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Strategies & case studies to transform your newsroom
Heyyyyyyy guyssssss, it’s Kristen here with another edition of my newsletter for the people who love and work in local news.
Sorry.
That’s my best YouTube voice and now you see why I’m not on YouTube. As a mom, the video platform is an ever-present part of my life. (I will never understand unboxing.) But as a journalist, YouTube has been pretty invisible. This is true for a lot of us. Maybe we work with words, audio, photos, or video, but we probably aren’t thinking about a social-first strategy for our work. (Some of you are, I know. I see you
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But there’s a lot to learn from the social media platforms that the youngest people in our communities are the most engaged with. After a year of work with three local newsrooms, my colleagues at Poynter’s VidSpark just published a playbook for social video strategy
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. You can find best
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practices
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, case studies from The Minneapolis Star Tribune
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, GBH News
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and 10 Tampa Bay.
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These aren’t guides to show you how to weave TikTok dances into your reporting. They employ investigative journalism, civics and breaking news. And most of us need to learn some of VidSpark’s biggest lessons, regardless of our platform or medium.
In her introduction to the playbook, my colleague Ahsante Bean, Poynter’s editor and program manager for video strategy, wrote about taking a community-building approach. It’s one that grows audiences slowly over time in a way that’s sustainable and builds relationships.
That matters for all the work we’re doing, not just social video. It takes building communities of people who care about what you’re doing, want to see your work and feel invested in it. That takes understanding the audiences you’re trying to reach, getting the details around presentation and discovery right, and making it easy for people to find and explore what you’ve made. It’s NOT about clicks or virality.
Bean told me the biggest shift for the newsrooms that spent the last year with VidSpark was understanding how people consume video content and prioritizing the viewership experience. I’d argue that’s true for all journalism. How are people reading/listening/watching local news and how can we make that a place they want to return to?
Bean learned how in tune local journalists are with their communities and that they are often not included in the national vitriol around “the media.” That offers a huge opportunity to show up in people’s feeds, wherever they are, she said, and show the value of local journalism.
Most of us won’t build viral YouTube channels or massive audiences in our communities overnight. It’s all a long game, Bean said.
“Trust is earned, right? Put in the time, care and attention. It pays off in the long run.”
Yes. I will like, subscribe and follow all of that.
FROM OUR SPONSOR:
When it comes to new year's resolutions, one of the biggest gifts you could give yourself—and your newsroom—in 2021 is a "Stop Doing" list
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. Learn how the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel uncovered time and resources by getting clear on what activities were actually holding them back. Read more
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While you're here:
I screwed up a link I shared last week. The link was correct
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, but I got the name of L.A.’s Crosstown wrong. Sorry!
The News & Observer’s Tyler Dukes tweeted about a new weekly investigative journalism newsletter he’s created for a class. This is such a great idea. Check it out
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.
Local Media Association has a new climate collaborative
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. Apply by Feb. 28.
Big congrats to two long-time local journalists on retirement: Scott Keeler from the Tampa Bay Times
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and Gracie Bonds Staples from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
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I’m very excited to see what Mitra Kalita and Sara Lomax-Reese are building
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with URL Media
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, a new network “seeking to expand local news on Black and brown communities to national audiences.”
In case you missed it, this piece on why audience teams matter
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really resonated with Poynter readers this week.
Read “Local News Publishers Need to Dig Deeper for a Better Advertising Model”
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from Editor & Publisher.
From the American Bar Association, check out this guide to avoiding systemic racism in reporting
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CJR has a great look at a local newsroom in Vermont that emerged from the pandemic
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TEGNA’s Verify is expanding!
I wrote an obit for the Tampa Bay Times about a local trophy maker
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who was also a great friend and neighbor.
In my obits newsletter
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, I shared that famous Jimmy Breslin story and how memorials brought President Kennedy and Clifton Pollard, his grave digger, full circle.
And for my fellowship with RJI, I wrote about the process of building something, which, like this newsletter shows, takes time
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That’s it for me, I wish you slow news days and meet-able deadlines,
Kristen
Have you been inspired by the stories in Local Edition? The nonprofit Poynter Institute relies on the generosity of readers like you to cover the transformation of local news, which is rapidly accelerating during this global pandemic.
Please make a gift to Poynter to support this work.
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