AudienceDevelopment

Since 2006, Global Press has prioritized local audiences in our coverage communities. In 2023, we built a new team of local audience liaisons to deepen local partnerships in each of our coverage communities. Together, they built dozens of new partnerships across radio, television, print and online publications.

Local audience liaisons build custom distribution strategies for each and every story we produce. They find unique and powerful ways to reach target audiences, no matter where they are.

The Global Press Strategic Plan centers on our local/global audience development strategy, which ensures each and every story reaches targeted audiences both in our local markets and around the world. The strategy blends large-scale partners, like nationwide newspapers and international online media outlets, alongside rural local radio and niche print publications to both maximize audience exposure to our stories and deliver them directly to the people who need them most.

How does story distribution work? 

Global Press stories are designed to serve both local and international audiences. We work hard to meet target audiences where they are, while also leveraging our high-quality stories to advance global narrative change.

Maximizing Exposure

Our audience team builds partnerships with large-scale local, national and international publications, to ensure wide exposure to Global Press stories.

Targeting Reach

Our audience team considers who needs the story most and builds a custom, per-story strategy to deliver stories directly to people where they already consume news.

Tracking Impact

Once a story has been distributed to its intended audiences, our Impact Analyst follows the story to track its impact over time.

How do we know our strategy is working? 

Global Press covers stories that few other outlets can. With inclusion as the cornerstone of our mission and vision for the future of journalism, it is essential that we do everything in our power to serve our local audiences. A robust and transparent partnership database tracks each and every story placement. Then, our new impact framework follows stories over time to study the many ways that our journalism makes a tangible difference in the communities we cover and beyond.

In 2023, we asked a leading audience expert to review our audience strategy and metrics. Here's what he had to say:

“Global Press is uniquely qualified to deliver greater access of fact-based information to local and international audiences. With a dedication to the highest journalistic standards of integrity, Global Press has shown a commitment to defining the value of audiences with established metrics of accountability and transparency. With stories available across multiple platforms, consistent metrics of audience exposure, reach and engagement are defining the significance of Global Press content for diverse global audiences.”

— Jeff Boehme, executive audience analyst, Former Chief Research Officer at Kantar Media, SVP at Comscore and Nielsen

AudienceLiaisons

In 2023, we built a team of local audience liaisons to build and maintain local media partnerships in each Global Press coverage country. Together, they grew partnerships by 430%.

Audience liaisons are local reporters with a deep understanding of their local media markets.

Their knowledge of their local markets allow them to build a vast array of cross-platform partnerships. From radio to television to textbooks, these passionate audience professionals transformed the scope of our reach. Scroll over each to learn about their favorite partnerships from 2023:

Haiti

Anne Myriam Bolivar

My favorite partnership:

"I wanted to reach an audience interested in climate and environmental issues in Haiti, so I built a partnership with Haiti Climat to feature a story on flooding in Port-de-Paix. The goal was to raise awareness of the consequences of flooding in the region and to promote a deeper understanding of the relationship between climate change and weather events."
Anne Myriam Bolivar

DRC

Noella Nyirabihogo

My favorite partnership:

“As one of the most listened-to radio stations in the country, Mishappi Voice is often followed by authorities who have the capacity to improve freedom for journalists in the DRC. I built a partnership with them and we were able to raise yet another subject that is often ignored.  Local journalists felt that they were not forgotten.” — Noella Nyirabihogo

Uganda

Nakisanze Segawa

My favorite partnership:

“The Independent is an online magazine that is widely read by people both in public and private sector. And it's popular in some refugee camps where accessing print media can be a challenge.” —Nakisanze Segawa

Zimbabwe

Linda Mujuru

My favorite partnership:

“I placed a story about the lack of health insurance for civil servants with Heart and Soul FM because it has a huge following on YouTube and the host  commands a huge following on Twitter. The show's following also includes policy makers. My goal with this placement was to harness this following to reach those who are mostly affected by this issue.” — Linda Mujuru

Mongolia

Odonchimeg Batsukh

My favorite partnership:

"Our collaboration with Gogo.mn started in May 2023. It's one of Mongolia's largest online news sites with a daily reach of more than 400,000 people. The most important placement I made was about 12-year-old girl who was kidnapped and killed in October 2023. The goal was to reach everyone from human rights defenders to water distributors, storekeepers, and neighbors to give information about how to detect and report domestic violence."
Odonchimeg Batsukh

Nepal

Shilu Manandhar

My favorite partnership:

“I chose our partner Halokhabar for a very important story about cattle dying from grazing on a specific kind of weed.  Most of Halokhabar's readers are farmers and entrepreneurs from the agricultural sector. It was important to reach that sector so people could be aware and take the necessary precautions to save their cattle and their livelihoods.” — Shilu Manandhar

Mexico

Marissa Revilla

My favorite partnership:

"I was so happy to place the story about orchids and migration in Animal Politico because they have an extraordinary audience reach, especially on social media. We worked together to create a custom comic for Instagram to bring this important issue of imminent migration to their millions of followers.” — Marissa Revilla

Puerto Rico

Coraly Cruz Mejías

My favorite partnership

“I created a long-term partnership with El Vocero so that our stories could reach a majority of Puerto Ricans, specifically those who do not access the news online. El Vocero has one of the largest print ciculations of any newspaper in Puerto Rico, and its distribution is free.” — Coraly Cruz Mejías

AudienceResults

This unique audience team was tasked with growing our presence in some of the world’s most-challenging media environments.  
They succeeded.

In 2023, our audience team built more than 100 media partnerships, growing our total partnership network by more than 430%.

Partnership Growth by the Numbers

The kinds of partnerships our team built, highlight the audiences we are prioritizing. Click on each number to learn more.

We know that the reach and impact of online news is limited in many global communities. From rural communities in the heart of DRC’s conflict zones to remote Haitian towns in need of greater access to information our, eighteen new local radio partnerships allowed us to serve some of the hardest-to-reach people on earth.

Featured Partners

Adding more than a dozen new print partnerships to our roster grew our reach to large-scale national audiences, thanks to partnerships with major newspapers from Zimbabwe to Puerto Rico. Greater local print distribution also enabled us to reach niche audiences from wildlife enthusiasts to policy analysts.

Featured Partners

Forty-eight new online partnerships catapulted our stories in front of ever-larger audiences. From Gogo.mn, Mongolia’s largest online news site to Animal Politico, one of Mexico’s largest political publications.

Featured Partners

Television is a newer avenue for Global Press. In 2023, three partnerships showcased the powerful potential of the medium to seed impact in our communities. In Zimbabwe, one television segment quickly sparked action from local teachers.

Featured Partners

Direct traffic to Global Press Journal grew by 12.5%.

Direct Audience Growth by the Numbers

Unique traffic to globalpressjournal.com continued to grow in 2023, especially in our coverage countries.

3,800%
visitor growth in Sri Lanka
323%
visitor growth in Mexico
180%
visitor growth in Uganda
25%
visitor growth in Argentina

TheStakeholders

At Global Press, we’re committed to prioritizing audiences we know we can’t monetize. We routinely seek feedback from the local communities we serve. Here’s why our readers and media partners said Global Press stories mattered in 2023:

global press matters in my country because

“As an international media platform, Global Press alerts governments to their international commitments. In Nepal's case, the government has signed seven of the nine major conventions issued by the United Nations. Similarly, Nepal is a signatory to 39 human rights treaties. Global Press' news and feature stories have aided in putting that commitment into action.”

Meg Raj Shankhar, Government Section Officer, Nepal

OurImpact

Global Press operates in some of the world's most challenging places from news deserts to unfree media markets. In these contexts, tracking the impact of ethical, accurate journalism takes time.

We work hard to ensure that our stories saturate our local markets, which seeds the ground for impact. Using a new impact framework developed in 2023, our impact analyst is continuously monitoring how people locally, and around the world, are using our stories to effect change.

We’re placing our stories in partner outlets to maximize the opportunity for impact. Then, we're tracking how people everywhere put our powerful stories to use.

From rural radio in Democratic Republic of Congo to print newspapers in Puerto Rico, our powerful strategy is now paired with strategic impact measurement that allows us to follow stories and track their use through community outreach, surveys and more. Our framework tracks impact in three categories. Click on each to learn more about some stories we're currently tracking.

How are we tracking community impact?

From unions to classrooms, local communities are turning Global Press stories into action. By placing stories in publications that both increase general exposure and reach targeted audiences, we’re able to  track community uses and follow up with interviews and community surveys to gather evidence of impact over time.

Recent stories we’re tracking:

  • In Zimbabwe, Global Press senior reporter Gamuchirai Masiyiwa wrote a series of articles on the country's decaying educational system. Today, the teachers' union, ARTUZ, is currently using her stories to  advocate for an introduction of a new fund.
  • In Democratic Republic of Congo, Global Press senior reporter Merveille Kavira Luneghe wrote about musicians who were going to jail for song lyrics that criticized the government and advocated for peace. When Merveille discussed the issue on local radio, she inspired a group of local rappers who say they are heeding her advice and changing the way they write songs to steer clear of new, punitive restrictions.

How are we tracking policy impact?

From sparking investment in local infrastructure to spurring the passage of new laws, officials and policy makers are acting on the accurate information in Global Press stories regularly.

Recent stories we’re tracking:

  • In Puerto Rico, coverage of how a local electrification project was harming one of the world’s most unique bioluminescent bays led to government action to eliminate light pollution.
  • In Zimbabwe, coverage of bitcoin scammers led to a government investigation.
  • In Mexico, coverage of a spike in pedestrian and cyclist road deaths led to the approval of a road safety law.

How are we tracking institutional impact?

Global Press stories feature local sources who are representative of their communities. When major institutions cite or republish them, we’re diversifying how the world understands key issues. In 2023, major institutions leveraged our stories more than 50 times.

Recent stories we’re tracking:

  • The US government cited our story on Nepal's anti-child labor laws in its Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
  • The World Health Organization cited our series on the changing nature of reproductive health as one of its eight resources on sexual health.
  • The Journal of Medical Imaging and Radiation Sciences cited our story on how the Zimbabwean health system was failing cancer patients.
  • A textbook published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in 2023, Media, Culture and Conflict in Africa, cited our coverage of corporal punishment in Uganda.
  • Fordham University cited our coverage of fair pay in DRC’s mines in its research paper “Conflict & Coltan.”
  • The United Nations Development Programme cited our coverage of intersex people’s rights in its legal and policy review of intersex rights.
  • The International Labour Organization cited our coverage of Nepali migrants' rights in a comprehensive mapping assessment of migrants across South Asia.



Global Press is proud to have a dedicated Impact Analyst who is tracking the relationship between audience development and tangible impact.

Former Global Press Journal reporter-turned-Impact Analyst Fortune Moyo built a new impact tracking framework in 2023 as a member of the prestigious JamLab Africa cohort of innovators. Her approach starts with audience development and then blends research and community outreach to gather evidence of how our target audiences are using our stories to change the world.

impact
‍analyst

Fortune Moyo

“Impact is a natural result of working hard to ensure the right audiences have access to our stories.  Using a rigorous and transparently available framework, we share the data and evidence we use to track impact. Global Press is changing communities across the world by giving them accurate and well-researched information.”