Are you creating content your audience actually needs? Lars K Jensen reveals the power of the User Needs Model in journalism and why understanding your audience is the key to engagement, trust, and business success.

Lars is the Audience Lead at Berlingske Media and an expert in audience insights, newsroom transformation, and digital strategy.

With years of experience in journalism and publishing, he has helped redefine how media organizations approach content by focusing on what their readers truly value.

In this conversation, Lars and Nils discuss why newsroom culture is more important than strategy, how data quality impacts content decisions, and his experience implementing the user needs model at Berlingske Media. They also dive into the delicate balance between automation and human intuition in audience analytics, his previous life as a DJ, and what the future holds for user needs in Journalism and news.

Chapters:

00:00 Intro
03:06 Why Lars Became Interested in User Needs
05:59 The User Needs Model Explained
08:52 How Newsrooms Can Implement Audience-First Journalism
11:39 Why Culture, Not Just Strategy, Drives Change
14:00 How Tagging and Data Insights Shape Journalism
17:01 Engaging Journalists Without Overwhelming Them
20:09 Measuring Success with Audience-Centric Metrics
22:59 Why User Needs Bridge the Gap Between Business & Journalism
25:39 Creating Internal Hype & Adoption for New Models
28:30 How Data Quality & Tagging Define Reliable Insights
38:22 The Role of Trust & Community in Modern Journalism
41:13 The Balance of Automation & Human Judgment
48:48 Demystifying User Needs & Making It Actionable
59:34 The DJ Analogy: How Journalism Is Like Reading the Crowd
01:06:07 The Future of Community Engagement in News

Follow Lars Jensen:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larskjensen/

Blog: https://productsinpublishing.com/

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/larskjensen.dk