Product Notes: How and when to integrate product into news organizations

Whatever your role might be within news product management, you are among a generation of firsts in the journalism industry. Many in the NPA community are some of the initial folks in an organization to take on product-oriented responsibilities, even if the role doesn’t come with a formal product title.

As more news organizations start up, grow, and incorporate product-oriented roles, our generation of firsts expands, providing opportunities for more successors. As detailed in NPA’s report released Wednesday, The State of Product Management in Journalism, the majority (70 percent) of 543 respondents to the 2025 News Product Alliance Census reported that product was either “established” or “emerging” in their organizations. 

Yet more than two-thirds of respondents still reported a high need for recognition and leadership support to better establish product in their organizations, as well as a need for improved role clarity. The census results show we all still have a lot to learn about ways to best integrate our roles into news organizations.

Product-oriented roles are often created in response to a growing need for internal strategy that accounts for audience, business, design, and technology priorities. But incorporating a new role itself requires a holistic, not just diagnostic strategy to avoid merely responding to gaps, and instead successfully initiate an autonomous product-led culture.

In my experience as an organization’s first product manager — on new, full-resourced product teams and in spaces where I’ve been the only technically oriented staff member — I’ve learned that beyond titles or expensive software tools, a new product hire’s success often relies on the organizational infrastructure and culture created for them. 

I spoke to three product leaders who’ve built out news product roles and teams about what it takes to successfully bring them on board and the lessons they’ve learned.

The prompt for a product role

Exactly when and at what stage an organization might incorporate product personnel varies. Some newer organizations have been fortunate to start with a product team from the outset, while some more mature organizations have brought on product or bridge role staff one by one during transition periods or restructuring.

To get product off the ground at The 19th, Amanda Zamora constructed teams with audience, design, and engineering in mind, and hired people with “two or more superpowers.”

“We hired bridge roles from the start,” says Amanda, Founder and Principal of Agencia Media. “I couldn’t have a newsletter product manager and a website product manager. We didn’t have the luxury of having people dedicated to just one product over time. We hired around skills.”

The exact title and shape of a role can be influenced by factors such as the organization’s business model and size, but these roles are usually created in response to an audience or revenue priority that triggers the need for more strategic product ownership.

Product opportunities can emerge as a way to respond to insights from audience teams, “and the next step is to be able to apply those insights to build something meaningful,” says Jessica Parker Gilbert. She led the evolution of product and design teams at The Washington Post and McClatchy, and is now Co-Founder of The Composition Collective, a product, design, and storytelling studio.Likewise, product opportunities can emerge after a team begins to better understand its technological capabilities and how it might use them to best serve audiences, which requires “a purposeful role of a product in it,” she adds.

Bringing product roles into organizations

Whether you’re building a product team from scratch or integrating one into an existing organization, incorporating product talent should allow the organization to champion collaboration around strategic goals — not just keep the ship afloat. 

This was a motivating factor in the reorganization of the Innovation and Audience Engagement division at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which encompassed news product, audience insights, marketing, and the RFE/RL Academy and Innovation Lab.

“We wanted to shift from being facilitators and documentation creators who set minimum standards to leaders with actual authority to commit various parts of the organization to alignment with market realities,” says Patrick Boehler, who oversaw the division and reorganization. “Before, we could only suggest and coordinate; we needed the power to drive real change across departments.”

Implementing product thinking successfully enables product managers to strategically consider feasibility, viability, and desirability, driving organizational outcomes, adds Patrick, who is now Founder and Principal of civic media lab Gazzetta, as well as an NPA Board Member.

This requires a culture shift, orienting both new product hires and broader teams around how product roles fit within and drive broader goals, to move beyond status quo maintenance and business-as-usual operations.

“When I think of a product manager, they are helping steward one or more products in terms of not just maintaining their functionality and sustainability, but growing them right in terms of engagement, revenue, all of those things,” Amanda says.

Advice for bringing on product talent and culture

The collaborative, cross-functional mindset required to create change across multiple skill sets and priorities is crucial for new product talent, regardless of whether you’re on a large team or a solo operator.

“You might be needing to do it all because you might be the only product manager in the room, but that doesn’t mean you have to do it alone or have to come up with all the ideas yourself,” Jessica says.

Building these characteristics of strong product thinking begins when an organization is hiring and integrating product roles, at the contributor, team, and leadership levels. Our experts had some final words of advice for initiating that cultural adaptation. 

• Build peer relationships. Jessica suggests that new product staff build connections individually with members of other teams, because “once you know your peer on a team in another department, then you’re able to have a solid plan for both teams’ purposes and how it can be executed.”
• Favor cross-functional service over allegiance. Organizations should delineate ownership of their platforms and products, but Amanda suggests that product teams should prioritize and facilitate genuine conversations among departments about audience needs, rather than engaging in territorial battles. To do this, she says, “Make it safe for everyone to center the audience and to be equally curious in challenging assumptions and asking questions, then dividing and conquering based on service.”
• Set expectations with leadership. Product managers are more than problem-solvers who implement rank-and-file tasks; they can be strategists who challenge organizational assumptions, Patrick says. Make sure that leadership understands the difference, which can make or break an organization’s ability to be accountable to its audiences and nimbly respond to their needs. This shouldn’t become a “side function that leadership cherry-picks from when convenient.”

“Product thinkers, if hired and trained well, will do magic in bringing people together. But they will also ask uncomfortable questions about why things are done certain ways, and they’ll have data to back up their challenges,” Patrick adds. “You can’t have one without the other.”