How Gazeta.pl embedded Citizen Agenda into election coverage?
In October 2023 Poland held a parliamentary election and after 8 years of populism rule chose a new government that wanted to restore democratic rules in the country. It was the main political event in many years for the Central European country and also a vast challenge for the media. Gazeta.pl - one of the biggest vertical portals adopted Citizen Agenda in their coverage, organised debates and included influencers to produce stories based on their research. How did they do?
We talk to Rafal Madajczak – editor-in-chief of Gazeta.pl, one of the leading Polish news portals. A former creative director with multiple Polish news outlets. Thinks media have to constantly reinvent themselves or perish
Read the full summary below:
Jakub: Hello and welcome to another sort of mixer, episode. Today my guest is Rafal Madajczak – editor-in-chief of Gazeta.pl. Hello Rafal. You are of course leading the best and almost the biggest media outlet in Poland. Can you tell us something about it?
Rafal: I don't know other sentences besides that about because of the power, but I try. We are the fourth biggest news, portal in Poland. Our audience, is approximately 15 million, people. And we cover politics, sports and gossip, of course, like everyone in Poland.
Jakub: Okay. So, in October last year, we had parliamentary elections in Poland, which is very important. And, many people around the world are describing them, because of the trouble with populism in many countries, whether in Europe or elsewhere. And I know that, well, you are editor in chief for almost two years now.
Rafal: It has been two years now.
Jakub: Yeah. So in our early talks, I remember that you've decided that you will try to do something around the elections, you know, editorially speaking and so on. And you did. Exactly what was that like? And, later on, we'll discuss the results or your happiness around it.
Rafal: So, we had an ambition. I have an ambition as, an editor-in-chief. To do things differently and to push the boundaries of our news formats. This is the ambition. So, approaching the elections, we wanted to try something different and to try something new. We are, as I said, the fourth biggest news portal. So we have to do things differently to be, to be noticed. Lucky us. Jakub approached us with, a workshop about best practices around elections, from mainly the United States. And he and you showed us, the citizen agenda approach. Citizen agenda is, in my simple words, an approach in which you survey your, readers and society about, the main problems and issues, for them, for them and try to cover them more and six solutions, for the problems, which are important for our readers. It sounds very simple, but. Every media consumer knows that it's, very hard to, see in nowadays media. In Poland. The big issues are almost non-existent in our news media cycle. Our typical news media cycle is, about, who's after who, who destroyed who on national television, or, if we are lucky, who illegally spends public funds. The big issues like mental health, education, defence or climate crisis are almost non-existent. So, so the citizen agenda was very, attractive to us, and we decided to pursue this. This is this project. So we decided to conduct the vast, vast research. First survey. On the on the, on the public about the real problems of Poland. And we of course did. It was the most expensive research in history because of that. But because of that. Well.
Jakub: I'm happy I suggested it.
Rafal: But not so happy that we didn't spend the money with, your outlet. So. And to put a perspective to put this, all of this in perspective for listeners from around the world, so to say, if I say that we had a larger budget for the election, the larger in power in Poland means, approximately $25,000. So, we bought the research for approximately $10,000, and the rest was spent on, communication debate about the survey and the influencers. But, we will talk about this. Yeah.
Jakub: So, it was called the Real Problems of Polish People. That will be my way of translation. The problem is, I remember correctly, and you've released it. How? Remind me how many months before the actual elections?
Rafal: The elections were, in October. We released it, I guess, between May and June. Yeah. I don't know the exact date, but.
Jakub: And you had they're like. Yeah. So basically like 3 or 4 months before it and you've had they're different. Well, let's say the general summary of the problems. And then it was break bread break broke down, into let's say different target groups with young people, you know. Yeah, mid-level people and so on. Was there anything that kind of surprised you and the results of it were there's or was it more the effect that, okay, now you the research which was proving that what we kind of think like security, you know, inflation and so on, those were the issues which were showing up on top of the list there? Which kind of surprised you?
Rafal: The most surprising thing was that, issues that were, dominant in, in our headlines, our when I say our I mean, all. Mainstream media. News media in Poland. That, that the headlines which were. Which were dominant in this in the mainstream and were not so important. Sorry. Not so important, for our readers. The dominant things. Not so important. Were this, all the coverage about, political infighting between the parties, who, who said what? Who as I said, destroyed someone on television and so on and so on and so on. And. The other surprise was that the main problems. But we didn't cover the main problems as much as our readers, demanded, so to say. So, in our research, the top problem was the economy. The main inflation. security, military school security education health services and mental health. So what it did for us, besides, larger spending. It did us good. Yes, several good things. Several good things. And for our for our readers, also for our readers, every five. Every five of the problems mentioned security, inflation and so on and so on. Received larger, coverage, in just about every, every issue. Every issue had its section, which was, placed on top of our website. So, every, every issue had, several, several. Solutions. Solution journalism pieces. Who are the experts? Experts? Interviews with experts about the issues and so on and so on. It's not that typical for mainstream Polish media. So, okay.
Jakub: Was and so I know, maybe I know and I think this attempts to, deserves certain recognition. That's why I'm happy that you're here. And it's, I think, a very important first step because also, Poland will have another one, two free elections in the next 12 months. So, as the whole world as we know, is that what 54% of the global population, is voting this year? On the. So it's going to be a really interesting year. But, okay. So we have the research and then you had the debate, which was like, online. Yes. And if I'm correct.
Rafal: Now, the debate was, this is, this is my Covid, dictionary. And, the debate stage was stationary. It was real. We, we, we hired a team. We rented a normal TV studio, and invited, politicians from the main parties, to discuss the real problems of, the Polish, people.
Jakub: Okay. And how did you go? You're happy about it or.
Rafal: It went well, but if I had to, if I had the opportunity to, make the debate today. No, we would give the politicians more time for their. Speeches. Okay. Because we, we we took. The television debate format. And. Copied it one on one. So the time for each politician was, each politician was, I see today too short to cover the, the, the issues, properly. However, it was still something different from the debate that main, national television, conducted.
Jakub: Okay. And finally, that was also very intriguing YouTube influencers. And what was their role in the whole distribution process?
Rafal: They were smart influencers. So we didn't want them just to, forward our news coverage or our pieces. We chose to work with content creators and, asked them to, cover, the campaign while one of the influencers was, Kasha Condor. She's a popular science, creator. She has, about 300,000, subscribers on YouTube, and the others were, a political commentary duo, Arab. News. Even they don't know what, our being is. You know what I mean. So. So that's that's the name. And, with, Custer Gander, the popular science creator, we, briefed her on the research. She got the research and we asked her to, choose, five topics, and do, her own, thesis, with, an emphasis on solutions. So she did, pieces on mental health, I guess, education, health and so on. We were very, very, happy with the results. She did, I guess. The 200 or 300 thousand views on our site with the. Explanatory solution, seeking pieces. So.
Jakub: Yeah. So in the end, like, what would you do differently right now if you, if you had the chance besides increasing the budget?
Rafal: I would do that. I would do more besides the budget with the same budget we would do more. We, I guess that's my take on our case. I hope someone, someone will use it and learn from our, mistakes on the site. I think we could. And we should have, communicated it, more. I think we should, have, pushed our and citizens' agenda more in our daily interviews with the politicians, too. I would, I'd like to do more layout changes. We had more layout changes, layout changes in the table, which, which would, underline that we are pushing the citizen's agenda, not ours. Not a political agenda. Agenda, but citizens agenda.
Jakub: Okay.
Rafal: So, to summarize it, I'd say more communication and more, bravery to push our. Agenda on approach.
Jakub: Okay. Do you have any plans for the upcoming elections? I mean, we have the card elections for national media, which is the local elections in many cities, so many different to thousands of candidates. And then we have the EU elections, which historically, I think this year might be very important or much more important than they have been in the previous years in Poland. But and then the easy ones, which is the presidential next year, but just.
Rafal: The main, the main event would be, of course, the presidential elections. The local ones are very hard to cover for, media outlets with our budget. I'd say so. We are not very ambitious about it. The new elections would be, a challenge and are a challenge because. My take is that the. The meaning of this election for readers and politicians is that I'm lost. I'm lost for words. It would be. It would be just a follow-up to the national elections. So, with the dynamics of, probably, politics in Poland now, the result is, obvious, now, the ruling party and the ruling coalition world, would win by a large margin. And and with it would be for, many readers and politicians, just. Real-time, a survey of their, of their real-time poll after just, six months of, a new coalition. Every, every, every time something like that occurs, that is a very close election. There is no change in the polls and the score, in the overall score. But I'd lie if I said something like that the European topics and issues are very popular with, popular in Poland for, for the, for the readers. We are very. We would be very surprised if the election and this is a problem for, for, for other European countries, if we would be very surprised if the elections, draw. Much attention this year. I know they are important. I know populists are raising their hats in Europe, and we will cover that with all the means we have, but we are not preparing anything. Blockbuster is this year. The main event for us is under presidential elections in the US this fight.
Jakub: Cool. Thank you very much for joining me today and explaining all this in detail. It was a pleasure to have you.
Rafal: Same. Likewise. And we need a budget. And we need a budget and larger budgets.