Crain Communications chief content office Dan Peres sent out the following to the staff:
As we continue the transformation KC and Veebha outlined last month, editorial is not just aligned with that work — we are driving it.
This is not a reset. It is an acceleration — building journalism around user needs, developing communities around our brands and integrating content, product and events into a single ecosystem.
We are operating with greater discipline — defining audiences more clearly, building products around their needs and measuring what works.
Growth and Retaining Our Audience
Growth starts with clarity — who we serve and what they need.
Across our brands, coverage is now structured around user needs, prioritizing insight, analysis and forward-looking intelligence.
- 100% of stories in Arc are aligned with user needs, ensuring clear audience value
- Beats are being restructured around audience needs, not topic silos (notably at Automotive News and Ad Age)
- “Update Me” stories have declined from 50% to 30%, shifting toward more differentiated journalism
User Needs is now an operating model — embedded in workflow, tools and editorial practice. While we are still improving accuracy and consistency, we now have enough scale to generate meaningful directional signals.
The mix is improving: Update Me remains important, but more differentiated work is growing — and now drives the majority of subscriber value, accounting for over 70% of subscriber visits and nearly 80% of order-assisted activity.
We are also tracking churn, which is down nearly 20% year over year, signaling stronger alignment.
We are off to a great start with User Needs. Retention improves when we meet specific needs consistently.
Product-Led Experimentation
We are structuring controlled experimentation with clear audiences, use cases and measurable outcomes.
Our product team has build and is now launching the LLM-driven Crain Answers tool across brands, in close partnership with editorial.
Other pilots include:
- Modern Healthcare x Second Opinion webinar series
- Segmented newsletter testing at Automotive News
We are also building internal voices as products, including the launch of the Private Markets Insider newsletter at P&I.
Each pilot is evaluated against engagement, retention, conversion and efficiency over defined timeframes. We are scaling what works and stopping what does not.
Driving Operational Efficiency
We are focusing on high-impact work and eliminating what does not support growth.
- Using audience data to guide coverage
- Streamlining workflows across editorial, product and events
- Developing AI-assisted tools that reduce time spent on lower-value tasks and allow reporters to focus on high-impact journalism
- Building once and extending across platforms
We are building around a simple operating model: define the audience, serve their needs and build communities around them.
Editorial is central to this model — and we are putting it into practice across our brands.
Dan
