The Audience Help Desk

Expert guidance for understanding and serving your audiences better.

The Audience Help Desk is a confidential advisory service for anyone in the information space—newsrooms, content creators, civic organizations, and technologists.

Led by Madison Karas and Patrick Boehler, the Help Desk provides accessible audience strategy support to those looking to deliver serviceable, relevant information to people. Our goal is to help you move beyond just reaching audiences to truly understanding what they need.

Think of us like your on-demand personal trainer, ready for any moment you need us to step in during your gym routine — whether it's adjusting your form, learning a new piece of equipment, or designing a new workout program entirely.

We're here for your toughest questions, no matter how tactical and existential they are: tweaking how you ask for audience input or wondering if you should throw out an old strategy altogether. Through one-hour brainstorming sessions, we can help you figure out things like:

Are people using your information?
What impact are you having?
How can you serve them better?
What do you need to be more effective?
How should you communicate your methods?

We'll do this together through methods like:

📊 Survey design and research planning
🎯 Audience-first strategy development
💡 Jobs-to-be-Done frameworks
👤 Stakeholder alignment
⚙️ Tool selection guidance

We support anyone pursuing the unburdened distribution of new information that improves people's ability to navigate their lives better. If you're an executive wondering where to prioritize, an audience researcher struggling to get buy-in, a content creator struggling to get started, or an established editor asking existential questions about why you're doing all this, this is for you.

Starting October 2025
Free, all time zones

Interested? Email us at helpdesk@gazzetta.xyz.