Guest: Kim Bui, Director of Product & Audience Innovation, Arizona Republic

“The product side is a personal interest of mine in that it really is the ‘how’ – I love looking at how we can tell better stories, how we can integrate better with our audience’s lives, listen to them, become more useful, and really get away from the pedestal style journalism that has ended up with us not being trusted by a majority of people.” – Kim Bui, Arizona Republic

What comes first, the product or the user? How do we close the gap between the addressable market and market penetration? What are ways to use newsletters and text notifications to get personal with readers? How can we position ourselves now with younger readers and Gen Z readers as a useful news source? What are the “winners” in the news product space doing that we are not?

On this episode of News Take, News Media Alliance President & CEO David Chavern chatted with Kim Bui, Director of Product and Audience Innovation at the Arizona Republic/AZCentral.com, about how to leverage the latest trends in digital products to connect with your audience and be useful to them, while at the same time building trust and emphasizing community-centered journalism. The conversation flows into a discussion of the evolving workplace and how Kim’s columns, “Sincerely, Leaders of Color” and “The Middles” reflect the importance of improving diversity in news media and providing education to those emerging leaders who are navigating unfamiliar management and leadership roles.

Listen now or download the audio file to listen offline:

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Speaker bio

Kim Bui is the director of product and audience innovation at the Arizona Republic. She’s focused her career on leading real-time news initiatives and creating new storytelling forms for digital, print and broadcast companies catering to local, national and global audiences. Prior, she was editor-at-large for NowThis News, focusing on original, social reporting and breaking news. She was also deputy managing editor for reported.ly, a digital media startup specializing in social journalism. She’s been a speaker, trainer and teacher on digital and social journalism at universities, conferences and gatherings worldwide. She writes a syndicated newsletter for emerging leaders and managers, The Middles.

Related reading

Sincerely, Leaders of Color

The Middles

The Key to Gen Z: Insights and Ideas to Build Lasting Relationships

Watch the next episode: Encouraging and Sustaining Diversity in News Media

Watch the previous episode: Tech Trends: What Publishers Need to Know

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Send your suggestions for future News Take guests to Alliance VP, Research & Insights Rebecca Frank at rebecca@newsmediaalliance.org.

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The post News Take Episode 103: Leveraging Products to Connect with Your Audience appeared first on News/Media Alliance.

Guests: Aram Zucker-Scharff, The Washington Post

“For the first time, we actually have the potential to create a real shift that benefits our users, our business, and our society, and that’s a win, win, win.” – Aram Zucker-Scharff on the shift to contextual-based targeting

Ad tech, Privacy and Performance, oh my! News publishers working to adapt to a privacy-first digital landscape before the inevitable end of the third-party cookie can easily become overwhelmed and may not even know where to start.

What does the shift towards privacy mean for news publishers and how they approach ad targeting? Is decreased reliance on third-party tracking a good thing for the industry? What are Core Web Vitals and why should news publishers care? How does my news site’s performance tie in to reader trust? What are things publishers can do right now to improve site performance? What is W3C and how can publishers take advantage to get their voices heard?

These questions and more will be discussed on this episode of News Take. News Media Alliance President & CEO David Chavern had an energizing conversation with Aram Zucker-Scharff, Engineering Lead for Privacy & Security Compliance at The Washington Post, that got in-the-weeds about the kitchen sink of ad tech topics, including site monetization; improving privacy and the user experience; optimizing site performance using Core Web Vitals; and more.

This episode was so full of interesting facts and actionable insights, we didn’t want it to end. The nuggets of wisdom will come faster than you can write them down, so it’s a good thing this conversation was recorded and you can re-watch it to your heart’s content!

Listen now or download the audio file to listen offline:

Don’t forget to subscribe to the News Take podcast by clicking “Follow” and selecting your preferred podcasting platform, or click on your preferred platform: Spotify, Apple, Google.

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Download closed captioning transcript

Speaker bio

Aram Zucker-Scharff is the Engineering Lead for Privacy & Security Compliance at The Washington Post, where he works with publishers to maximize site performance and revenue. He has also worked on The Post’s Ad Tech R&D and Big Data teams. Aram has developed open-source tools for publishers and consulted on content strategy and digital newsroom workflows. He was one of Folio Magazine’s 15 under 30 in the magazine media industry.

Related reading

“Why The Ad Industry Should Care About Core Web Vitals – And The Impact For Publishers Who Ignore The Dreaded ‘Layout Shift’” (AdExchanger) – by Amanda Hicks, director of product for The Washington Post’s Research, Experimentation & Development (RED) team.

Watch the next episode: Leveraging Products to Connect with Your Audience

Watch the previous episode: Local News: Understanding What Readers Want and How to Deliver it to Them

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Send us your suggestions

Send your suggestions for future News Take guests to Alliance VP, Research & Insights Rebecca Frank at rebecca@newsmediaalliance.org.

News Take Production Team:

Host and Executive Producer: Rebecca Frank, VP, Research & Insights, News/Media Alliance

Production Support, Editing & Distribution:

Georgi-Ann Clarke, Social Media & Content Manager, News/Media Alliance
Rachel Fox, Manager, Membership & Events, News/Media Alliance
Lindsey Loving, Director, Communications, News/Media Alliance

Audio & Video Engineer: Current Media Group

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The post News Take Episode 102: Tech Trends: What Publishers Need to Know appeared first on News/Media Alliance.

Guests: Jim Bernard, Star Tribune and Mike Orren, The Dallas Morning News

Is there such a thing as a typical reader or subscriber? What role does the e-Paper play in the transition to digital (and why did our speakers initially despise the product)? Do new storytelling formats such as podcasts and social media present viable business models, and how can news publishers successfully venture into this space? What are news publishers getting right on the tech side, and where do they still need to improve?

In this episode of News Take, News Media Alliance President & CEO David Chavern sits down with Jim Bernard, Senior Vice President for Digital at the Minneapolis-based Star Tribune and Mike Orren, Chief Product Officer at The Dallas Morning News for a candid conversation about the challenges and opportunities that arise from understanding your readers and subscribers and how to give them what they want (and when, where and how they want it) – all while prioritizing revenue (because at the end of the day, newspapers need to sell subscriptions). From the differences between print and digital subscribers and their desires, preferences, and behaviors, to why the e-Edition is a valuable product, to approaches to experimenting with new forms of storytelling (including audio and video), to their most exciting plans for 2022, Orren and Bernard draw from their leadership experience to offer insights on navigating the constantly changing news consumption landscape.

Listen now or download the audio file to listen offline:

Don’t forget to subscribe to the News Take podcast by clicking “Follow” and selecting your preferred podcasting platform, or click on your preferred platform: Spotify, Apple, Google.

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Speaker bios

Mike Orren is the Chief Product Officer at The Dallas Morning News, leading the teams responsible for all digital products, marketing, business intelligence, and digital audience. Prior to that, he was President at Belo Business Intelligence, where he leads marketing, analytics, product development, strategy and sales infrastructure for A.H. Belo Corporation, publisher of The Dallas Morning News. He founded Pegasus News, the largest single-market digital news pure-play in the US in 2005, eventually selling it to a publicly-traded broadcast company. Mike has served in senior roles at American Lawyer Media and D Magazine (where he launched the first city magazine website). His work has been recognized with awards from Editor & Publisher, The Dallas Press Club, the North Carolina Press Association and The Dallas Business Journal. Mike is a graduate of Duke University.

Jim Bernard is Star Tribune’s senior vice president for digital with responsibility for the company’s portfolio of digital properties and operations, including StarTribune.com – the state’s most-visited website with 7 million unique visitors each month. He also oversees dozens of other digital products, including Star Tribune mobile apps, print “replica” edition, CityPages.com and 19 Minnesota high school sports websites. Jim joined Star Tribune in 2010 from Dow Jones MarketWatch and prior to MarketWatch, he held a series of executive positions with Dow Jones. Jim earned his MBA from the University of Minnesota and a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Iowa.

Watch the next episode: Tech Trends: What Publishers Need to Know

View all episodes

Send us your suggestions

Send your suggestions for future News Take guests to Alliance VP, Research & Insights Rebecca Frank at rebecca@newsmediaalliance.org.

News Take Production Team:

Host and Executive Producer: Rebecca Frank, VP, Research & Insights, News/Media Alliance

Production Support, Editing & Distribution:

Georgi-Ann Clarke, Social Media & Content Manager, News/Media Alliance
Rachel Fox, Manager, Membership & Events, News/Media Alliance
Lindsey Loving, Director, Communications, News/Media Alliance

Audio & Video Engineer: Current Media Group

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The post News Take Episode 101: Local News: Understanding What Readers Want and How to Deliver it to Them appeared first on News/Media Alliance.

PeopleImages/E+ via Getty Images

Facebook’s threat to block real journalism from its properties is simply an attempt to bully the Australian government and legislature. It is also a clear attempted exercise of their massive, anticompetitive market power. I suspect the Australian authorities won’t be easily intimidated.

And without quality news and information, all of Facebook’s problems with misinformation would just become much worse. They would be taking away the only real balance for all the crazy rumors and conspiracy theories that they deliver.

They should, instead, embrace quality journalism as an answer for many of their issues and offer Australian publishers better and more economically sustainable ways to deliver it to the public.

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The post Statement: Facebook’s Threat to Block News in Australia appeared first on News/Media Alliance.

Twitter

Twitter added its live component in 2016, but it wasn’t until 2017 that it really took off with the news media industry, and now there are a number of news producers using it to not only cover breaking news, but to host regularly scheduled news programs. So, who’s doing it well?
Bloomberg’s TicToc. The 24/7 streaming news Twitter channel covers all the topics you’d expect Bloomberg to cover, but through short, shareable videos. You can watch for 30 seconds or 10 minutes, depending on how much news you’re looking to ingest at any moment. Their morning update covers multiple stories in about 10 minutes, while new single-topic videos are tweeted throughout the day, allowing you to go more in-depth with whatever story has caught your attention, whether it’s hard news or a human-interest feature.
Cheddar. Despite their name, Cheddar’s news is anything but cheesy – covering business, tech and media news. Its live show runs from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and is appropriately filmed at the New York Stock Exchange. Cheddar runs during business hours, when their audience is most in need of the type of news Cheddar shares, but if you miss a segment live, don’t worry — Cheddar’s videos live on their Twitter feed, and you can pop in and out of segments whenever you want to catch up.
BuzzFeed’s AM to DM. The pop culture morning show that lives on Twitter and in the Periscope app, AM to DM airs at 10 a.m. EST, and works like a typical morning news talk show — think The Today Show, but for millennials. Covering all things pop culture, from the #MeToo movement and the shift in LGBTQ+ acceptance, to the must-hear summer songs and what to binge-watch next, the show is the perfect start to the day for anyone who wants some entertainment with their information.

Instagram

Not into Twitter news? Instagram is a great platform for getting information on the go. From in-feed videos to Instagram Stories to the newly launched IGTV, which allows for long-form video, the photo- and video-sharing app gives you a slew of options for getting your daily dose of news. Everyone from social-based news sites to traditional media are turning to Instagram to reach the growing news audience, so they’ll never run out of innovative and engaging ways to get the news. What are our Instagram must-views?
The Guardian. A good old-fashioned print paper that started in 1821, The Guardian has nonetheless embraced the web and all the newest ways of telling stories that the digital landscape has to offer. And where they shine most is on Instagram. The paper uses their Instagram feed to share photos and short videos that correspond to their print and digital articles, making sure they’re finding readers wherever they are. But it’s The Guardian’s Instagram Stories that really make a splash. Using a mix of photos and videos, the paper strings together a Story across anywhere from a few slides to a few dozen, giving followers a chance to see an article brought to life before swiping up to read the full piece.
NowThis. This app-based news source has a website, but all of their content is made for social media first. Their primary distribution channel is Instagram, and they’ve recently expanded their presence on that platform to utilize the new IGTV feature. On the NowThis channel, you get longer videos than you do in their feed, and without the interruptions between clips that come from stringing videos together in Stories. They also use multiple channels, allowing followers to choose whether they want to follow all the news or just one segment, like NowThis Her, NowThis Money or NowThis Entertainment.
Cookie The News. Although Cookie The News is only updated occasionally, the Instagram feed is a must for news junkies. Using cookies and icing to illustrate a major news event every month or so, Cookie The News adds levity to your newsfeed by not taking itself or the news too seriously. Past cookie news events include the death of Koko the gorilla, and the race between Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps and a (computer-generated) great white shark.

Snapchat

For companies hoping to reach Generation Z, Snapchat has proven to be invaluable, but the app is still underutilized by news organizations.
NBC’s Stay Tuned. When you think of NBC, you probably think of legacy network television, with programs such as The Today Show and The Tonight Show. But the network is also pioneering Snapchat news, attracting millions of subscribers to its app-based show, Stay Tuned. Original news content is loaded twice a day on weekdays, and once a day on weekends, and viewers have 24 hours to watch it before it disappears, as Snapchat is a more ephemeral platform than any other.
Snapchat News. Using crowdsourced Snaps from users, Snapchat’s news updates give users a chance to learn about the top stories of the day from the people who were there. Snap editors are responsible for curating the content and adding the story text to the thread, but all visuals come from users who are on the ground. The innovative channel, found in the app’s Discover panel, lets users not only get the news, but see how their peers are experiencing the story in real time. Snap also has an interactive map that allows anyone, in app or online, to check out Snap “hot zones,” where users are posting tons of content. There you’ll find anything from tourists posting vacation Snaps of Washington, D.C., to breaking news about someone scaling the Statue of Liberty, to Snaps of daily life in Iraq.
Refinery29. Focused on millennial and Gen Z women, Refinery29 uses their Snap channel to share visually-engaging stories with their audience. Not only do they tell complete stories in the app, but they will often include interview subjects’ social followings, showing that not only are users flocking to new platforms and apps for news, but that the newsmakers are on there, too.

Facebook

Facebook is synonymous with social media, and there are few businesses — news organizations included — that don’t have a Facebook page. But not everyone is using their page to their advantage. The platform gives users a multitude of ways to connect with followers, and using those modes well isn’t always easy. However, there are plenty of news outlets that are delivering quality content worth following, especially quality video.
AJ+. Part of the Al Jazeera Network, AJ+ has become a star of social media news. Their videos, shared largely on Facebook, attract anywhere from a few thousand to a few million viewers. By covering topics as diverse as art history references in a Beyonce video and puppies in Chernobyl to the rescue of a soccer team from a cave in Thailand, they give viewers all the news and entertainment they could desire, and they do it in short, digestible, engaging clips.
The Telegraph. A daily British newspaper, The Telegraph has become a go-to for live Facebook video news. Streaming live from Parliament during important speeches and producing videos on important U.K. and global news stories, The Telegraph stays in front of readers even when they haven’t had time to read the paper, ensuring they reach a larger audience than their print circulation would cover.
Yahoo! Finance. The internet’s first favorite search engine-turned-media company, one of Yahoo!’s star brands is Yahoo! Finance and its daily Facebook shows. On weekdays the page hosts several live financial talk shows, while single-topic videos posted throughout the week allow viewers to watch only the stories that most intrigue them. The mix of live and pre-taped video means they have fresh content any time you log in, perfect for keeping users hooked.
Does your newsroom have a livestream we should be checking out? Tweet your links to us at @NewsAlliance.

The post Social Video Successes Prove Streaming Is Here to Stay appeared first on News/Media Alliance.

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Just as most companies have employee codes of conduct and standards, many are now crafting similar codes for employees’ online behavior. These rules are not only for the social media manager about how official newsroom tweets and posts are formulated, but also about how newsroom employees can post in their personal capacity. Coming up with the right strategy for your newsroom isn’t easy, however, and there are many factors to consider.

Are journalists employees or individuals?

The first step in crafting a good social media strategy for your newsroom is determining whether you want your employees to be acting as company spokespeople online or as private citizens. In today’s internet landscape, many publications are finding value in hiring journalists and editors who have developed a personal brand — and thus a sizeable online following — because it allows the publication’s brand to expand and potentially reach a new audience. Others, however, want to present a more unified online message, which means giving employees guidelines on how they can post on their personal accounts.

Having rules that are too stringent could scare off younger or more social employees, while having no rules in place could make newsroom management feel that there’s no way to control how staffers present the organization and its content to their followers. The best strategy involves a moderate approach that allows journalists to maintain their personalities, while still representing the newsroom’s core values and voice.

The New York Times announced their strategy last fall, with a focus on maintaining journalistic objectivity while still allowing reporters to develop their own personalities and followings online, stating: “In social media posts, our journalists must not express partisan opinions, promote political views, endorse candidates, make offensive comments or do anything else that undercuts The Times’ journalistic reputation.”

What should journalists not say on social media?

As the Times rules demonstrate, what your journalists say online is important. While their policy allows employees to express themselves fairly freely, it does require that they avoid sharing partisan tweets or bringing up customer service complaints they may have.

The Washington Post has similar rules about what employees can’t say online, including provisions about not disparaging advertisers, vendors or readers on social media — even if their accounts are private.

While rules like those initiated by The Times and The Post may seem prohibitive to some people, they are designed to prevent the appearance of favoritism or bias. When crafting your own rules, you’ll want to find a balance that makes your employees feel comfortable, while also protecting your brand from unwanted or unwarranted criticism.

How should news be delivered?

For major breaking stories and exclusives, your official newsroom accounts should be responsible for going out first with the news. If the tweets or posts link to a developing story on your website, your journalists can follow your posts with their own, but if not, staff should be retweeting the original post so that it’s clear the news comes from your outlet.

On their own accounts, journalists can add commentary or insight about the developing story, but should avoid actually breaking the news themselves. Why? If your journalists are breaking news before you are, followers will have no reason to stick with you and you could see trust and engagement in your own accounts diminish.

When should the news be delivered?

We discussed in an earlier How-To post the frequency with which newsrooms should post to social media, but breaking news doesn’t fit those rules. When a story breaks, it’s okay to throw your schedule out the window and tweet immediately and relatively frequently. The key is to keep your posts fresh (post if there is something new to add) and relevant. You’ll have the chance to get your article in front of people later, so if someone misses your breaking-news tweet, it doesn’t mean they won’t turn to you for the full story later.

How should your employees interact with followers?

The BBC offers great guidance on engaging with followers, which is simple but effective: be polite. It’s sometimes easy to forget that journalists’ personal interactions with the public can impact how people view your publication. These days, it’s often difficult to separate journalists from their outlets, so if one of your employees gets into an argument on Twitter or blocks a user, that will appear as a reflection of your organization, regardless of how fair their actions were.

While it’s acceptable (and even desirable) for journalists to engage in discussions with followers, they should assume that they’re always representing the company or publication. A good rule of thumb is to keep what you say online consistent with things you would say in front of your boss; that should keep things civil and professional, while still enabling staff to express themselves freely.

How should reposts be handled?

When it comes to reposting, treat each post as your own. If your organization wouldn’t write it or share it under its own name, you shouldn’t repost it to the newsroom’s feed. Twitter makes reposting incredibly easy, but when you do so, it’s not always obvious to your followers that you don’t endorse the tweet or that it didn’t originate with you. So, it’s best to err on the side of caution. Assume that anything you share, regardless of attribution, will be viewed as having come from your publication. If you want to share a controversial or questionable post, present it with full context — as in an article. Otherwise, it’s best to keep all reposts out of your feed.

Does your newsroom have social media rules? What are some of your dos and don’ts of social media for your staffers? Let us know by tweeting @newsalliance.

The post How To: Craft the Right Social Media Guidelines for Your Newsroom appeared first on News/Media Alliance.

The first and most important step is to decide the purpose of your account. Do you want it to be a way to promote the stories in your print or digital space? Do you want to use it to share behind-the-scenes looks at how your journalists work? Do you want it to be its own standalone platform with its own visual stories?

While you can certainly do a combination of all these things within your account, you should set a primary goal so you can produce the most consistent posts. Consistency is key to promoting your brand and keeping followers interested. If your outlet’s Instagram looks too much like my personal account, you’re going to confuse people about who you are and what it is you’re providing to them.

Your newsroom’s Instagram account should have better photos and more consistent material than my personal account.

You also need to know up front that you can’t include links with each image. If you post a link in your photo caption, no one can click it. The exception is the link in your profile bio. Many accounts will include the link to whatever they want to share in their bio, but other than this awkward workaround, it’s best to stick to photos. More on this later.

Now that you know what not to do, it’s time to focus on what you can do.

Share Links — But Do It the Right Way

We talked above about how the only place you can share a clickable link in Instagram is the profile bio. But there are tools you can use to add more links without forcing your followers to log onto a computer to copy and paste, or changing your one link 87 times a day to keep up with what you want to share. To do that, you can create a link to links; one that allows your followers to click your one link and get access to all the links you want to share.

This is especially helpful because Instagram does not sort posts in a user’s feed chronologically, but algorithmically. So, while you might have updated your last link to reflect your latest post, your followers might still be seeing the post from 12 hours earlier telling them to click the “link in bio” to read the full story. Unfortunately for them, however, you’ve already replaced that link, and now they can’t read the story they wanted.

Instead, you can use something like metricool, linktree, LNK.BIO or Link in Profile to share multiple links without having to constantly change the link in your bio and risk confusing followers who are victims of the algorithm.

Another option for sharing links is through Instagram Stories, allowing users to simply swipe up on a post to access the link (and keeping them in Instagram so when they close the article, they’re still right there in your story).

Make Sure Your Posts Reflect Your Brand

If your outlet prides itself on being hard news and serious stories, you don’t want to have an Instagram account full of cute puppies and funny photos of the news. That’s not true to your brand, and you won’t create a crossover audience for either your Instagram or your publication. New platforms can be a great way to get new readers, but not at the expense of your brand identity. People who are interested in what you do will find you.

You can also have more than one Instagram account for your publication, as long as each is true to your overall brand. The Washington Post has more than a half-dozen different accounts, each of which caters to a different kind of user, from general news junkies to sports fans to fans of great photos, illustrations and page designs. The New York Times, too, has several accounts, including those dedicated to fashion, travel and their archival photos.

But you don’t need to be one of the biggest national publications to show off your brand on Instagram. Local newspapers across the country have started Instagram accounts to share their communities with their residents – and the world. While their brands are more streamlined — they focus on their immediate communities and all the people in them — they are no less true to their brands on Instagram.

Use Your Stories

About a year ago, Instagram started allowing users to post Snapchat-style “Stories” to the platform. These Stories are video and photo clips that play on the user’s profile for 24 hours before vanishing. If a story is worthy, you can keep it in your highlights so that anyone who missed it during its initial 24-hour run can come back and watch it whenever they want.

Stories can be anything related to your content, but like your main posts, they should stay on brand. There are so many creative ways to use Stories to share news and information with your followers. Earlier this year, The Guardian created an Instagram story about how their newspapers are printed in order to show off their newly re-designed print product.

The Los Angeles Times recently did an Instagram story where they discussed a very hot topic — the annual National Rifle Association (NRA) convention — with an NRA supporter and YouTube channel host. The story was a perfect fit for the brand because it not only touched on a very hotly-debated news item, but because it found a way to connect to a very L.A.-based industry: YouTube influencers.

Have a Personality

What does it mean to have a personality on Instagram? That depends on you. For example, The Lily, a feminist news product from The Washington Post, has crafted a very stylized Instagram feed that is primarily in black and white with only occasional pops of color. The feed matches the brand’s tone, as The Lily is serious feminist news often presented through a pop culture angle. When you see a Lily post, you know immediately where it’s from and what you can expect if you read the caption or the accompanying story.

The Atlantic, meanwhile, shares their unique brand of highly-stylized story art on their Instagram page. Traditional photos are few and far between, and are rarely non-styled photos. You won’t see breaking news images in The Atlantic’s feed — that’s not what they’re known for. Instead, you can expect to see intriguing illustrations and captivating headshots of news-makers, all of which are on-brand for the magazine and show their unique take on the news.

Get Creative

While you need to be consistent and stay on brand, you also should be willing to try new things. Social media is all about experimenting and engaging with your audience, and Instagram is no different.

The Washington Post has been using one of their Instagram accounts to introduce followers to members of their staff each week. The account introduces followers to parts of the Post team they might not meet otherwise, from reporters and editors to HR and IT professionals, and gives those staffers full control over the account for the day so they can share what their experiences inside one of the nation’s most famous publications are like.

You can also use your Instagram account to engage directly with your followers. You can share their photos of your community on your feed (or exclusively in your Stories if you want to keep your feed consistent and on brand), you can create polls for them within your stories that ask them about the community or — even better — ask them what kind of posts they want to see from you.

Post as Often as You See Fit

There’s no right number of posts on Instagram, and no magic timeframe that works best. Because the algorithm mixes up when people see your posts, you could post 10 times per day or once per day and still have some followers who don’t see your posts, some who see them all at once and others who see them as they’re posted. That said, you don’t want to overwhelm your followers. A few posts per day is fine, but if you want to share more than three or four photos or videos, take it to you story. People can choose to skip through stories more easily, and it feels less intrusive to have constant story updates appearing than a stream of never-ending photos from one poster in your feed.

Think you’ve got it down? If not, below you’ll find examples of news outlets that are using Instagram to share their stories. Maybe their posts will help inspire your newsroom to launch its Instagram account soon, too! In the meantime, send an email to jennifer@newsmediaalliance.org or tweet @EditrixJen and let us know about your ideal newsroom Instagram posts.

The post How To: Optimize Your Newsroom’s Instagram appeared first on News/Media Alliance.

More and more, we’re on the go, relying on our smartphones to be our computers. So this week we’re going to share with you some of the tools you can use to be productive  even when you’re away from your desk.

Google Drive

You know you can use it from any computer, but Google’s shared workspace also lets you write and edit, or even compile spreadsheets, on the go. When you use Google Docs in “suggesting” mode, it works just like Word’s “track changes.” If you’re an adept texter (aren’t we all, in 2018?) it’s easy to type on your phone. If you’re writing, it’s simple enough to take your work with you, and if you’re editing, you don’t have to worry about losing the original or making changes you can’t undo. You can also easily share the documents right from your phone, so you never have to worry about downloading files or software not being compatible with a colleague’s.

WhatsApp

The chat app is popular with teenagers around the world, and for very good reason. It offers end-to-end encryption, so you can be guaranteed your messages are secure, and it’s free, so if you’re connected to WiFi, you can call or text anyone anywhere without it costing you a penny. (You can also use the app when connected to your cellular network, but that may cost you, depending on your carrier and plan.) It’s a great tool if you have sources in other countries, or if you’re traveling for a story and need to keep in touch with sources back home. You can use it to text, send images and files, make video calls, or even have group phone calls all from one app. And because it’s a free app that works on any smartphone, you and your sources and editors can keep in touch without hassle, no matter where you are in the world.

Tape-A-Call

We’ve talked about this app before, but it’s worth mentioning again, especially for the journalist on the go. The call-recording app works by conferencing in you and your source to a secure third line that records your call. Once you hang up the phone, the recording is sent to the app, where you can choose to download it, send it via email or text, or upload it to a cloud server. It’s a very user-friendly system, and it works wherever your phone works (though if you have limited talk time, you’ll want to check your plan before making calls). The app is free, but the paid version allows you unlimited calls for a mere $10 a year. For an additional $14 (billed annually), you can get the advanced searchable version so you never have to hunt for the quotes you recorded again.

Photo Vault

If you find yourself taking photos for work using your smartphone, you’ll want to download an app like Photo Vault to keep your personal photos stashed away, safe from prying eyes. This is especially helpful if you run social media for your publication or in your role as a journalist. You don’t want to accidentally post a private photo and end up front-page news like Anthony Weiner/Carlos Danger. And even if your personal photos aren’t of the risqué variety, it’s better to be safe than sorry. With an app like Photo Vault, you can easily load your photos into a private, password-protected app and delete them off your camera roll in one easy step. And if you spring for the paid version, you can create as many folders as you want within the app, so you’ll always know where to find your photos.

Apartments.com

This may not seem like an essential app for journalists at first glance, but hear me out. If you’re reporting on new cities and towns on a regular basis, chances are you need to swoop in, learn as much as you can as quickly as you can, and hit the ground running to find sources and stories. The Apartments.com app lets you do that. If you scan the apartment listings, you can get a sense of the neighborhoods, the income level, the school districts, and whether the area is full of families, businesses, or kids moving into their first apartments out of college. Not finding listings for an area will also tell you something: either that neighborhood is full of houses, or it’s a commercial district; a quick glance at the map will give you a better idea. And knowing about the neighborhood makes it easier for you to find people to interview and know, to some extent, what their economic situation is and their basic quality of life. Because this isn’t exactly the intended purpose of the app, it’s not a perfect tool, but if you’re parachuting into a new place on a regular basis, it’s a good way to get started.

Photoshop Express

It’s easier than ever to take photos with your phone, and thanks to the Photoshop app, it’s just as simple to edit them, too. The app version of the software includes all the essential tools you need to prep a photo for publication, including color correction and noise cancellation (the photo kind — though we’ll get to the audio kind in a moment). Whether you’re trying to post a photo to social media or sending along “live from the field” photos to your team back in the office, you want to put your best foot forward whenever possible, and quickly running your photo through Photoshop Express will ensure that your photo matches the quality of your writing, even if you’re not use to being your own photographer.

VoiceRecorder

Need to upload audio to go along with your story? Want to give your readers the full multimedia experience? VoiceRecorder lets you record and save files, as well as trim your audio clips. You can cut out long-winded answers, trim out background noise, or convert the file to a more compatible format for your website. You can also save the file from the app or upload it to the cloud so your colleagues can access it to do more detailed editing. But for an in-pocket recording studio, this has what you need to get the basics done and get your audio posted in time to break your story.

Social Media

We’ll be delving more into social media in future installments, but if you’re a journalist and you aren’t using Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram to share your stories and reach out to sources, you’re missing out on a very valuable series of tools. While these tools didn’t exist when most of us were learning the tricks of the trade (did I just date myself? Oops!), they’re critical to our work now, even given Facebook’s recent changes to deprioritize publishers in the Newsfeed. If you’ve made a conscious decision to avoid social media because you’re trying to “reach a high-brow audience,” you are losing out on a huge readership that doesn’t come to news via traditional pathways. We’ll discuss each of the platforms in detail in the coming weeks, but for now, download them all to your phone and start engaging!

Are there other apps you rely on to get your job done on the go? Let us know if we missed any of your personal essentials so we can update our list. Shout out your favorite apps by emailing jennifer@newsmediaalliance.org or tweeting @EditrixJen.

The post How To: Turn Your Phone Into A Mobile Newsroom appeared first on News/Media Alliance.

So, what’s stopping newspapers from hopping on the platform’s bandwagon? Here are a couple things that could be holding them back:

First and foremost, no live links = no traffic driven:

Instagram only allows active links in the user’s profile bio. This means links don’t work in captions, comments, etc. and therefore won’t be effective in those locations. For an organization whose main products are news stories, this type of content isn’t received as well on the platform. News organizations primarily want visits to their original websites.

On the actual platform, it’s next to impossible to monetize:

On Instagram, users can’t embed advertisements before their content is viewed like on YouTube. They also can’t embed advertisements near where their content is viewed like on Facebook. Really, they just can’t embed advertisements. Users who make money from Instagram content are those using brand deals. This is when the account holder (primarily social media influencers) uses their account to promote a specific brand or product. However, this is done outside of Instagram and is a deal between the brand and the user. Monetization of content is done without Instagram’s involvement, and any money made is separate from the platform.

So, what’s the point of newspapers using Instagram?  Despite the previously mentioned off-putting factors, some newspapers have taken to Instagram and here’s why:

To reach new audiences:

This goal is arguably the most achievable using Instagram. Almost 60 percent of all online adults age 18 to 29 years old use Instagram, the highest percentage of age groups. Most Instagram users are 18 to 29 years old. This age range also has the lowest number of daily newspaper readership. Eighty percent of Instagram users are also from outside of the United States, which provides the opportunity to reach international audiences. With the demographics of Instagram users and features (namely the explore page and the post-sharing messaging capability) that allow quick and easy content sharing within the platform, one post can spread or be stumbled upon and the organization that posted the original content will spread with it.

Brand awareness:

By being active on Instagram, an organization can easily keep its brand at the forefront of followers’ minds. Out of the adults that use the Internet, around around 30 percent use Instagram. Almost one-third of the 700 million on Instagram are on the platform at least once a day. This provides a lot of opportunities for brands to create awareness.

Expanding the brand:

Most newspapers already have an established brand prior to using Instagram. The platform provides the opportunity to showcase a slightly different aspect of their brand. Due to the uniqueness of the content-sharing capability on Instagram, a traditional approach to content may not work. It’s worth trying to expand the type of content delivered by your specific brand. This opens some doors for well-established organizations.
A great example of a publication achieving all these goals on Instagram is The Economist. They have over one million followers on the platform and receive thousands of engagements (likes and comments) per post. From quotes to short news stories, this publication is using Instagram to draw in more brand awareness, reach new audiences, expand their brand and more – while subtly placing their subscription link in their bio.

Once it’s acknowledged that the pros to using Instagram outweigh the cons, there are ways to effectively utilize this social media platform as a visual representation of an organization.
Here are some ways to follow in the footsteps of publishers that are doing it right:

Most importantly, stay true to the brand:

It’s true that Instagram provides the opportunity to try out some new aspects of the organization, but it’s important not to completely reinvent the brand on Instagram. Social media in general often gives off an informal tone, which can cause the temptation to follow suit. If the organization isn’t playful normally, they shouldn’t try to come off that way over social media. Take a note from a leading brand on Instagram, National Geographic. They replicate their brand through their posts, keeping an educational tone. It doesn’t hold them back – they have 78.3 million users and receive thousands of likes on each post.

Photo by @salvarezphoto (Stephen Alvarez) Soon, this cave will likely only exist photos and memory. A rapidly changing climate is likely to wipe out all glaciers in The lower 48 United States. The science on climate change in not in question. The climate is changing and human use of fossil fuels is the cause. #Paris #ClimateSummit

A post shared by National Geographic (@natgeo) on Jun 2, 2017 at 9:45am PDT

Have amazing content:

This seems like an obvious tip; no one is attempting to produce horrible content. The main point of this one is to produce high caliber content as a priority. Focus on attracting new followers and keeping current followers engaged. On Instagram, there isn’t a ton of room for leading up to the content or posting meaningless content. Also, remember that Instagram is a photography platform, so a strong visual should be the strong point of each post on Instagram, just like it is for The Wall Street Journal:

Descendants of those who fought in World War II carry portraits of their of their ancestors in St. Petersburg, Russia, as they observe the 72nd anniversary of Germany’s surrender. See this, South Korea presidential candidate Moon Jae-in celebrate victory, and more in @wsjphotos photos of the day at the link in our bio. : Dmitri Lovetsky / @ap.images #photooftheday

A post shared by Wall Street Journal (@wsj) on May 9, 2017 at 4:49pm PDT

Tease up future content:

Poytner suggests taking a lesson from CNN’s Instagram, where they “tease for long-form reporting.” When their reporters are on site, they will post photos to Instagram of the reporters in action, with captions hinting at longer, more in-depth stories that will be available on their website. This provides that desire to visit the website that isn’t made easy with Instagram.

CNN’s Fred Pleitgen has just arrived in Iran – and immigration officials rather liked his CNN shirt! Iran’s voters will go to the polls this week in presidential elections that could change the country’s relationship with the international community. Follow @fpleitgencnn and visit CNN.com for the latest updates. @fpleitgencnn #Iran

A post shared by CNN (@cnn) on May 16, 2017 at 4:21am PDT

A place to put extras:

Keeping the content meaningful and engaging is important, as is having a place to showcase this meaningful and engaging content, even if it doesn’t necessarily belong on a primary website. If there are some amazing shots that don’t really work with the story posted on the website, Instagram might just be the place. For example, The Los Angeles Times posted articles about the LA Pride events but they included this photo on Instagram instead of with any of the articles online:

This is the first #LAPride parade that took place in Hollywood in 1970. The police commission tried to deny organizers a permit to gather — citing the potential for violence — but a court decision eventually granted them permission. Check out our Instagram story for L.A. Pride parade moments over the years. : Associated Press.

A post shared by Los Angeles Times (@latimes) on Jun 9, 2017 at 2:20pm PDT

Use it for what you want to:

If this is going to be the place where smaller, less hard-hitting projects will be displayed then that’s what it is going to be! Again, users should stick with the brand, but that doesn’t mean making a Humans of New York style Instagram of the company’s’ staff is going to be detrimental to your organization. Neither will using Instagram to highlight There aren’t rules of what type of content needs to be on Instagram, so you don’t have to align your content with that of which you see in your news feed. Take a note from azcentral who posts content on Instagram ranging from serious news updates to relatable memes:

A post shared by azcentral (@azcentral) on Jun 20, 2017 at 7:40am PDT

Remember:

Instagram is different for every user. While one newsroom is using it to display their hard-hitting news, another organization is successful showcasing their employees’ pets. See what works for the organization and run with it. Most often, first posts aren’t very successful- just think back to the first content you ever posted on social media; it might not have even gotten a single like. That’s because you were still figuring it out. Practice makes perfect.

The post Newspapers and Instagram: Why and How Newspapers Should Use Instagram appeared first on News/Media Alliance.