It’s August. Can you believe it? I can’t, not really. A bit more than half the year is just ... gone. 

Sticking your head in the sand isn’t an option, unless this e-mail finds you on vacation. But in that case I’d rather recommend to put your feet up and let your mind wander toward what you still want to get done this year. 

Because August also means something else. We have five months left to actually move on a few things.

No, this isn’t going to turn into a self-optimisation newsletter. I’m not going to link you to a spreadsheet where you track your habits. I’m not going to hand you prompts to make your workday marginally more efficient. 

What I want instead is to reframe the rest of this year as an opportunity. Big organisations think in quarters. Which makes right now the exact moment to set in motion the things that even the slowest-moving legacy tanker in your building can still land by Q4.

Let’s think about this creatively. We come back from summer more or less rested, roll up our sleeves, and then what? What is the one thing you still want to get done in your organisation this year?

I’ve got three ideas. Think of it as a small challenge and pick your favourite one.

1. Find a voice

We talk a lot here about creators and about how to build creator journalism inside legacy newsrooms. If you want to deep dive into this topic, check out our remote Young Audiences Summit this upcoming September. 

Here’s a simple place to start. Set yourself a goal: By December, find two voices inside your organisation who stand out. People who have something of their own to say and who actually want to be in front of a camera. 

They don’t have to be professional moderators. The job isn’t to manufacture a persona. It’s to notice who already has a voice and a talent, and to actually let them shine. Look out for people who love their niche, who love your brand, who love to try out new things. 

How to do it:

• Have conversations with colleagues and with potential talents — be open to new ideas.

• Organise a little bootcamp. Every journalist who is interested in vertical video can take part in it. Two days, one paid coach, afterwards you look through the material. 

• Make sure you have your voices by October. Then give them clear assignments. That means: one channel, one format, and some real time to produce content (not on weekends, obviously). If you are insecure about the outcome, do not post the material; just let them produce one month of trial videos. 

🎯 Goal by December: You sit down with your voices and look at the content. What worked well, what did not work at all? Look at numbers, workflows, feedback. Listen to the people who are the target audience. 

And if you are a talent: 

• Produce one video and send it to your boss. Don’t think about whether you’re allowed to do it or not. Don’t think about cringe mountain. Just try it and show them what you got!

2. Think interdisciplinary

Build a small group that cuts across teams and across generations. Give that group real time, not “whenever you find a spare hour,” to develop two or three concrete proposals for reaching young audiences by year-end.

This only works if you actually protect the time and resist the urge to ask for ROI in the first meeting. Trust your youngest colleagues here. They understand the platforms and the audience instinctively in ways a strategy deck can’t replicate. Take the blinders off. Invite someone from outside editorial into the room.

What you need:

• A recurring 90-minute session every two or three weeks, on the calendar. If you’re pitching this idea to your boss, make sure she or he commits to this time investment.

• A group staffed on purpose across generations and departments.

• Patience to hold the ROI question until later in the process. Let round one be about ideas. Use the first meeting just to brainstorm, and do not forget: Quantity is key here. Give the people A LOT of Post-it notes and sharpies and just write everything down that comes to your and their mind. Ten minutes of intense, creative brainstorming — no wrong ideas. Afterwards try to group the idea and then pick together your three favourite ideas from every group. And then work through this bucket of ideas: Sketch them on paper, discuss them, make it creative!

🎯 Goal by December: Two to three concrete proposals for reaching young audiences, presented to leadership as a progress update, not a pitch.

3. Run a mini young audiences audit

This one’s close to home. I am actually going to talk about this with a room full of CEOs later this month at the INMA CEO Roundtable at Vail.

The argument: Publishers are conflating two different investments — long-term brand presence on platforms and product transformation. Most organisations underfund both while believing they have a strategy for either.

You don’t need to be in that room to run the same exercise. Here’s the honest version: Map out where your young audience money and time actually go right now. Chances are, most of it lands in neither bucket. Not platform presence, not product transformation. It goes toward short-term content pushes and conversion tactics, measured this quarter and forgotten by the next. 

The audit’s job is to make that visible before you can build a case for either kind of long-term investment.

What you need:

• Map out where money and time currently go toward young audiences right now.

• Test it against the two buckets: platform presence, product transformation. Be honest about what fits neither.

• Write one page: What it would actually take to fund one of the two, not just this quarter?

• Derive long-term goals that actually pay into this audience and that justify the investment over time. Not “these Reels brought 200 sign-ups.” More like: How would we even measure trust?

• Bring it to the people who need to see that they don’t have a strategy for younger audiences yet before Q4 planning starts.

🎯 Goal by December: A one-page case that makes leadership see the gap — no real strategy for younger audiences, not yet.

Which challenge is calling your name? Send me an e-mail and tell me which one you’re picking. I’ll check back in at the end of the year and ask how it went. Consider me the coach who won’t let you off the hook. ;)  

If you’d like to subscribe to my bi-weekly newsletter, INMA members can do so here.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .