Program

Mastering qualitative audience insights with Ariel Zirulnick

A free virtual series from the Lenfest Audience Community

January 21, 2026

Understanding your audience is essential to creating content and editorial products that truly resonate. Audience and Product Strategist Ariel Zirulnick has spent years exploring how different newsrooms approach their audiences and has developed a structured, actionable approach to helping newsrooms collect qualitative audience insights that can strengthen their audience strategies. 

In this series, Ariel will help participants understand and serve their audience by teaching you how to conduct audience research, extract the most actionable insights, build organizational buy-in, and measure the impact of applying the insights.

Series overview

Thursday, Feb. 19: Designing actionable research

2 p.m. EST/ 1 p.m. CST / Noon MST / 11 a.m. PST

• Setting research goals, aligning stakeholders, and designing research

Register for session one Register for session one

Thursday, March 26: Extracting and communicating research insights

2 p.m. ET/ 1 p.m. CST / Noon MST / 11 a.m. PST

• Separating the signal from the noise when you’re done with the research

Register for session two Register for session two

Thursday, April 23: Building buy-in and understanding of audience insights

2 p.m. EST/ 1 p.m. CST / Noon MST / 11 a.m. PST

• Tips on getting all levels of your newsroom bought in on utilizing the research insights and building their understanding so they can apply them independently

Register for session three Register for session three

May – TBA: Evaluating the impact of research

• How to track the impact of audience insights on organizational understanding of your audiences and performance of your products