Ryan Restivo is a newsroom product leader and the founder of YESEO, an audience optimization tool designed to help journalists apply SEO best practices without disrupting editorial workflows. He currently serves as director of product at Newsday Media Group, where he works across mobile, over-the-top streaming platforms (OTT), which deliver video content directly over the internet, and data-driven newsroom products. He previously held roles spanning editorial development, app redesign and newsroom training.

Restivo built YESEO during his 2022–23 fellowship at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, affiliated with the University of Missouri, following extensive conversations with editors about discoverability, workflow friction and the limits of traditional SEO tools. The Slack-based app has since been adopted by many newsrooms and used on multiple stories. His career sits at the intersection of journalism, product and emerging technology, with a focus on practical tools that meet journalists where they already work.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What newsroom problem were you trying to solve when you built YESEO, and how did conversations with editors shape the product differently than if it were built purely as an SEO tool?

The spark came from a real newsroom problem. I’d heard about the Reynolds Journalism Institute fellowship and I started a document with a bunch of possible ideas, but none of them became the project.

A few weeks later, an editor came to me with a question: Why wasn’t a local story showing up on the first page of Google? We put everything into a Google Sheet, headlines, descriptions, what competitors were doing, and it became obvious pretty quickly: the key names in the story weren’t showing up in our headline or description. That gap was the “aha” moment.

That’s what pushed me toward the idea of building something that could help more than just one newsroom. And I’d built a Slack tool years earlier when I was learning to code, so those two things — a real editorial problem and my comfort with Slack — came together in the earliest version of YESEO.

Editors shaped the product throughout. During the fellowship I did a lot of interviews and qualitative research. Surveys are great, but conversations help you get to the “why” and see what people actually need.

One feature that’s still in YESEO today came directly from an editor interview: when you paste a link, the app can break down whether the keyword you care about is actually in your headline or description, and how often it appears. I built the first version quickly, then refined it because the counting was imperfect at first.

And then in late 2022, when large language models started to take off, it changed how I thought about the tool. I realized I could use what users were already entering to generate suggestions, like multiple headline options, without pretending the tool could be “the expert” for every market. I prefer giving people options they can adapt with their own judgment.

Many newsrooms are debating whether audience tools belong in the CMS, Slack, or standalone apps. From your experience, where does YESEO fit best — and why?

I built it for Slack because, right now, that’s where work gets done. My approach has always been accessible, practical innovation, something people can easily install and reach in the middle of their workflow.

A big challenge early on was making it installable across multiple Slack workspaces, so different newsrooms could use the same app. Since March 2023, there have been more than 650 installs, and the tool has been used on more than 18,000 stories. My biggest worry at launch wasn’t “Will this be perfect?” It was, “Will anyone even find it?” People found it and used it.

That said, tools can belong in different places. It depends on what’s most convenient for someone to do their job. For some teams, a CMS integration might make sense. For others, a standalone web tool might.

I’ve also heard from a few people that YESEO inspired them to build tools inside their own newsroom, which is one of the best outcomes you can hope for.

Would you expand YESEO beyond Slack — to web, Outlook, Google Docs, or Teams?

When I first released it, the question I got most was, “Where’s your Teams app?” But then I’d ask people what they thought of Teams — and a lot of them told me they hate it. That didn’t feel like a great direction to chase.

More recently, I’ve had a chance to double down through a JournalismAI Innovation Challenge partnership with The Oglethorpe Echo at the University of Georgia. We’ve been building features that help them understand sources better. A web platform could eventually help with some of that work, but it’s a massive undertaking. It’s something I might explore, but realistically that’s more of a “next year” project.

With Google search evolving and AI summaries changing referral patterns, what SEO practices still matter for journalists in 2025 — and what should they stop worrying about?

The basics still matter, all of them. Every signal we’ve seen so far suggests you should keep doing solid SEO best practices: write strong headlines, use accurate keywords, and make sure the story delivers on what it promises. Write good stories that serve users and create an experience that helps people.

It sounds simple, but some newsrooms are still catching up to the fundamentals. And even as search changes, the tried-and-true practices are still what will make you successful.

For journalists or product-minded reporters who want to work in newsroom innovation roles, what skills or experiences matter most in 2025, and what’s the best way to start carving out that path inside a newsroom?

One of the most important skills is the ability to learn quickly. When you step into a professional environment, especially right out of undergrad, you suddenly have a lot of systems to learn on day one. Being able to pick up new tools and workflows is what helps you grow.

I didn’t build a tool for a newsroom until less than 10 years ago. Early in my career, I took jobs that weren’t a perfect match, like testing fantasy games, because I needed a foot in the door. But those skills helped over time. Everything builds on itself.

The news product world can feel big, but it’s also small. People know each other. It can be hard to break in, so it helps to look for opportunities in news or adjacent to news that let you build experience. Over time, the skills compound and make you more unique.

And people approach news products differently. My approach is reflected in what I built with YESEO, but if you put the same tool in someone else’s hands, it might go in a totally different direction. That’s why shaping your worldview as you build skills is important.

For students graduating soon who feel like they have a lot of skills but don’t know how to package them, what’s your advice?

I graduated in 2008, which wasn’t a great time. I took the first job I could find. Sometimes getting a foot in the door is harder than people think — and just getting in matters.

As you evaluate opportunities, I’d focus on values: What’s important to you now and long term? Compare your values to the roles out there. That can give you clarity on what you’ll actually be good at, and which jobs might look interesting but don’t match what you want.

That kind of clarity takes time. It’s a process.

For Restivo, that same mindset — learning, adapting, and meeting journalists where they already worked — is what shaped YESEO and continues to guide how he builds tools for the newsroom.