Earlier this month, I presented at the 2026 City and Regional Magazine Association conference in New Orleans. My session focused on a topic I think about constantly in our work with publishers: the gap between how media brands define their audience and how their audience actually experiences them. Here are a few of the key insights I shared.
The Honest Math
For most city and regional publications, print subscribers represent a small fraction of total brand touchpoints. Across our client base at TFD, fewer than 10% of a publication's newsletter list are active print subscribers. That means roughly 90% of the people who read your newsletter, follow you on Instagram, buy a ticket to your annual event, or click through to your website may never pay for (or experience) your print magazine.
The problem isn't that those people aren't valuable. The problem is treating them like they aren't.
Your Brand Has Multiple Products
One of the insights I shared was about the need to think of your channels as distinct products, each with its own audience and revenue logic. To illustrate it, I made the connection to the childhood board classic board game: Chutes and Ladders. Members of your audience are sliding up, sliding down, moving left to right — and often never landing on the same. Each square on that board represents a touchpoint with your brand. I challenged attendees to ask themselves: if your brand were a game board, how many unique squares do you have to land on?
The opening keynote from Jordan Vita, Head of Product for News at The New York Times, reinforced this point in a striking way. She spoke about how the Times has intentionally built multiple distinct products — NYT Cooking, Games, Podcasts, and more — specifically to capture readers wherever they are, regardless of whether they ever subscribe to the paper. Each product serves a different audience. Some of those audiences barely overlap at all.
The good news: you don't need the resources of the Times to apply this thinking. Your newsletter, your social channels, your events, your membership programs are not just marketing vehicles for your print product. They are unique products. Each one has its own audience, its own value, and its own monetization potential. Think of each one as a square on your game board — a place where someone in your community can land, deepen their connection to your brand, and eventually become a more loyal and valuable audience member.
Meet Them Where They Are
The audience development work that actually moves the needle right now is built around a few things I covered in the session:
- Treating each channel as a product with its own editorial identity, growth strategy, and revenue logic
- Using first-party data — email engagement, event attendance, content behavior — to understand what your audience actually cares about
- Building habit through consistent, personalized experiences that make your brand feel irreplaceable
The goal is not to funnel everyone toward a print subscription. The goal is to grow the size, depth, and loyalty of your total audience — and then build products worthy of it.
The New York Times didn't accidentally become a tech and media company. They made deliberate choices to invest in the products their audience was already reaching for. Regional publishers can do the same thing, at their own scale, with the audience they already have.