Product Kit
The rise of product roles and product teams in news organizations is a shift toward operationalizing the product mindset and practice within the news industry. Yet news product roles and the news product concept are still novel in many news organizations, and where these are not new, the product practice can vary from one team or organization to another.
Product Kit is a growing catalog of practical guides for product strategy, product research, and product development in news organizations. There is no one right way to build an operational foundation that supports a product culture in a news organization, but there are product methods that have been tested through experimentation and practice in newsrooms of all sizes.
The guides are organized into four categories — the product, the product mindset, the product practice, and the product team — that emphasize product practice in news organizations.
Expand the sections below to browse all guides.
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A news product is a defined article, series, program, or other content created by a news organization to meet the needs of news consumers. Examples include annual editorial features, datasets, podcasts, video series, events, smart speaker briefings, membership and subscription programs, and streaming services.
Guides
→ ABCs of Product: A glossary of commonly used product terms for news organizations
→ Distinguishing between products and projects in journalism
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In a news organization, a product mindset considers the needs of news consumers and treats the outputs of journalism as products that are developed with purpose and maintained (or discontinued) with intention. News organizations with a healthy product mindset emphasize collaboration across teams, goal-setting and iterative development.
Guides
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Product as a practice operationalizes the product mindset and enables newsroom leaders to make informed decisions about what products to build, how to build them, and when to update, maintain, or retire an existing product. The core functions of product practice are product strategy, product research, and product development.
Guides
→ Getting started with product research
→ Making research and experimentation part of your development process
→ Using research results in decision-making
→ Understanding the product development lifecycle
→ Defining requirements for product development
→ Planning for effective product research
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A product team in a news organization owns the product practice. The team is responsible for ensuring that product decisions are based on audience needs and take a holistic view of the organization’s capacity to develop news products and sustain product operations.
Guides
Most Recent
How to collect, organize and prioritize product requests
A helpful guide for figuring out what to do next
Scaling a product team
A guide for building capacity while growing your team’s credibility as a driver of business value
Working collaboratively with design and development
What product managers need to know about design and development to help their teams collaborate
Distinguishing between products and projects in journalism
A guide to understanding the difference between product, project, program, and portfolio management in news.
Aligning stakeholders around product: How to bring newsroom stakeholders together for product prioritization and decision-making
A guide for understanding why and how to align stakeholders
Planning for effective product research
A guide to determining product research objectives and creating a project plan
How to sunset a product
Making space for new development by sunsetting products that no longer serve user needs
Creating a product team from scratch
A guide for creating a newsroom product team with limited or existing resources
Understanding the role of product in news organizations
An overview of newsroom roles and responsibilities and how product fits in
Teaching product methods in the newsroom
How to explain product in a newsroom and get stakeholder buy-in
Choosing the product development method that works best for your team
An introduction to product development terms and method
Getting started with strategic planning and goal-setting
A guide for aligning strategic planning with newsroom mission and values for product teams
About this guide
Product Kit is a growing catalog of community-created product guides for news organizations developed by Jessica Morrison in collaboration with News Catalyst and News Product Alliance. Support for Product Kit comes from the Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund.
Editing by Jessica Morrison, Heather Bryant, and Feli Carrique.
Project Management and Production by Madison Karas and Lakshmi Sivadas.
Design by Tony Elkins.
