Hi, I'm Sophie Ho  👋

I’m a journalist focused on helping newsrooms and organizations grow their audiences through data insights and product strategy. I’m currently the Director of Product and Insights at News Revenue Hub, where I oversee the design and strategy of technology and data products that help rebuild the news industry to be more equitable and community-driven.

I’m driven by two missions — increasing access to high-quality news for everyone, and helping publishers become sustainable through understanding their readers’ needs. I’ve worked on these challenges in different capacities over the years, leveraging my skills in audience development, data analytics, product strategy, and user experience research in both newsrooms and product tech companies.

What I’ve done:

Grown audience and traffic for The Washington Post, first as an engagement editor and later as the News Analytics editor.

Developed content and product quality principles at Google to deepen reach with news-seeking readers across key markets on a new project to surface and rank user-generated content in Google Search.

Led strategy for newsroom products, building and delivering tools to help journalists understand their audiences and subscribers.

Spearheaded editorial and SEO strategies to increase reach of breaking news coverage to reach new audiences.

Experimented with new media and formats, such as an artificial intelligence bot that wrote hundreds of stories and a messenger bot that asked how readers felt about the 2016 election (that one got an award!).

Conducted comprehensive content research, reading and analyzing 89,052 Washington Post stories to recommend strategies to engage with new audiences.

What I’m looking to do more of:

Community projects with the wider journalism community, especially with people of color and women.Some projects I’ve done with the journalism community include collaborating with 100+ journalists to build the DEI Coalition For Anti-Racist, Equitable, And Just Newsrooms, a digital community for journalists who want to work toward a better future. As one of four committee leads, I facilitated a group who crafted our community’s agreements and effective response framework.

Teaching and speaking on my favorite subjects. Past talks I’ve done include: How to make spaces you're in more inclusive, how to use metrics to know your audience and sell subscriptions, why data skills are fundamental to creating equity in newsrooms, how to track team decisions, and thoughtful questions to ask in A/B testing.

Outside of work, you’ll find me:

🏺  Making pottery (still very much a beginner)

📚  Reading science fiction and fantasy

🍜  Cooking Vietnamese food

🎧  Curating playlists on Spotify, such as “songs I think I know the words to but actually do not”

To reach me:

Message me on Linkedin. I'm also on Twitter.