their food. Find ways to leverage each event against all of your organization’s revenue lines.

I hope this breaks down how we were able to accomplish low cost, mission-driven events, but please share your questions and comments.

Do you have other event ambitions for your organization? Take this quick survey to share!

🤠 Resources Round-Up

• Sample Host Sponsorship kit and the Tribune’s underwriting kit

• Nonprofit News Guide to Earned Revenue

• Watch past Texas Tribune Events to see this playbook in action

In my first post, I noted five questions I ask when talking to news organizations about their event plans, and after having this discussion, they don’t always call me back. It’s overwhelming to think about a big hairy challenge, but understanding what you want to get out of your events is essential to avoid wasted time and money, and an unclear return on your investment (ROI). We do this kind of planning with all kinds of products so hopefully this isn’t news, but given what I’ve heard, it bears repeating.

“If you've seen one nonprofit news organization, you've seen one nonprofit news organization.” —Evan Smith in Second Rough Draft

In the spring of 2020 as the deputy director of RevLab at The Texas Tribune, I poured out my experience into Events Bootcamp, a eight-week learning/coached program designed to help organizations develop a plan and execute an event production. We delivered the course that summer to 14 teams, and repeated the effort the following summer with another 22 teams.

From both cohorts there are still many that are still doing events, so over the coming weeks, I’ll be checking in with them to report on how things have gone. I’ll also be repackaging the learnings from the bootcamp to help organizations looking to build their own plans.

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Getting started 🏁

The first step to developing a plan is to brainstorm with your team. While it’s tempting to go scour the web looking for a template, because your organization is unique, so must be your event plan. Don’t have time for all that work? How do I say this nicely? If you don’t have time to make a plan, you don’t have time for an event program. I can absolutely help you get into a groove so production is not so difficult in the long run — with a small team, I produced 50-60 events per year while at The Texas Tribune — but jumping in without consideration is likely to result in frustration.

Assuming you are still with me, the American Press Institute offers a great event planning strategy worksheet along with “The best strategies for generating revenue through events” by Kevin Loker (pub. Aug. 7, 2014). The examples in the article are outdated but the advice still holds, and the strategy worksheet is a solid guide to help your team in generating ideas that will be organic for your organization. The best events are rooted in an understanding of your audience and what will resonate with them, and what you can bring to the table vs. what you need to source elsewhere.

Do you feel confident about your WHO and WHY and are aiming for one large event or series? Check out my Event Planning Worksheet. This also requires a brainstorm focused on teasing out all of the avenues your team will pursue to make your event a success. The worksheet can evolve into your Event Brief, a one-sheet that is shared and explains all of the details of what is happening, who is participating, and those all-important goals that will be your yardstick for ROI at the end of the production.

A word on event types

I’m focused on what I call editorial events. At The Texas Tribune, we didn’t have bandwidth for projects that didn’t serve the mission. Not every event was newsroom-driven — we had trivia nights, happy hours and fundraisers — but even when the primary purpose wasn’t live journalism, we still featured our journalists, topics of coverage and audience interests in the mix. I’m sure future posts will allude to different kinds of events, but for clarity’s sake, my perspective is primarily on events driven by the newsroom. We’ll get into this more as we go, and you are welcome to send me your questions and topics you’d like to see discussed in this space.

🤠 Resources Round-Up

• American Press Institute’s Strategy Worksheet

• Better News: Events are extremely difficult. You should do them anyway.

  • Better News article index on Live Events

• Event Planning Worksheet provided by Power the Press

• Journalism Live: How News Events Foster Engagement and Expand Revenue by Josh Stearns for Democracy Fund’s Local News Lab

• These media outlets diversified their revenue with live events. Then the coronavirus hit. by Gregory Scruggs for Poynter

• Publishers double down on events heading into 2024 by Kayleigh Barber for Digiday

Reminder! If you are a media organization producing events, or wanting to, please take this survey to help me make it easier!

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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