The DTH management team has effectively expanded the DTH brand into the digital realm. However, by focusing on the students in the realm where they live — online — we can extend our engagement and outreach.
Digital Engagement
While the expansion of our online desk has brought in more clicks and, thus, advertising revenue, the DTH has room to grow financially. By expanding these blogs and creative content, like podcasts, into a BuzzFeed-style website as a subset of the DTH brand, we will be able to expand coverage to meet students’ changing needs and set ourselves up to expand advertising revenues through appropriate native advertising and sponsored content.
Additionally, the DTH will benefit from an increased focus on multimedia packages and projects for enterprise stories and special projects. Not only should we utilize our existing longform story template to include short videos, photo galleries and visuals within the story, we need to follow outlets like The Washington Post and create an email app to return readers to unfinished stories.
Partnerships
We need to reach out to both student and professional news organizations to learn how to work with other professionals. The DTH has partnered with The News & Observer in legal battles with the University and public records, but for the most part, our partnership ends there. Further, the DTH does not currently work with student media. This should be remedied.
We can learn from broadcast outlets like Carolina Week how to grow our video staff, from cultural outlets like Black Ink and the Siren magazines how to produce respectful coverage, and more. In return, we can offer knowledge gained from a legacy newspaper.
Outreach
The UNC community needs to know, above all, we’re here to serve them — a message that’s been lost for many students.
