Why The Business Times has both a news editor and a product editor

UNUSUAL job titles can empower, but can also confuse. When I became The Business Times’ first associate editor for product on Sep 1, as part of BT’s recent reorganisation, some of my contacts were genuinely perplexed.

“Do you now ensure products get stocked on store shelves?” one asked. “So you’ve moved to sales and marketing?” asked another. And from a third: “It’s about that stuff you use to make your hair stand up, isn’t it?”

The answer to all three questions is: No. I work with SPH Media’s Digital Media Products team on BT’s product development and management. And by product, we mean the vehicle through which we create value for you by solving your problems in delightful ways.

Where news and product meet

What does problem-solving and delight have to do with news? Everything, actually, because BT is not only about reporting the right news. This news has to be available in the format you want, on the platforms you use, and in a way that satisfies you. That’s where news and product intersect.

Product is about creating value through solving the right problems. The problem BT solves for you is whatever you come to us for: information, analysis, reviews, etc. And delight is what we hope readers, viewers and listeners experience as we solve their problems.

Meeting news needs in a delightful manner can be a tall order for product folks, however, when many people don’t really know what we do. And when colleagues do not understand the role of product teams, it can be especially difficult to get anything done.

Product development and management are more commonly associated with software development. But product thinking goes beyond tech. It asks the crucial questions of why, who and what: Why are we writing this or building that? For whom are we recording this podcast, or creating this award? And what value – what outcome beyond mere output – are we delivering to this audience?

The breadth of the product mission overlaps with other parts of the media business – from subscriptions to advertising, from marketing to customer service. Product work is, by definition, cross-functional. It leans on shared goals and metrics, since each department has its own key performance indicators and reporting structure.

BT adopted product thinking as a formal discipline less than five years ago. It has become a cornerstone of how we do things at BT, but the learning curve has been steep.

Creating what you want to read, view or listen to, and delivering this when and how you want it, might sound like common sense. Systematically pursuing this goal, however, requires expertise, data, and a calibrated decision-making framework.

Integrating product with news

The biggest challenge of integrating the product team within the newsroom has been the differing pace of ideation and work. Most product innovations need to be built by tech, which works in two-week sprints. Large goals that require months to build are broken into multiple sprints. Decisions are driven by data.

Journalists, however, live and work by daily news cycles. Advance planning still takes reference from this daily pulse. Instinct matters. Informal feedback plays a more important role.

This can lead to tension when the newsroom regularly asks product and tech to build new features or make changes mid-sprint, in response to news or feedback.

It doesn’t help that the word “agile” has a different meaning within the context of product thinking. Ordinarily, it simply means the ability to react quickly. For product, agility refers to a virtuous cycle of feedback and iteration within a structured cadence.

These differing work rhythms have required journalists to learn to plan ahead. In turn, BT’s tech team has learned to reserve development bandwidth in each sprint for inevitable ad hoc tasks.

This meeting of minds between product and journalists means a news experience that incorporates both behavioural data and informal feedback. It’s also resulted in a newsroom strategy that’s more audience-driven.

BT editor Chen Huifen has shared BT’s early forays into digital publication, as well as our more recent transformation into a digital-first newsroom. As we continue to search for new ways to tell stories, and to deliver them with the best experience, product thinking will help us avoid doing this in an echo chamber.

Off The Record is a monthly column by BT’s editors on the modern news industry from an insider’s perspective. We welcome feedback and suggestions at btnews@sph.com.sg.

Listen to the extended podcast version of this column.