It comes as senior vice president Jeff Johnson said the group is targeting 100,000 more paid digital-only subscriptions this year after climbing by the same amount to reach 300,000 in 2021.
Tim O’Rourke has been appointed to head up the new development hub, known as DevHub. It will be based in San Francisco, but the team will be geographically dispersed and hiring is not expected to be completed till the summer.
DevHub’s objective is to improve Hearst’s provision of data journalism and provide all of its newspapers with tools developed by the DevHub team.
O’Rourke told Poynter that pilot projects have included an interactive wildfire tracker, an interactive digital guide to Texas floods, and a guide to San Francisco’s restaurant scene.
Whilst conceding that circulation and print advertising was falling, Johnson told Poynter that “collectively, our Hearst newsrooms are the same size as five years ago, although with much different digital skill sets.”
Hearst’s success, however, has possibly been bolstered by the wealth of its parent company and its diverse investment portfolio. Nevertheless, “we don’t get a hall pass on performance,” Johnson said. Hearst’s papers are expected to make a profit and have targets to meet.
Johnson spoke to Poynter about its pooled statewide news operation in Connecticut, whose website, CTInsider.com, is fed content by eight dailies and 14 weeklies owned by Hearst.
“That’s a 180-plus newsroom,” Johnson said, which makes it significantly larger than The Hartford Courant, one of the state’s most established newspapers.
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