Reaching Younger, More Diverse Audiences As A Legacy News Org
6:00PM Aug 26, 2023
Speakers:
Keywords:
audience
readers
platform
young
newsroom
instagram
important
content
story
news
people
journalists
create
thinking
brand
social
lean
read
text
gen z
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Hey guys we'll get started shortly in like a minute let a few more people walk in. Wow, what a good crowd for a Saturday for the last day. Give yourselves a round of applause yay. You made it?
Update on me right now.
Okay. Is 230 And I have a train to catch later. So kick off on time. Yeah, so my name is Edmund Delos and we're presenting with everybody I'm going to do introductions formally. But yeah, welcome to our panel. It's reaching younger, more diverse audiences as legacy news organization. resources and tips that kind of walk you through cultivating a relationship with the with this audience or with these audiences throughout all the steps, all the steps of a newsroom. So starting from hiring, ending off platform. So yeah, we are going to start with some introductions. Like I said, Hi, my name is Edward. You can call me Edie though. I do audience strategy at the Associated Press, which is as you know, a legacy news organization that's been around for quite a while. And then I'll let everybody else introduce themselves.
Hello, I'm Narada Perez. I'm based in Dallas and I'm an audience engagement editor at Slate Magazine.
How Hi, I'm Valerie Sullivan and I am an audience strategist at USA Today. Before I was there, I worked at the Dallas Morning News and The Cincinnati Enquirer as a digital news producer and on the audience teams there.
Hello, I'm Sariah here. I am a visuals producer at the Wall Street Journal. I mostly make Instagram posts so I really call myself the Instagram editor there. But yeah, I've been doing social there for about four years.
Awesome. So yeah, the first portion I'm actually going to kick over to Norda. And yeah, it's about hiring and people.
Thank you. Hi, everyone. So as I mentioned in the panel description, we say that reaching younger and more diverse audiences is something that goes beyond any single part of the newsroom. So during the presentation, we'll talk about the different areas of the newsroom where we work towards cultivating a diversity of reader needs to be done. And then a lot of what we'll be discussing today really starts here with hiring and managing as a lot of you know, already, you can't have authentic strategy and content targeted at these audiences. If those voices aren't valued in your newsroom, from the very beginning in the get go. So culture eats strategy for breakfast is a really famous quote from legendary management consultant and writer Peter Drucker. This implies that the culture of your company always determines success regardless of how effective your strategy may be. Is your culture inclusive where you're working out right now with the people of color and Gen Z employees in your newsroom say so. If I asked them right now, these are questions if you're not already asking yourself should be. So what does this all mean? For you? You have to lay out a path for success with younger journalists on your team and within your newsrooms. The culture you cultivate at your organization matters again from the very beginning and from the get go young people and many journalists of colors have to see clear pathways for development and feel comfortable with your culture to pitch ideas and stories that are deep, deeply personal to their identities. And they have to be trained thoughtfully by someone experienced before they can start excelling. So how do you do this? You have to offer stretch opportunities and ownership of projects and initiatives. Again, from the very beginning, having tangible experience it's really important for young journalists to learn and feel empowered. It's, you know, as a young journalist, it's very important to feel like you have ownership and and have something tangible you can show for it. So this is an excerpt from AP NORC. And I'm not going to read the whole thing to you. But to summarize, it says that many communities of color and communities of immigrants don't believe that traditional coverage of their communities have accurately represent their experiences and livelihoods. Was I'm sure it's not a surprise to us. And here this is a Nieman lab article, where Angel Rodriguez of the LA Times which some of you must know, said that part of what makes their loss which is a new standalone vertical from The Times aimed at young US consumers. What sets it apart from from other verticals is that the team is building it with its intended audience, not just for them. So again, what does this mean for you? Let your target audiences tell their own stories. What stories are bubbling up for Gen Z and for communities of color in your area? Well trained people who are comfortable there will be better equipped to find the answers in the stories. This is demos which I just mentioned, and it's really interesting. It's a really interesting example of these practices happening now within our industry. Now I'm going to hand it back over to Ed, I believe.
Yeah, awesome. Yeah. It's very important to have all of that be based with the people like already in your newsroom or that you're looking for. Yeah, I'm very passionate about that. And I have lots to say about it as well. But then, so the rest of it will kind of keep going through like this sort of like timeline of content like at your news organization. And the second part really is around the content in and of itself, the reporting and the editing that many of you do at your organization's when we think about like young audiences, we typically like immediately start thinking about socials and the audience teams at your organization, which is very natural, but the truth is that, you know, these audiences are going to determine a lot of the futures of our industry and our newsrooms, and that sort of topic needs everyone's attention, not just the audience, journalists or editors in your newsroom or the people doing social media. So this one will kind of focus on what potentially reporters and editors could do on their level to start thinking about these readers and cultivating a relationship with them down the line. You know, I'm an audience journalist, we kind of all have that background. Some of us also have like a lot of text background too. But you know, after all, like the audience, journalists alike can only do so much when they optimize a story off platform, if it but if it doesn't start to optimize itself at the source with those reporters and editors thinking about the stories they're doing and how they're packaging them. You could really lose out on a future relationship with this audience and you know, a future relationship has your organization kind of keeps going. So I'll just be sharing some quick little things and then kind of go with more information, but this is an AP NRC study. You guys might have already been to like other really great panels or sessions. At the conference about this sort of topic, but you probably already know enjoyment of the news is falling by nearly most measures, the numbers of whether people enjoy the news and how they use it are lower than they were about seven years ago. And this is from a news report from Reuters and Oxford another study and it's saying that those who avoid the news are more likely to say they're interested in positive positive or solutions based journalism and less interested in the big stories of the day, which is really interesting to me. Yeah, so yeah, what can we do about that? I know we've heard a lot about this topic here, but like, what are we supposed to do about news avoidance and all of that, especially with younger people? So yeah, what does this mean for you? Don't be afraid to offer variety we've seen We've seen a lot of research and anecdotal anecdotal information saying that modern readers want content that goes beyond the basic news report, right? So when you think about the ways people consume information already young people consume information in their feeds in their, in their in their phones and stuff like that, this kind of becomes even more relevant because in terms of of content, right, think about like the ways I consume information on Instagram, it's variety. It's not the same and it's brief. And I intake a lots of different kinds of information like on my Instagram feed in a matter of like five minutes. So that kind of helps you kind of think about the same thing with with variety with like, on your sites. And just like what you promote Yeah, in terms of variety. Here's some things that like you can do as like a news gather offer solutions, hope and levity. That's something very like tangible that I think a lot of people can kind of put more attention on in their own newsrooms. Politics and conflict are crucial to our coverage. At the AP. But audiences want a little bit more than that. Right. Still on that one. So this is kind of a screenshot of a part of the coverage we did about the wildfires, wildfires in Maui recently. We covered the heck out of them, like really amazing reporting and photos and video came from just like the devastation that was happening in Maui, but something we kind of leaned into also was how people can help and respond to that emergency responsibly. So that's something we see a lot of interest in around like devastating natural disasters, we report the news, but people often want to know how they can help. That's such a common thing that people look for, especially young people. And again, this ties back to the statistics that we've shared that like people want solutions, we want something positive. They're a little bit tired of this or that just like news is terrible, right? So this is like one way, our philanthropy team just dive dove in to how people can help. Thought about the timing and the people that their people are donating to and it was a really thoughtful thing. It's not also it's also just not like a list of or something that a reporter has to think that is beneath them. This is a really interesting piece that explored how people can do this, what times they should do it and they spoke to their philanthropy experts on the best ways to help a community like Maui during that time and so that was like just one really easy way that we kind of like sought out a different variety of content around that news. And don't be afraid of story diversity people readers, young people especially can handle more than one topic at a time. cover your bases but don't be afraid to offer and show off the range. many news organizations like us cover the news and the politics and wars really well. But we also have an amazing entertainment team at the AP. And so what we've leaned into over the last year and a half as we've been really like developing the heck out of our digital strategy is to lean into those other desks that produce really light hearted or just like really interesting content on entertainment, and philanthropy and other stuff. That's not as, quote unquote, depressing. This is not a front page of a newspaper. You don't have to be afraid to give space to lighter topics on all your platforms, including your homepage. This is especially for those people that curate a homepage and a social feed or just like assignments to for editor for reporters. Kind of like go back like think about the algorithms and the social media that young people spend their time on. More people more and more young people are really accustomed to seeing something really tragic. Right in front of something that's really funny. That's just so normal because of the way we consume information now. So people like this are capable of it taking all of your content without a critique on your curation skills or your decisions. That's not really something like you have to be aware of people want more than just the basic bad news. Here's another piece of another AP NRC study in the hard news categories study found that young groups are really interested in things like national politics, government social issues. Like abortion, gun violence, gun policy, LGBTQ plus issues in crime and public safety. I thought that was really interesting. Like, sounds familiar, right. It sounds like things that most of you most of your newsrooms are probably already covering, which I think is a great thing. They aren't. That's key because doesn't mean necessarily have to start adding new beats like team culture, which is a thing that I saw somewhere. The key lies more in within the ways you present the content you're already producing. So you are all probably covering things like this, I assume. It's just the way that you're kind of covering those. It's just another piece before I go into more tips, but if newser, this is from a really cool Nieman lab article I read from 2020 from Nico Gendron is really good one. There's a handout in our in the q&a app. If you go to this session, there's a handout with like a lot of the studies that I'm referencing in there, but this is a great one. She was saying if news organizations can't commit to hiring young people to tell their own stories, they at least should productize content in a way that appeals to Gen Z, which I really thought was really interesting. Here's a meme
so I so I spend a lot of my time I'm a part of this generation. I spend a lot of my time like most of people in this generation steeped within apps that have engineers and designers really cool coding and experimenting and creating the smoothest, most engaging user experience right thing tick tock and Instagram. You go through its brief, you have a variety of content and it's like really tailored to my interests. And it's useful oftentimes it's like a tick tock that teaches me something or whatever it is. So think about that. And then think about giving the same person me imagine my generational sock when I open a new story and it's just a scroll like five minutes growth text. Why? You know, if you think about it like that, why would someone like me? Why would a young reader trying to get the news be engaged by that, if you think about the ways they're accustomed to, in taking information and tic TOCs, or an Instagram, which has text on it, it's so different than the way we're giving it to them. It's just text with a headline and maybe a photo or two. So yeah, that's kind of what this meme the purpose of is. I love it. That it's like the I think the context is like someone sent them a paragraph. And this was a response so again, what does this mean for you? What I really like would like more people to think about more news producers at the source of that content is to think of it as a product right? So kind of like what Nico was saying, create a really strong user experience. You should not shy away from thinking about your stories in that way. What is your story look like? What does it feel like when a person is scrolling through it on your phone? How much time will it take is a really important one again, like how do people consume information? It's very brief. And then also think about the value your story is kind of adding to someone's life. I don't think we should shy away from that. There's value in just sharing the news and investigations, right, but just like lean into that sort of thinking, is it improving the reader? Is it improving their life? Is it bringing them joy? Is it teaching them something I should know? And then kind of like think about the way you're writing and format it to like answer these questions very clearly. And to make sure that these questions are answered somewhere in the story somehow. Yeah, this kind of is a cool thing I saw. It is a text service and a newsletter. Let's see it's a Gen Z. It's targeted at Gen Z, and it's run by them. I think it was created by someone who has Gen Z and it's a get to Gen Z targeted run news product. It's called the CRAM and it comes in a really short form Short but sweet, daily sort of newsletter and I think you can get it via text as well. So this is like the use and the sort of user experience of this is very clear. It's short. And what is the sort of takeaway is that I get to have my news in a text every morning at like 7am. And I'm pretty informed, right? That's kind of the use that's the that's them thinking about this as a product that a Jimsy person can kind of use really make their life better in some way. And just like to keep going on this, like what you can do, again, to kind of think of your journalism as a product is embrace alternative story formats. I know that's something I feel like we've been talking about for years, right and industry, but also embrace it and don't just embrace it like with projects or stuff like that, like think about it on your day to day stories. Think about the topics that we talked about that Gen Z and millennials are really interested in. It's stuff you're already covering, think about experimentation with how you are presenting those right. If we know that the current sort of like mode of a news app doesn't mean me or tick tock or Instagram then that should like tell you okay, how can we switch it up, especially with the politics and social issue stories? This right here on the side is a takeaways version of a really extensive like five story project he ran this year that I worked on about health disparities, health disparities, impacting black people in America at every stage of their life. It was called from birth to death. We have all five of those. It's a beautiful interactive experience on the site, but one thing we've leaned into is creating these takeaways for the whole thing. If a person doesn't have time to read all of it, we have this thing that tells them five really key takeaways that they can read if they don't want to go through all of that. And so that was like a relatively it was a very easy lift for that reporting team to do. It wasn't like anything crazy. And they were very excited to try to make a product that might be really useful for people who don't have time to read their intense and amazing investigation that they put together. So yeah, yeah, lay the value out. I think worst thing for me is like in this kind of does that right? It lays the value of here the takeaways really clearly and their worst thing for me is to read like five paragraphs of a story of an investigation, and I don't know what it's about or why I should be reading it. It sounds like it's like putting a burden on your creative narrative sort of skill, but it's not it's giving the reader has like a reason to keep going and it's creating a value in your work for them. I think that's going to be really key to the future of us is how are you a value to this generation, how are you helping them in their daily life and so laying that out really clearly somewhere in your story is going to be really important. And with that, we're gonna keep going down the sort of like pipeline. This one focuses on a little bit more off platform. So after the story is written, and I'm gonna kick it off to Mallory.
Thank you. Hi, everyone. So we're gonna get we're gonna go ahead and build off of what I was just talking about. Just keeping all of that in mind. It's important to keep how you are telling the stories that he was just talking about, to the audiences across them as you're considering stories for different platforms. Every audience is different. So it's crucial to meet them where they're at and engage with them in ways that makes sense to the platform, both through the stories that you're choosing, and then also the way that you're literally writing for and speaking to them on those platforms. When done right, you can make or you can create meaningful user experiences that keep readers coming back for more. So creating these relationships with your audiences really begins with understanding your brand and who your brand is at its core. everybody probably knows all four of these brands. I hope you do. They all have different personalities, traits, stylistic elements, and phrases that you probably attached to them. The these are all important qualities to consider when laying the foundation for your voice as they are all useful for brand recognition and relationship building across platforms. If you're not sure to where to begin, here's a few Here a few tips. You know, sort of like if you're not sure where to start, ask yourself Who is my brands? When I'm Who are you like who are you speaking to? What platforms are you on? And what people what do people associate with my brands? And how can that be applied to the approach on the platform that you're wanting to engage with somebody on because because all brands are or I was gonna say I thought I was going to a different slide. So I apologize for that anyway. If you're not somebody that holds the keys to a brand account, that's totally fine because this is also applicable to journalists who are interested in building their own brands as well, and audiences around their work. So Julia Munzo and an even predictions list actually touched on how journalists had found success with young with young gotten audiences simply by showing their personality outside of the platform or outside of the newsroom and pulling back the curtain on or to bring readers into their day. To day events. Emily Davies, a reporter at The Washington Post is doing really really well. She created an entire Instagram accounts to bring her readers into her day to day and show them the work that she that goes into her writing process. Behind the Scenes looks at her days and the strategies that she takes to kind of unwind. Ultimately, we're trying transparent and vulnerable, vulnerable with her readers. Doing something like this is not only helpful to great like build trust with the communities that you're serving, but it's also great for humanizing journalists at a time where trust is decreasing in journalists. This is a slide that I thought that was going to a couple of slides ago. It's so so so important to remember that audiences aren't one size fits all. What may be working for Emily on Instagram is may not work the same way on a completely different platform because readers on across all platforms are wildly different than one another. For example, you wouldn't use the same tone on LinkedIn that you would on Twitter because one of them is more casual than the other. And you also and you likely wouldn't use a headline written for SEO on Instagram when your goal on that platform is for more shares. So I've kind of given a little bit of example of that right here from from our folks that USA Today. When you're being intentional about these audiences, at your you seek out and how you're talking to them, the reward can oftentimes be far greater than posting the same story to all platforms in the same exact way. And this isn't just applicable to social media by the way this is uses when thinking about you know how you are approaching alerts and newsletters to the way that you're speaking to people online as well. So with so many outlets competing for readers, attention on social media platforms, and inboxes and lock screens and elsewhere. How you set yourself apart from your competitors is super crucial in the spaces. Something I personally found a lot of success with early in my career was creating an Instagram newsletter. I started at the Cincinnati Enquirer back in 2017 or 2018, and then brought it to Dallas when I started there in 2019. And it was very much it was very focused on that platform on Instagram. Like I was talking about earlier. It was it was very much a product in and of itself. I wrote cheeky headlines and copy that kind of, you know, really homed in on the audience on that platform. I wasn't afraid to use emojis and I posted it consistently on Fridays. It was also at a time when text over image was kind of taboo and newsroom still, but it also set us apart because it was something that readers weren't getting anywhere else. And I also realized that they were coming back for it every week. Another thing that readers really appreciate is when they hear from you. I love reading the comments. I know a lot of people say don't read the comments, but reading the comments is literally where you're getting where people are telling you you know what, what they're what they're really interested in, what they're not like what they're not super interested in, and they want to hear from you know, the brand account and from you personally. I always encourage people to engage with readers like you're their smart friend. Talk to them like a human don't talk to them like a robot. So this is kind of an example of what I did. This is from the same Instagram newsletter that I had showed previously had mentioned, you know, like we're going to be like, because we posted it so consistently on Fridays. I said, you know, hey, like we're going to be taking a break for elections. You know, thank you so much for understanding and reading and we got comments like this, like thank you for that announcement always look forward to reading so people are coming back and they're really excited about these things and they just love to hear from you. So those interactions are also very, very important for building trust and auditing how you are approaching that platform and how you are talking to those people. And then it's also important to bake accessibility features into your approach that you can be a smart friend for all of your readers. The Bureau, the Bureau of internet accessibility, recommends adding alt text I'm sure a lot of you add alt text, closed captioning to videos like we did here on tick tock. Making sure that your content is clear and concise and using using meaningful Call to Action Text and then also using list formatting, when applicable to better help Reader's Digest your work because it helps with reading comprehension. So with that, I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to Sariah who's going to take you into building social strategy that speaks to your audience.
Thanks, Valerie. Okay, so now that we've taken all these steps of the pipeline, let's bring it all together and start to build a strategy that you can start off platform for targeting this young and diverse audience. Like we just established these individual individuals are on social right now. So I think the easiest first step that you can take to target this audience is to take stock of your social presence. I think it's an investment well made you know, building out your off platform identity, and it'll pay back in dividends when you know, these young audiences decide to turn that support from follow to subscribership. So building the strategy begins with thinking about how you're going to curate these platforms. What do you have to offer? What are you publishing on site, in your print editions in your, like desktop editions? And how can you bring that to an audience? Off platform? So there's three things you can consider to answer that question. So first, is finding where your content offerings on platform overlap with the content that is of interest to younger audiences? To find that one way is to look at the data. Luckily, our newsrooms are equipped with metrics that inform and quantify the success of content. You know, we can look at the subject matters of the content that your young audiences or your yellow followers are engaging with. I know what the journal we often look at click through rates as a measure of success, but also like vanity metrics, like likes and saves and shares, you know, your benchmarks of success, and which ones you want to reach and focus on and just, you know, look at those numbers to see where young audiences are surpassing those benchmarks. And, you know, give more of what they want. They're telling you what they want. They're engaging, and just bring it to them off platform. The next way to identify these pieces of content or the subject matters, is open conversations. So that means among your audience teams among your social teams, find these ways and times to prompt conversations about what do people like and what do they actually personally engage with? Off platform. You know, like, I think these conversations can happen naturally. Like, I know we do this on our team a lot and we just find ways to talk and bring up topics like, you know, if it's like, like the grimace milkshake, do you remember that? Yeah, that was like a big conversation in the newsroom. And, you know, among my team, we were talking about that. And, you know, we found ways to bring that to our social audience at the journal which you know, I don't think people necessarily thought that the Wall Street Journal would report on the grimace smoke shake, but we did. Which I think is a fun way that you know, we get to we get to do things like that, but that's, obviously I'm a younger audience member and I also find that like, interesting so I'm glad we can like reach audiences with topics like that. I don't know how often grimace milkshake will come up. But you know, somebody to keep in mind an example. Okay. Okay, so the next thing is important, useful and engaging, what stories are important, useful, engaging stories that young audiences, as we've discussed, you know, here that resonate with them hit on these kinds of three qualities when taking into account your content offerings on platform, ask yourself to identify whether this content mat matches up with these qualities. And finally, I'm thinking thinking about curating content for social. Remember, you shouldn't ostracize your existing readership as legacy news organizations we know who our readership is. But if you're trying to reach new audiences, you should not depart from the brand that you've established, but introduce social audiences to a wider view of what you can be the Christmas milkshake again, we didn't ostracize our older audience, but we're bringing in a new audience but the next part is the final part now. Okay, now that you've identified the breadth of content and subject matters that you will offer on social, how and where do you package the stories in a way that best represents the information to the target audience. My work day to day at the journal focuses on thinking about this challenge, specifically on Instagram. Our goal is presenting stories that meet the subject matter desires of our audience, but also offers impactful visuals because you know of the nature of the platform. It's a visual platform on Instagram. And of course, we're also meshing all that with keeping in mind our responsibility to maintain our brand's voice. So the visual part of it is, as you can see here, we have a good variety of things that we pull from on the website or from elsewhere or all of our minds, we come together to create these bespoke pieces of content. And the visuals I mean, the obvious things are like photos or graphics, some sort of font of illustration, or things like that, but it's also the display text. You really should always keep those things in mind, like Mallory mentioned about like, using your tone of voice in these headlines and making it match with the platform. And in all that it's also making sure that you're keeping things brief. And like, very easily digestible when people are scrolling on their phones in a quick way. So yeah, I think that's most of what I wanted to say. Lastly, we'll go through the takeaways here. The too long didn't report if you didn't want to watch the rest of this presentation. points that we've made so far, create a safe environment before you hire bipoc and expect the UN expect the world from them. Yeah, okay. Let your target audiences tell their own stories. Embrace variety and non traditional story formats. Think of your journalism as a product, meet readers authentically, where they're at the member, experience and personality. And finally, build a strategy that speaks to your audience without sacrificing your brand's legacy. All right, now we're gonna get into the activity.
So this is not a leanback session. I'm so sorry for everybody that was expecting one of those. I feel like we've all had enough of those. And so one thing oh and a wanted from us is to make this slightly interactive. So we are going to ask for a little bit of work from you guys. I know.
So you're all kind of already in sort of some sort of group format. So I don't recommend like, shuffling around in the room but, and I there's also a lot more of you guys than I expected. So we are going to try and get into some sort of thinking this is a this session it's live, it's unprompted, some times. So the interactive portion is basically just to kind of take a look at a story that any of you might have or be publishing and to kind of think about ways that take five minutes and take. Think about ways that you can kind of that you would change it based off of what you've learned today. This is yeah, it's gonna be super simple. It's not like anything crazy. It's just like reading a story and kind of being like, Oh, I think we should we could potentially have done this with the headline. We could have potentially done this with the social piece of it. Yeah. So yeah, I think we're going to just I'm thinking, we're going to involve a few of you. There's far too many for this activity. And also the room is not set up for this at all. But again, when a kindly asked me to kind of like think about a way to make this non traditional to make it a little bit more interactive, and so this is me meeting them where they're at. So, okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna take a few of you from the front row. I feel like these are the Yeah. And then they're just going to take like literally five minutes and come I'm gonna give them something and if you are interested in you're in the back, come forth, please and join them. But basically, I'm just going to hand you guys a quick story. You're going to take five minutes and you're gonna just after the five minutes, you're gonna be like, I would change the story, or I would do this with that to kind of make this more appealing to a younger audience. Okay, I really appreciate everybody's participation. I was in one of these interactive sessions, and it was pretty good. I was really glad I stuck around through the activity. So yeah, if you're, if you're in the back and you want to participate, come forward, and if you're not just stay there totally fine. Not everybody has to participate. So yeah, I'm gonna walk around. Yeah, I'd love if Yeah, it looks like the front rows are pretty like diverse with young people and everybody else
we were joking. We should make a playlist on again, like okay, here's how you can start to get in touch with your audience. It's just
incredible
should be like no
big deal.
Hello. Can people hear me after this is going to be a q&a so please if you have questions stick around past this activity
not
someone who originally did you check it
out so yeah, thank you guys. That is a fun little science story about a seal. So yeah, it imagine you have all the resources in the world to kind of create a really interesting experience for a young audience. And then like, a few minutes, I will just call any person who's holding the thing to kind of shout out a few of those. Awesome. And then yeah, we're gonna be open for questions after you started. Can someone for like three minutes on the timer?
Day story
story about a science study on seals is interesting. It's you know, I give them all the fun little products it's almost sort of
okay. I'm gonna start from this side, the this left side of me, group and I'll just like, if someone wants to kind of just share some things they thought about to do with that story to kind of make it a little bit more engaging for the audience. It's a very bear story, which is why I give it to you guys. So yeah, you want to speak
so one of the things
so like asking people like how many seals are in this photo? Or like, can you identify which of these seals and whatever and then like, actually be like, you can't have worries and for you, and kind of like that
yeah, that's awesome. And I'll just repeat it for everybody else. So
that's, uh, I think the point you made about saying like you like, this is how you could do something that's really engaging like you're talking to people in a way that's like one to
one. Yeah. And they just said that they would kind of like try to gamify this story and lean into the AI aspect of it. And to be like on Instagram Stories sort of thing to be like, which one of these seals do you think is AI? Right? Is that what can you tell? Right? Yeah, I really like that. So just a bit to gamify off platform and to kind of make it more interactive. I thought that was a really cool one. Send one from here. I want to show you something.
Obviously, yes. You can do some sort of TiC
TOCs. Yes. Amazing. Yeah. That was a really good one. I really liked that. The idea was to kind of like go to the CEO in an ideal world and interview him and do kind of like a tick tock, where we kind of hear from the seal itself. I thought that was that's a really good one. Yeah, anyone from here want to share?
Yeah, social people love animals. That is a fat
firm. Our audience loves animals.
And then finally, the last group over here.
So that idea was kind of also on social to kind of do like a carousel like a slideshow with some text kind of ask the reader some questions about the seals and, you know, sort of whatever's in the story, but yeah, those are really cool. Awesome. Um, got some good ideas from you guys. And you know, this is really interesting because like, these are kind of the things that like an audience producer kind of thinks about in a matter of like, a minute, sometimes seconds upon reading the headline and the first few graphs of a story. So it's a really good challenge for like other people to kind of think about. And it's really interesting when you start thinking about that sort of thing from the very start, right? All of these are off platform, but really, you could have told the story in this way. From the beginning, if you think about it. So yeah, that is our session. We are just going to open it up for any questions when we come
I'll choose you right here at the front. Thank you very much. First of all, before I wander legacy is important read again around
Yeah, yeah, I can answer that. Um, so I think it is important to younger audiences that they that we are legacy publications because we have established an authority on topics whether it's like the digital magazine, or you know, the journal, we have a command on the topic of finance and markets and I think that is relevant to this conversation.
as well. Thank
you. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's it's both a it's a benefit and a challenge because we have a established identity, but the identity may be separate or it seems like it's it's out of touch with a younger audience. So that's where we this comes in, where we have to hire these younger people and have this adopted this voice that will work off platform, but still, you know, it mirrors the authenticity and the command of the subject matters because the quality of the journalism isn't gonna go away. It's it's just how we're packaging it.
How can we make like the Finance News? We don't have to change it, but how can we bring young people into the loop and have them be interested in inform themselves on the world's money? You know, that's, yeah, it's really
it's about trust. We have trust built but we just need to maintain that trust and then open it up to a wider audience. Who else? Yes.
Welcome How
are we? Making useful and important? Work is useful for everyone all ages.
Young people don't care about what I am or I will make them worse. And they'll be like,
Oh, my child needs to know about this. Or like, oh my god, much attention. Have you ever had any?
Reservations bias. Yeah, I'll take this one. I work with a lot of colleagues who, you know, have a background in traditional reporting and who are the most seasoned people in the world, the most seasoned journalist in the world? And so that's been very great. The journalism we work with is excellent. And the way Yeah, so I encounter not always like that, right. But different versions of kind of like what you're talking about, I think, and, you know, one sort of way it's not about what they're making is not useful. I think, like, we kind of said earlier, like most of what we're doing is very useful. There's a, there's a reason but it's usually really hidden in there and why that is really helpful to people. If and that's kind of why I was saying that it's really important that we make the value of that. We spell it out, and we spell it out quickly and very efficiently at the start for a reader in some way, right. Yeah, because there's value in most of the journalism that we're doing in some way, but it's about who you're trying to get that for, like thinking about who you're trying to reach and then spelling it out for that specific person. So if they're writing a story about a war, like I would challenge them to kind of like think about well, who are you trying to kind of explain this to who is are you trying to kind of take think about like explaining really complex like geopolitical issues to a young person. Think about that and like, make it clear on why this is like really interesting or why they should know this. You know, young people, again, are really hungry for politics and social issues. There's a way you can kind of make that information useful to the audience if you know who the audience that you're trying to reach. Is, is what I would say and spell out that like this is the future. Like we kind of said like, I think most journalists are really interested in like, keeping and thriving in wherever place they are. Yeah, I think it's really important to just kind of like have really candid and like, open conversations, like, very like kind conversations about, you know, who the brand is and where they're heading and why it's important to kind of be inclusive of everybody. One thing I have said that kind of was an aha moment, I think during like working sessions with news leadership, is we were thinking about just like how news editors around the company could kind of like work with their teams to kind of be thinking more digitally. And one thing I always say to this is who are the people that are able to access our journalism right now. And if we think about our brand and our legacy, and most newspapers, right, those people are probably more educated, they're probably older, and they probably have like a reliance on news brands right? And and so you would want to kind of make that accessible and kind of include more people in that. And so yeah, if you think about who you're making, who you're already reaching, and who you'd like to reach and the ways you want to reach them is through things like this. So yeah, I'll stop there. I think you had your hand up earlier
about whether you guys
subscribers, and I know that's not your job, but like your audience is to become subscribers in another way I can take this or at least start to take it. So I have thought about this a lot. I thought about this quite a bit. Not. I want to, I don't want to say not so much. Now we have a different subscription model at USA today than we did at the Dallas Morning News where I came to yesterday from and so when I was at Dallas, I was really thinking about you know, like Instagram particularly and the demographic of the reader. they're younger. Our our paper was I don't like $15 a month or something like that. And I know that a lot of people can't like a lot of younger people can't afford to pay for that. So I'm like, so I started thinking, you know, like, I really want to engage these readers in the space where they're at without asking them immediately to subscribe to us. So like what so I had to think of you know, it challenged me to think of other ways to get our content in front of them more regularly. That can come through newsletters, plugging newsletters whenever you can, just to get them to sign up. So they can continue, you know, like you can get that in there. Or they get that in their inbox every single day and they'll start you know, like realizing like how much they read it and then eventually you know, like, when they have the money to pay for they can go ahead and subscribe whenever there whenever they want to because they've seen the value that this brings to their day. Another thing that I did in Dallas was I worked with our marketing department to create promo codes for people on Instagram, particularly for a month free trial. Because you know, again, they're probably not paying immediately they might not be able to pay right now but we want to be with because they're, you know, engaging with us so frequently on stories and seeing that story. I wanted to you know, give them something like give them give them something and then track it track to see you know, like if they stay afterward track to see if they even use it. So I was really thinking about you know, the these alternative ways to like, get people to down the funnel without really asking them outwardly like, Hey, pay for our product right now because, you know, I like I have been in like I have been a college student. Everybody's broke. So what are some like ways to push them down without like, begging them for money, essentially. So those are some things that I thought about I don't know if that's totally answering your question, but of course,
I feel like someone from this side maybe we Okay, I see. Oh, oh yeah. In the blue in the front. You I've also seen your hand up for a while.
wondering the same thing
that's such a good question.
Yeah, we are wondering the same thing. I mean, I think obviously, this is useful feedback for OMA and I would encourage all of you if you share the same sentiment, or any other sentiments to definitely share it with the organizers because I mean, yeah, it'd be fully transparent. I 100% agree with you.
Many more. Do you guys pick
over there? Yeah, right there. Yeah. Hi.
What?
Is Yeah, that's a great question. Um, so this is actually something that we're discussing a lot at Slate right now just because I just started at Slate earlier this year, and was really brought on to redo our Instagram and our tic toc. And so a big thing that a lot of the journalists in our newsroom have told me is that they're interested in kind of having more direct interactions with our not just our followers on Instagram, our audience in general, our readers. And so first and foremost, like, I always I've asked every single journalist in that newsroom if they feel comfortable being tagged in an Instagram post being tagged. On Tik Tok or Twitter, whatever. If they say no, I completely respect it. And that's that and if they say yes, great. We do this a lot with our like audio side at Slate. We have a bunch of podcasts with hosts that have a huge following. And some of them specifically get a lot of backlash and hate mail and hate DMS and stuff like that and have asked not to be tagged in certain posts and they don't want their personal pages to be tagged. Some of them have, you know, their professional pages or fan pages or whatever, and that's fine, but it's it really to me boils down to that, like I'm never going to force any journalist or any colleague to have these interactions if they feel uncomfortable or they feel not ready or not prepared, and that's totally fine. Because the thing is like, you can always change your mind. Like if you don't want to try it this week. They might want to try it next month or they might feel more comfortable in like a more controlled setting. We do a lot of zoom events, right? So we feature a lot of our writers and our editors in these events that are more controlled where we have control over like, who can mute and unmute and like what links we direct them to. So I think it's all about like keeping it an open conversation and keeping it a continuing conversation like just because a certain you know, group of journalists in your newsroom don't feel comfortable now. Doesn't mean that you know, they might not get curious later down the road or later in the year and want to try something but I think for me what's been really successful is I bring like a laid out plan about what B's you know, personal interactions are going to entail. I say I'm going to tag you in this Instagram story and this Instagram posts. I'm going to you know, lead it with like a question box sticker and we're going to turn it into an AMA at the end of the week and this is what your you know, what I think would be the most beneficial for our readers. What do you think let's talk about it like what what about this plan does or does it make sense for you? What about it makes it weird or uncomfortable for you and then take it from there. I think a lot of people sometimes get hesitant or scared because they just don't know what it means. And like what it's going to entail for them.
Okay, well get one more. How about you and Yeah, how about you in the back? I'm sorry. So many.
Oh wow, yeah, that's a good one. So I'll just kind of repeat it at how any advice on how to deal with like, generational differences within philosophies about news gathering, right? And especially having to do with like, reaching out to police sources and all that. Well, first of all, it's like, very, in every they're very in the right with having skepticism and pause for reaching out to police authorities. I think we've like last few years, I've made that very clear. So like that's good. They're journalists and they should be skeptical of all authorities. And so it's important to recognize that like every journalist should be like that and not just the young ones. So that's something I would kind of be like, Oh, that's kind of that's great that you are skeptical. But but right like sometimes it is important to kind of reach out to like all different sides and all different communities. Yeah, do you guys have like better PCs?
I think that's right. I think everybody should be skeptical. I think that's a valid response. I think. I don't know. I haven't reported in quite a while. So.
Yeah, I think yeah, it's important to be skeptical, but I think it's important to let people know everybody that a lot of people aren't trusting of the news because of a leaning maybe in one way or another. So if your brand is lean into whatever your brand is, right so if your plant brand has a lien, which is controversial, right, but like if it does, maybe lean into whatever your audience is responding to, I don't know that there's any like, Nirvana. But I think most of us can lean into what we value of like, just like being very trusted and so like lean into being trusted and like how our people think about like the ways young people and others are going to trust you and sometimes that means spelling out like everything, like spelling out the good and the bad and the differences within the community and being very candid about that. I think if you send her the truth and like the trust and like value of all of that to a journalist who a young journalist, I think they'd be able to appreciate that because if they are afraid to kind of reach out to one side or another. I think that they might not be leaning into building trust because they're, they're just building into whatever they trust. And so it's important that you know, they value what audiences are kind of valuing, which is truth and usability. So yeah,
I think another thing that young audiences appreciate is transparency. I think people love to see behind the curtain. So explaining the reporting process, wherever you can, wherever it's appropriate, and finding ways to highlight it, whether that's on platform like within the story talking about who you reached out to, and reasons for doing X, Y or Z and also documenting that in ways that are appropriate off platform are a way to get audiences to understand this process and just like you know, find more ways to build trust for you know, whether it's the legacy organization that already has trust or needs to work on building in.
Mallory has
a flight to catch I do I'm so sorry. I need to leave. That's been amazing. Thank you so much for showing up on Saturday. I think he's been fantastic. I appreciate I appreciate you. Thank you so much.
I'll be around for a little bit while longer if anybody has anything
you
very
much have you ever went out there Oh, are you kidding me? I'm ready ready to go been told as far as
