Nexstar's The Hill Continues to Grow on New Platforms and Networks

In April The Hill debuted a new onehour nightly program titled The Hill on NewsNation the fastest growing news network on cable And The Hill print edition long the authoritative source for law and policy makers on Capitol Hill was reimagined with a bold magazinestyle design earlier this yearJoe Ruffolo who became Senior Vice President and General Manager for both The Hill and NewsNation Digital a month earlier is thinking of other ways to deliver news to consumers that they can find with their thumbs that is to say on their smartphones quotI think it39s a natural evolution to continue to build out all the ways that our users can interact with what The Hill doesquot Ruffolo pictured says quotMost of our users are increasingly experiencing us on mobile devices not that it should be a surprise so we39re continuing to look at ways that we can elevate the contentquotThat may mean airing Rising The Hill39s opinion show with Robby Soave and Briahna Joy Gray or What America39s Thinking a show exploring key trends and public opinion hosted by Julia Manchester and Rafael Bernal Or it can mean creating shorter bitesized reporting easily consumable on a smartphoneStaff from The Hill including Editor in Chief Bob Cusack Congressional Staff Writer Mychael Schnell and Race ampamp Politics Reporter Cheyanne Daniels are available for interviews on the video platforms but so are reporters from the 200 owned or partner local stations that are part of Nexstar Media Group which owns both The Hill and NewsNationquotNexstar is the largest local station owner in the country so it39s a very powerful news gathering operationquot Ruffolo says quotThis gives us a huge opportunity to not just cover the same old stories but to be thinking about it from a very local perspective as well as how we can amplify all those different perspectives and stories across the country and really deliver the news that people want and needquotIn addition to The Hill39s politics and policy coverage quotthere are economic issues or health issues or education issues and different things that are happening across the country that we want to continue to elevate and put a light on to inform our audiencequot he explainsSince it launched in March 2021 NewsNation has grown its audience significantly over 100 percent in just the past year a time when established cable news networks like Fox News and CNN have declinedIt got a further boost when the nightly The Hill program premiered on NewsNation on April 24 growing viewers by 59 percent yearoveryear for the 5 pm hourquotThat39s been a huge success for us so far and something we39ll continue to build on as we go forwardquot Ruffolo says of the programRuffolo has spent most of his career in the digital space since its infancy starting at CNN and CNN Interactive as it was called at the time Later he developed digital news at AOL Nickelodeon ABC News and most recently OceanXquotNews is definitely in my heart as my No 1 passionquot he said quotSo it was a great honor and an exciting opportunity to go back into news and to help develop and continue to grow such an enormous political brandquotAnd NewsNation he adds allows him to be quotreally thinking about what news networks can be in the future really looking at it from the perspective of news for all America With both The Hill and NewsNation our goal is to be nonpartisan and to really cover news from a different perspective and to really bring all the Nexstar assets into playquotRemaining nonpartisan in a partisan time is always a challenge Ruffolo says quotBut I think if you really focus on what the news is and what the story is and stay true to our clear mandate as an organization with such a fantastic group of journalists and people across the company you39re not always going to be perfect on these types of things but we tryquotThe most important thing is making sure the news is right he assertsquotWe can figure out how to use this technology in different ways or make that come to life for peoplequot Ruffolo concludes quotBut we just really need to stick to what we do best which is news politics and policy And then we can figure out all the different avenues to make that come to life for people across the country and in every community we servequotClick the social buttons to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillageorgMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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Nexstar's The Hill Continues to Grow on New Platforms and Networks

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