At The Athletic and The New York Times, Cabrera has championed data-driven reporting to ensure overlooked stories get the attention they deserve
When, in April 2019, the rapper Nipsey Hussle was found murdered in the parking lot of his store in South L.A., one newsroom on the other side of the country was not planning to cover the case past breaking news. But by the time his killer had been sentenced to 60 years to life in prison in 2023, The New York Times had dedicated 24 pieces to the case, including multiple videos and an investigation.
Claudio Cabrera, then search engine optimization (SEO) director at The Times, takes credit for that change of heart, which he advocated for, he said, after running an analysis of Google search trends. Now head of audience engagement at The Athletic -a sports-focused publication owned by The Times-, Cabrera has used tools like Google Trends to make the paper more receptive to readers’ interests. In a recent interview with City Newsroom, he shared that journalists should leverage the same data to advocate for stories their editors might initially overlook.
Born and raised in Upper Manhattan, Cabrera spent his earlier career years as a reporter at The New York Amsterdam News. Later, he moved to CBS New York and then The Times before leading a team of 35 at The Athletic. His expertise extends beyond editorial strategy. During his years at The Times, he helped redefine audience growth, the structure of headlines, and the visibility of articles.
At The Athletic, his team shapes the company’s website, optimizes search strategies, and crafts notifications to boost audience attention and engagement. He thinks that platforms like Twitter and Facebook are no longer reliable distribution tools of online journalism. Instead, The Athletic has strategically moved to WhatsApp and Reddit as alternatives, in order to build deeper and sustainable audience relationships. “Social media hasn’t been this huge driver, like it was five, six years ago”, he said. “You need to find a way to replace it.”
Cabrera’s work represents a shift that is making The Times “an audience-focused paper,” putting more effort and expertise into directing coverage according to subscribers’ needs. He used Brexit as an example. No one thought an explainer piece was necessary in a newsroom constantly covering the latest political stories. But Google Trends was offering a different picture, pushing editors to change course and offer readers what they were looking for. Brexit explainers like these from 2018 and 2021 were a huge success among subscribers, Cabrera said.
This case revealed that journalists don’t always have a pulse on what their readership does or does not know, or care to see.
As a Black journalist in predominantly white newsrooms, Cabrera had to advocate for coverage on communities of color. “Within the New York Times newsroom,” he said, “when you think about Black music celebrities, it really just comes down to like Jay Z and Beyoncé.” That’s what happened with the Hussle murder story. “When I pitched it, they were like, ‘no one knows who this guy is.’” He had to prove to his colleagues that the paper would be worse off without that coverage. “I had to really lean into the traffic angle here, even though I didn’t want to”. He said he showed that there were “85 million people” searching for information on the story and told his colleagues “you guys will look culturally irrelevant if you do not write it.”
In 2021, Cabrera spent 21 weeks at Columbia Journalism School as a Sulzberger Fellow, studying coverage of important figures for communities of color and how to highlight its relevance at institutions like The Times. The Hussle case, he said, was part of the inspiration for his project. “Forget traffic, forget everything. Someone that was culturally important to the black community died in a parking lot where he had a store and was murdered, and people are up in arms about it. It’s a story, end of discussion.”
Still, Cabrera is aware that, no matter the quality of the story, the way it is conceptualized, published and marketed makes a difference. That is what audience engagement work is all about. The trick is thinking about the story you cover like a reader would, “basically answering a question that people are searching for,” he said.
Jennifer Zhou is a Master's student at Columbia University's Journalism school with a background in journalism, finance, and media. She previously worked at UBS in Wealth Management and as a reporter for Hong Kong's largest broadcast TV channel. Passionate about business and economic journalism, she is currently covering transportation issues in NYC.
Cate Zanardi is a local politics reporter for City Newsroom. Previously, they covered environmental risk, housing, and activism for radio and print. They hail from Bologna, Italy.
Kristi Yang is a public health reporter for City Newsroom. She was born in Queens and raised in New Jersey, Beijing and Singapore. Her reporting focuses on the intersection of health and culture, driven by a passion to foster greater understanding across communities.
