With a goal to improve the audience engagement and business model of Gazeta de Spania, an online portal in Spain published in Romanian, NewsSpectrum Fellow Cătălin Șerbu spent one month at the Sudvest.ro newsroom in Romania.
Based in Zaragoza, city with the second-largest Romanian community in Spain (around 35,000 people), Gazeta de Spania serves a small, specific audience while aiming to reach the wider Romanian-speaking population across Spain. Thus, the outlet needed to redefine its approach and mission, reach a new audience, and enhance community engagement, while also developing a membership-based business model.
Throughout October 2021, while working closely with the Sudvest.ro team in Romania, Cătălin was introduced to variety of new methods and tools to help grow and monetize Gazeta de Spania’s journalism. He learned about live broadcasting, cross-posting techniques, comment moderation, and content tagging; became familiar with Switcher Studio technology and the Steady system for developing a membership community.
Inspired by this cooperation, Gazeta de Spaina plans to expand its activities to organizing events for the Romanian community in Spain, to approach wider pool of advertisers and to advance its distribution list and newsletter database.