#1 The User Needs Expert: Are You Creating Content Your Audience Actually Needs? Lars Jensen at Berlingske Media

Are you creating content your audience actually needs? Lars K Jensen reveals the power of the User Needs Model in journalism and why understanding your audience is the key to engagement, trust, and business success.Lars is the Audience Lead at Berlingske Media and an expert in audience insights, newsroom transformation, and digital strategy. With years of experience in journalism and publishing, he has helped redefine how media organizations approach content by focusing on what their readers truly value.In this conversation, Lars and Nils discuss why newsroom culture is more important than strategy, how data quality impacts content decisions, and his experience implementing the user needs model at Berlingske Media. They also dive into the delicate balance between automation and human intuition in audience analytics, his previous life as a DJ, and what the future holds for user needs in Journalism and news.Chapters:00:00 Intro03:06 Why Lars Became Interested in User Needs05:59 The User Needs Model Explained08:52 How Newsrooms Can Implement Audience-First Journalism11:39 Why Culture, Not Just Strategy, Drives Change14:00 How Tagging and Data Insights Shape Journalism17:01 Engaging Journalists Without Overwhelming Them20:09 Measuring Success with Audience-Centric Metrics22:59 Why User Needs Bridge the Gap Between Business & Journalism25:39 Creating Internal Hype & Adoption for New Models28:30 How Data Quality & Tagging Define Reliable Insights38:22 The Role of Trust & Community in Modern Journalism41:13 The Balance of Automation & Human Judgment48:48 Demystifying User Needs & Making It Actionable59:34 The DJ Analogy: How Journalism Is Like Reading the Crowd01:06:07 The Future of Community Engagement in NewsFollow Lars Jensen:Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larskjensen/Blog: https://productsinpublishing.com/Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/larskjensen.dk