The typical back-and-forth exchange does not always help people to go off-script. It also does not help audiences understand complex topics. Some media companies now employ themes, games, props and other devices to get their guests talking and audiences hooked. These work best in video series that viewers can subscribe to on platforms like YouTube or follow on Instagram but you can also add a video feature to your website.
Here, we compile some of the best examples of creative interviewing ploys. These videos get thousands - even millions - of views and are a good place to start if you have a creative block.
Challenge videos are trendy on social media.
You see it a lot in sports-related content where fans do "blind rank challenges" which task them to rank players without seeing which player comes next. It can lead to some funny moments when professionals also take part in this popular format.
Football channel GOAL enjoys a lot of success with this, as well as the "stay quiet" challenge and the "build the perfect footballer" challenge. They have also gotten celebrities and famous journalists to take part.
You can tell a lot about someone based on the ten items they cannot live without. That is the thinking on the British GQ's series Ten Essentials, where celebrity guests show and tell their most precious possessions.
Fans will love to see the human side of their idols. And it is guaranteed some light-hearted moments and chuckles.
GQ also runs a series called Actually Me where famous guests respond anonymously to fan questions via social media platforms, and Tattoo Tour as an interesting way for well-known guests to talk about the meaning behind their inkwork.
Any sports fan will tell you that the jersey or shirt holds a lot of significance. For the players, a shirt can remind them of highs and lows, breakthroughs and setbacks, the special moments - and the days to forget.
That is the approach that BT Sport takes with its series 'What I Wore'. The series is hosted by Andrew Mensah who takes football stars through an impressive collection of shirts that tell their career story. That might be the shirt they wore for their first club, one for a stand-out match, even the shirts of their biggest rivals. It prompts the guest to reminisce and open up on their deepest feelings.
Mensah also always asks one question at the end of the interview: if you were in a burning building and you can save two shirts - one for the sentimental value and one for the aesthetic value - which two would you pick?
There is a good reason why universities do not accept citations in your essays from Wikipedia - it is notoriously unreliable.
One series by music news publisher Loudwire allows famous guests to correct the record once and for all, and many are happy to be given the platform to do so. In 'Fact or Fiction', interviewees are presented with a bunch of information pulled from their Wikipedia entries, and they either debunk the claim or add insightful personal anecdotes. Both scenarios happen regularly.
Journalists are taught from day one not to assume knowledge. We are told to either say things like we are explaining it to a child or an elderly person. Why not turn that into reality?
Wired's series '5 Levels' takes tricky topic and explains it in five stages of increasing complexity. How? An expert is brought in to explain the topic to five people each with a very different knowledge base: a child, a teen, a college student, a grad student, and an expert.
For the viewer, this is a natural way to explore tough topics in a way that gets more technical, without jumping the gun.
Other honourable mentions by Wired go to its auto-complete interviews, where famous guests answer questions from 'the web's most searched queries' about them. Other experts, like morticians, are pulled in to respond to common queries about topics of interest. But Wired is not the only publisher to do this style of interview.
There are other ways to draw the audience into an interview. One is with personal questions, the other is through camera techniques. Vanity Fair uses both in its series 'Slow Zoom'.
It does what it says on the tin. It very slowly zooms in on a celebrity guest (using a camera on a sliding track), all the while asking increasingly deep and personal questions. The effect is twofold: the viewer is pulled into the interview visually and emotionally. It also uses greyscale outtakes to reset the camera and move on to the next set of questions.
Amelia Dimoldenberg's hit series 'Chicken Shop Date' sees her interview well-known rappers and musicians in a fried chicken shop under the pretence of a date.
Dimoldenberg told LADbible that she wanted to avoid boring conventional interviews where music artists end up typically talking about influences and tours.
It is a bit bizarre - and there is definitely some acting going on - but in this setting, guests' guards are lowered and no questions are off the table. She has also managed to lure football players and other influencers onto the show.
Sticking with the food theme, the famous Hot Ones challenge - now in its twentieth season - invites celebrity guests onto the show to discuss all manner of subjects - while working through increasingly spicy chicken wings.
Watch astrophysicist Neil deGrasse try to explain the wonders of the universe while enduring severe Scoville levels. Other famous names that have not chickened out include Gordon Ramsay, Elijah Wood, Ricky Gervais and Shaq O'Neal to name a few.
You will find plenty more food-themed interview series on the First We Feast channel, as well.
LADbible might be known for light-hearted, viral content. But it has some serious video series in its locker too, like 'The Gap', bringing together two people a generation apart but with shared experiences.
This can foster some eye-opening conversations about homelessness, mental health of athletes, crime and life as a soldier. It covers how much has changed over time - for better or worse - and what challenges still remain.
A more polarising option can be seen in its series 'Agree to disagree', a head-to-head style interview that pits two people with opposing views together. Sometimes they find common ground, sometimes they reach an impasse. That can be something as light as views on superheroes or as divisive as animal rights.
The first time you try something will usually leave a powerful memory in your mind.
The now-defunct channel Soccer AM by Sky Sports had a good idea with its series "First" which asked guests puerly about their first experiences in the game. The above video with Pep Guardiola explores his first match in management, his first trophy, and his first mistake. That gives a lot of room for follow up questions and revealing insights.
Note also how the video thumbnail is also thematic, with the guest posing with one finger in the air. All their guests do this.
Sky Sports did something similar with Pep Guardiola recently, not as a series, but a video titled "same interview, 8 years later." The idea was to revisit an interview from eight years ago and put the same questions to him to see how much has changed.
It is common for films and video games these days to be based on history, mythology and religion. Naturally, there is no better way to know how faithful it is than to ask an expert.
Video game news publisher IGN invites experts to unpick all the details which games do - and do not - get right in its series 'Expert reacts'. Reaction videos have become a standard format on platforms like YouTube, and this series definitely takes inspiration from this.
Insider does something very similar with its series 'How Real Is It?' which uses experts to assess how accurate movie scenes are.
Rule one of interviewing is research and this is really just a lesson in taking preparedness to the extreme. Nardwuar is an eccentric, one-of-a-kind music journalist who built his name through forensically-specific questions to music artists.
Viewer discretion: the below video contains a lot of swearing and bad language. But watch as Nardwaur stuns his interviewees by bringing up the most niche of knowledge - think high school radio stations, debut stage names, childhood friends, pet projects and demo releases.
He even presented Snoop Dogg with a VHS copy of his debut film, that not even he had in his possession. Guaranteed laughs, reactions and original insights.
Let us know any more of your favourite examples
]]>It was not.
Facebook News, the platform's dedicated news tab for journalism, launched with much fanfare just before the pandemic in 2019. Brought to market first in the US, and then internationally across Europe and in Australia, Facebook News was curated by humans and an algorithm, aiming to ensure local relevance and that fact-based journalism would be given its proper voice on the platform.
The very existence of Facebook News was a testament to the fact that Meta (then, still known as Facebook) had a problem: In a world where half of people get their news from the platform, fact-based journalism was under attack.
The removal of Facebook News will make it that much harder for millions of people to access fact-based journalism. The ultimate result is a citizenry with a warped view of society, in which extremists are given a bigger microphone than the rest of us, and doomscrolling leaves us with a deep-seated animosity toward our neighbors, our society, and ourselves.
Large tech conglomerates wield a diverse arsenal to limit the reach of the free press, from algorithmic downranking of news to monopolising advertising revenue. These platforms have also shown their willingness to align with authoritarian regimes at the expense of freedom of speech, such as when Twitter censored the Turkish Election and Facebook censored citizens in Vietnam.
Today's dominant social media platforms are all ad-based. Their profits rely on capturing and keeping your attention at any cost, including amplifying the extremes. These tech giants have learned that the more toxic, enraging, and divisive the content they surface, the more engaged their user bases become, resulting in more time spent on their platforms and more associated ad views.
With Europe rolling out its Digital Services Act, the situation will only get worse. As governments attempt to force platforms to pay journalists for their hard work, Meta and others are getting ready to protect their wallets – and to avoid regulation, the only real threat to their monopolies.
In Australia, platforms like Google simply paid up when the government passed new legislation requiring them to compensate publishers for content distributed through their platforms.
In Canada, Meta went nuclear, blocking the sharing of all news content outright – by users or by publishers – greatly limiting the reach of fact-based news. This occurred even as wildfires blazed across the continent and governments attempted to share timely information to keep their citizens safe.
While Meta says it has no such plans to block news-sharing in Europe, that stance could change at any time. (Facebook has a long history, documented in US congressional hearings, of doing what serves its interests best, then apologising to those it harms.)
Of course, these tech titans are justified in their fear of regulation. The Digital Services Act will greatly impede the platforms' ability to capture, store, and share data – and, likely, their bottom lines.
Conversely, journalists, editors, and publishers would do well to rethink their own distribution strategies and business models before Big Tech gets even more reactionary. Here’s how:
An informed citizenry is necessary for a free and democratic society. To ensure fact-based journalism survives and thrives, we need to stop being reactive and start charting our own destiny. We need to say, "enough is enough," and seek out alternatives that compensate news organisations fairly while building a smarter, more civil society.
Noam Bardin is the founder of Post, a social news platform for real news, real people, and civil conversations. Prior to launching Post in 2022, Noam founded and served as CEO of Waze, one of the world's most talked-about startups through its acquisition by Google in June 2013.
]]>The platform rolled out collaborative articles in March. These articles are generated initially by AI and then tweaked by the editorial team. This can be on a wide range of professional topics, like calming public speaking nerves, managing burnout and so on. Head to the collaborative article section, filter by sector and start browsing.
They are like blog posts with the ability to comment on different sections. Only, LinkedIn is selective over who can have their say and they want journalists to join the party.
"Journalists and media professionals bring deep subject matter expertise and knowledge across a vast array of topics to LinkedIn’s community," says Julien Wettstein, head of editorial, EMEA at LinkedIn in an email to Journalism.co.uk.
What's in it for journalists? Good question. LinkedIn says journalists can expect to grow their following and reach new audiences by getting involved. There may also be some prestige up for grabs.
People can earn a light gold Community Top Voices badge if they become one of the top contributors for a particular skill or topic. This is awarded for consistent contributions that are "relevant, original, and additive". The badge expires after 60 days if users cannot keep up this commitment. Users can have multiple badges for different topics, all of which are subject to the same rules and guidelines.
Note: this is not to be confused with the LinkedIn Top Voices (formerly the LinkedIn influencer program), which is a blue badge on your profile or next to a comment.
The Community Top Voices is a shortcut for newcomers and time-poor users to achieve some standing on the platform. Posting a comment is easier than creating original content. LinkedIn confirmed that nearly half of collaborative article contributors are members who are not regular content creators.
Wettstein points to the LinkedIn for Journalists programme, a dedicated place for training and resources, and LinkedIn News, which curates and amplifies journalists' articles, as other ways LinkedIn wants to attract journalists. No signs of opportunities to monetise content, though.
Juliana Chan is a Singaporean media entrepreneur, formerly a biomedical researcher with a Ph.D. degree in Biology from MIT. In 2018, she walked away from a tenure-track academic career to pursue social impact through science communication.
Today, she is the founder and CEO of Wildtype Media Group, Asia's leading STEM-focused media company and publisher of Asian Scientist Magazine, an award-winning science and technology title that highlights Asian research and development news stories.
In November 2020, she was among 16 experts chosen to be a part of the inaugural cohort of LinkedIn's Top Voices for Singapore. The selection process is a qualitative and quantitative assessment of user posts over a 12-month period.
Chan has 68k followers on LinkedIn. Being a Top Voice, she says, is attractive for potential clients and a welcome confidence boost in her ability. However, she has found other features more beneficial. This includes appearing in LinkedIn's weekly newsletters and speaking opportunities given by the platform.
She has been invited to participate in the collaborative articles but has not yet jumped in. She praised efforts to democratise who can be a 'Top Voice' on the platform, even though it requires significant input from the user.
"LinkedIn’s editorial strategy is to reward content creators who invest significant amounts of time, painstaking effort and energy into posting quality content on its platform," Chan says in an email to Journalism.co.uk.
"I am heartened that LinkedIn is finding more and more ways to reward their content creators. If LinkedIn treats its creators well, all of us will reciprocate with renewed enthusiasm and invest even more time into creating content for the platform. That's the law of reciprocity for you."
]]>Since its very recent launch, Meta’s text-based app Threads has attracted the interest of journalists and media organisations. However, given the uncertainty surrounding the new platform’s future, newsrooms and social media teams feel cautious about directing resources to it.
Digital media expert Matt Navarra thinks that Threads represents an opportunity for media professionals to expand their reach to a highly community-oriented platform. Like Twitter before it, Threads could evolve into an outlet for content distribution with an immense user base.
But Threads is still in its early stages so it is hard to determine what the most successful publishing strategy. Initial low-risk experiments can use insights from other digital platforms like Twitter or TikTok.
Although Threads still lacks many of the features which made Twitter the go-to platform for news content, Meta’s latest update announcements around interoperability with other apps - including Twitter’s competitor Mastodon - might bring novelty for digital content distribution.
]]>The comparison with Twitter is inevitable, mostly because of very similar functionalities and timing. Threads was officially launched on 5 July, four days after Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced a cap on users’ tweet views.
Digital media consultant Matt Navarra said Threads’ main strength currently lies in the mass engagement generated by Meta’s own magnitude and attention gathering around the platform as a Twitter alternative.
"There isn't anything standout that separates it from Twitter at the moment. The main differential is it's not run by Elon Musk, and that there is a better base level standard of content moderation and community standards in terms of what's permitted on the platform," Navarra said.
Threads’ current features seem to target a Twitter-based audience. The basic functions such as stacked-up posts, repost and reply are all elements which marked the success of Twitter communication.
However, the platform still lacks some functionalities which are essential to media professionals. These include accessibility features and news-friendly functions such as a chronological timeline or hashtags to search and follow topics.
The reason might be that Threads is not designed for hard news and politics content. Instagram head Adam Mosseri explained in a thread discussion that the platform does not want to replace Twitter or encourage posts about politics and hard news.
"It makes sense they would say that," Matt Navarra commented, "given Meta has spent the last couple of years trying to distance itself from the news industry. News content is always going to bring about problems to do with content moderation and the sorts of quite fiery discussions that kick off on Twitter surrounding that kind of content."
But, he warned, "for Threads to achieve the status of new digital town square, as equivalent to Twitter, it needs journalists and news publishers to be present on the platform."
News professionals are interested in Threads. Gemma Farrell, social media editor at the Telegraph, said it represents "a fascinating opportunity" for social media teams pivoting away from a Twitter-centred strategy.
"Threads is providing the ability to experiment with an Instagram/Twitter hybrid," Farrell said.
Rather than fully reproducing the Twitter experience, success on the new platform seems to depend on leveraging outlets’ existing Instagram following.
"The opportunity for fresh strategy has seen established news outlets adopt a more informal tone already on the platform. Like Instagram, Threads already feels like a place for a more visual-first strategy, which we can also see many publishers trying out, focusing on standalone images, picture galleries and graphics," Farrell explained.
Much of the platform’s future, she added, "hinges first on the changes Meta makes to its development, and second, the innovative ways social media teams can harness it."
This is especially true for independent media platforms and freelancers. Suswati Basu, editor and the host of the How To Be… Books Podcast, said she found her Instagram audience crucial for the podcast’s successful move to Threads.
"The Bookstagram community completely transferred over from one platform to the other, hence in a day I had over 1,000 followers. It allows me now to directly interact with each of the followers rather than just send comments below images," Basu said.
Pete Carvill is a freelance editor, writer and reporter based in Germany, where Threads has yet to become available. However, he is determined not to miss out on the opportunity to expand his platform for professional self-branding.
"Reporters and writers have to be their own brands nowadays. We can’t rely on a title to market us. I see it as a somewhat unfortunate but intrinsic part of the job," Carvill said.
It is unlikely that news publishers and freelancers will desert Twitter for Threads anytime soon. They certainly perceive it as an opportunity to expand and build up audiences.
]]>The report ‘Pressing Matters’ builds on two previously published papers in the same area of study; ‘Breaking the News’ by Matthew Lesh for IEA and ‘Meta and the News: Assessing the Value of the Bargain’ by Jeffery A Eisenach of NERA Economic Consulting.
Australia's News Bargaining Code was an unprecedented piece of legislation adopted by the Australian parliament in 2021. It argued that big tech platforms, chiefly Meta and Google, dominated the digital advertising ecosystem, undercutting news publishers. The Code was successful in allowing publishers to negotiate repayments estimated at around AU$200m. Now, other countries like Canada are trying to follow suit.
However, the 'Pressing Matters' paper finds that the market power of these platforms is "significantly overestimated". It argues that existing repayment mechanisms could stunt tech platforms' development and do long-term harm to consumer interests.
It also says that cases of market dominance should be dealt with by domestic competition law, rather than "custom-made" regulations that are prone to lobbying from interest groups.
"There's a motivation here in the minds of too many people which says that the platforms are damaging traditional news providers and moves straight to the conclusion that the platforms ought to be paying news providers," says Dr James Forder, academic research director and author of the paper.
The traffic from Facebook to news publishers is estimated to be worth something like 1 per cent or 1.5 per cent of the publishers' total revenue, according to the paper. If Facebook was not there, that traffic would probably come by other routes.
At the same time, Twitter - which does not pay for news either - is not seen as having disproportionate market power and publishers are not seeking payments from the platform. Surprisingly though, Twitter will soon enable micropayments for news articles although there was no negotiation or pressure from publishers.
One of the problems with Australia-style bargaining codes is that the payments disproportionally benefit the largest publishers who can keep on lobbying governments and regulators and are least in need of subsidy.
The economics of news publishing is unlikely to improve simply by forcing tech platforms to pay out settlements. So far, publishers benefit more from platform-to-publisher payments than the platforms ever did from freely hosting news content.
Dr Forder recommends that countries weighing up their own News Bargaining Code need to properly assess whether market dominance is truly occurring.
"If Meta and Google are not abusing market power it’s absolutely crucial that we would not be making them pay because they are the agents of progress."
]]>"I'd suggest it's none of those. The enemy is inertia," says Edward Roussel, head of digital at The Times and Sunday Times, in a keynote speech at Newsrewired this week (23 May 2023).
Sitting still is simply not an option for news organisations regardless of the odds stacked against them.
Roussel lays bare the economic issues: the UK economy is contracting 0.3 per cent this year, the worst of all G7 countries. Subscription fatigue is kicking in amid the cost of living crisis, as 1m Britons cancel subscription services. Print costs have doubled in the space of two years with print advertising taking hit.
"When you’re in a recession, your best bet is to double down on your existing customers," he continues. "You’ve got 24 hours to win over a digital customer."
Times Media is taking a data-science-led approach to retaining subscribers. Getting them to download the app, finish a puzzle or sign up for a newsletter will significantly decrease their propensity to cancel. Those who engage beyond the 24-hour window are twice as likely to stick around.
The Times Media has around 500k digital subscribers, 73k coming in the last 12 months. That is down to a culture change internally. Gone are the days of print-focused news meetings and stories that were crafted with newspapers in mind. Now, there are three daily meetings at 8 am, 10:30 am and 3 pm and they all centre around digital.
"Any conversation about print is banned, we're only talking about digital news stories," says Roussel.
"It's not until 5 pm that an editor will look at a flat plan for print. The entire day is dedicated to the planning and commissioning of digital stories."
Multimedia elements matter a lot more now. Times Media's pandemic expansion into radio illustrates its audio commitment, bringing in 500-600k listeners every week. Increasingly, its investigations emphasise visual reporting, like graphics and photography.
Digital brings with it a broader audience and Roussel is eyeing up further expansion into the US, which makes up roughly 10 per cent of its subscriber base.
Read more: Subscription retention strategies from Times Media, Washington Post, DC Thomson and The Conversation
Disruption to Facebook in recent years, and Twitter of late, is making some media companies sweat. But not Times Media: only about three to four per cent of its overall traffic came from Facebook before it started to pull its support for news businesses.
It has been more detrimental for social-first brands like BuzzFeed News and Vice, both of which closed this year. Since 2020, Facebook referral traffic dropped 85 per cent for the former and 89 per cent for the latter.
"That’s the coup de grâce for a number of media companies who were entirely reliant on social media," Roussel says.
Mousetrap Media/Mark Hakansson
Mobile users are too big to ignore though, as Apple News tops the charts as the most popular news app (13.4m) just in front of BBC News (13m). Tied-third Upday (2.7m), owned by Samsung, paints a picture of phone companies that are suddenly important to the news industry.
Google is also changing fast, with its search "becoming a destination, rather than a conduit". The search engine is a significant source of traffic for media publishers, but Roussel says that the clickthrough rate to publishers' websites is on the decline.
He adds that publishers need to make some bets. News Corps (owner of Times Media) has extended its deal with Apple News+, first started in 2019, which brings in up to 1m daily readers from new demographics and locations. It is also bundling Apple Classical Music into the Times subscription package.
Generative AI is an area where Times Media will tread carefully. Roussel's view is that it is better to be an "active actor" amongst disruptive forces. Questions around the source of its data, licensing potential and referral model still need answering though.
The third big headache is the state of news avoidance and trust, as only a third of people in the UK trust the news, and nearly half are avoiding it.
An obsession with politics and negativity in the news agenda are some of the largest reasons for these figures but it is difficult to break the mould.
"The media is caught in a loop because negative arousing headlines can attract more clicks than positive or neutral headlines, creating a perverse incentive for news companies to spread negative content," Roussel says.
"But the long-term impact of that direction is that people switch off. So what do we do about it?"
Read more: How to counter news avoidance? Give readers a stake in the story or their news outlet of choice
Times Media is focusing on cutting out hyperbole and alarmist language and emphasising constructive, contextual and factual reporting. This can be seen in The Times' campaigns around cleaning up rivers as part of its environmental coverage.
"None of these issues needs to be a weighty problem for you, provided we do what we’ve always done: continuously reinvent the model," concludes Roussel.
]]>You can show the behind-the-scenes of your daily work or provide exclusive content for your most loyal followers. It can be beneficial to show that the hard-working journalist is just another human at the end of the day. An added benefit of going this extra mile is that your audience starts to become familiar with the news brand you work for.
Different platforms offer different capabilities. Want to get your creative juices flowing? Here we round up some inspiring journalists and content creators to help you get the ball moving.
The standard piece-to-camera tests any reporter's ability to deliver a clear and punchy script. Anna Holligan is a foreign correspondent for BBC News based in Hague, The Netherlands. The experienced reporter has become so adept at her job, she decided to turn the difficulty up a notch on her Twitter video series Dutch news from the cycle path.
Here, she can nail a news briefing while two-way filming herself and cycling through the Dutch city. Check out the amazing feat of multi-tasking below.
The numbers are impressive too. A single video can fetch around 34k views and 400 engagements on Twitter.
Hi friends 🌷🌷🌷
— anna holligan 🎙 (@annaholligan) March 23, 2023
Your sunshine-infused Dutch News from the Cycle Path… with some extra loveliness today 💐#dnftcp
🛍🚲🚲🌸 pic.twitter.com/vnx42svKJY
One piece of equipment any TV presenter or anchor will know well is the teleprompter - AKA the autocue - which displays text for an anchor or TV presenter to read off.
Megan Healy, an award-winning reporter for Fox 5 San Diego, found a clever way to engage viewers with her daily work.
During the pandemic, she used TikTok and Instagram Reels, to put out 'prompter challenge' videos, letting her audience try their hand at her day job.
They got shared far and wide on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. An effective audience engagement strategy. Harder than it looks, right?
Anyone who has spent any time drifting through YouTube knows that the social video platform attracts a certain kind of content creator personality. Light, fun, snappy, and insightful; these are all necessary qualities to stand out in such a crowded space.
Not many journalists are focusing on YouTube. But Johnny Harris, a filmmaker, journalist and senior producer who has worked for Vox Media, is nailing his presence on the platform with short and medium-length explainer documentaries.
He has done reflective takes on his career in journalism, and a whole lot more unpicking complex topics with humour, wit and intelligence. He has 3.85m subscribers for a reason.
Type the word "journalist" into Facebook search and you will see many reporters with their own pages set up to keep followers in the loop with their latest stories. Pumping out links to their bylines seems to be their end goal though.
This is a missed opportunity to develop a deeper relationship with your audience. Look at Romeo Agresti, the Juventus correspondent for sports publication Goal.com, reporting on Juventus football club.
Agresti also has a popular Instagram and YouTube presence but on Facebook, he shares sneak peek-style videos on the beat he covers.
The point is, if you have an exciting beat, show the world the tantalising access that you have. This is engaging content for passionate followers.
There is an untold number of headaches that freelancers will relate to. Whatever industry you work in, if you are freelance, you will understand what it is like to chase payments or find a sweet spot of pricing.
Jamie Brindle hits the nail on the head with his Instagram Reels videos. He is the founder of Brindlescotch, a B2B content production company, but has built up a strong following online through freelancing advice videos.
In true TikTok trending style, he plays the role of a rookie and pro freelancer. On a given topic, he acts out advice being handed down from one to the other on topics like networking, raising your rate, going full-time and so on.
What is really clever about these videos is that they make full use of the "looping" aspect of Reels and TikTok videos, so the conversation between the two characters is edited in a way that keeps the video rolling naturally over and over again (watch logged in for best results). Journalists can be inspired by the editing skills here to make this work, but also by playing into a niche and having a good sense of platform trends.
He also collaborates with a lot of other content creators, from podcasters to YouTubers, to help spread his presence.
Who do we need to add to the list? Get in touch and let us know.
]]>One thing is sure - the relationship between platforms and news publishers has gotten frostier this year and there is no sign of it warming up. So if you are trying to solve the I-hate-platforms-but-the-audience-is-there dilemma in the year to come, read on.
Other articles in this series:
The relationship between platforms and publishers will largely continue to be the same as in 2022. Except for Twitter, which is going through huge changes around ownership and content moderation.
Elon Musk has not got a lot of patience or interest in building bridges with journalists and news publishers. But he must recognise that one of Twitter’s USPs has been its ability to distribute news content and that has been largely driven by journalists.
His relationship with the news media is very antagonistic, though, so it is going to be a much more difficult and less cooperative environment. It will also be harder for publishers to develop new products on the platform. It is possible that presence on Twitter will become untenable with its new policies, especially around content moderation.
Meta is also further distancing itself from journalism, shutting down resources and products for journalists and redirecting resources to metaverse.
TikTok, being one of the worst platforms for disinformation, presents journalists with new opportunities to use it to their advantage. It will be adopted by more news publishers in the year ahead.
Mastodon or Hive are the most talked about as alternatives to Twitter but they all have their flaws. There is more appetite for building private and closed communities on spaces like Discord or Telegram. These present an opportunity for news publishers to experiment with new formats and niche content.
With the success of platforms like TikTok, news brands will have to behave more like creators in the way they produce content and engage with their audiences. They will need to find hybrid business models and support individuals that may be more important that the news brand, like CNN’s Max Foster or VICE’s Sophia Smith Galer. Those organisations that will hire strong personalities who will deliver on these platforms are the ones that are going to succeed in the year ahead.
The platforms will continue to regroup, and review their engagement with the news sector. TikTok will be centre stage. The news industry has understandably focused on its allure for younger audiences, but it is important not to overlook its impact on advertising: TikTok is siphoning advertising revenues away from traditional media products and the timing could not have been worse.
News media need to focus on how to do things now that social media is not what it used to be, with Twitter and Facebook distancing themselves from journalists.
This, however, is a good thing. Social media never really benefited us. Sure, we got some traffic, but that traffic came at the cost of the erosion of loyalty, low-quality and low-converting traffic, and a journalistic focus that made our direct traffic perform worse as well.
We can see this clearly in the studies about news consumption. The countries with the highest level of social news consumption are also the countries where newspapers often perform the worst.
So, the combination of Facebook giving up on news, and the very clear data that newspapers benefit from when they focus on direct shows us how to think about this in the future.
In 2023, many publishers will have to think long and hard about this and start to experiment with how to make direct traffic work again.
Content moderation has been a thread running through many publishers' coverage over the last 12 months due to Elon Musk's takeover and incoming platform regulation in the UK and Europe. 2023 will see it come into focus for a number of reasons.
Firstly, as Twitter and other platforms reinstate previously banned users, we are likely to see whole news cycles regarding account takedowns and the reactions of other prominent users to these moderation decisions. Think Ye (formerly Kanye West) and Alex Jones but every week. With so many mini-narratives to keep track of, I expect (and hope) that we will see online speech reporting becoming distinct from technology and general news publishers investing resources in technology policy coverage that impacts millions of people every day. The smartest outlets will appoint specialists with deep knowledge of shadowbanning and deplatforming who can unpack the many tradeoffs for readers.
Secondly, much like there was with GDPR, there is work to be done to ensure news organisations comply with regulations due in 2023. For example, the EU's Digital Services Act requires all online platforms to publish public transparency reports with information on content moderation measures, something very few outlets currently do. Other legislation, like the UK's Online Safety Bill, contains "duties to protect journalistic content"; but who does that apply to and what does it mean exactly in practice? UK publishers would be wise to look for guidance on how to comply with the intended regular Ofcom in the spring next year.
]]>But that does not mean that publishers have found new audiences - the latest report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) found that most news content is created by influencers, activists or ordinary people. With this comes a justified worry about misinformation.
RISJ tracked publisher activity across more than 40 countries and it found that around half of top news outlets are now regularly publishing content on TikTok. Most news brands in Indonesia, Australia, Spain, France and UK (81 per cent) are active on the platform, but countries like Italy (29 per cent) or Denmark have been slower to get going.
Read more: Forget Facebook: four publishers share tips on growing audiences on other social platforms
For publishers anxious to attract younger audiences, TikTok seems a godsend, as the majority of its users are under 25s. But many journalists are also keen to provide reliable news in the sea of misinformation TikTok has become known for.
Those who are not jumping on the TikTok bandwagon often worry about the Chinese ownership of the platform and its implication for free speech. Some are also sceptical of its limited monetisation options, wary of investing heavily in creating content for a social platform and hoping for traffic referral (pivot to video, anyone?)
"It is a platform in which there are a lot of young readers, young viewers," says Fabrizio Barbato, CFO of Ciaopeople, which owns Fanpage, as quoted in the report. "We thought that we should be present on it, even if there is no direct business model right now."
How News Publishers Are Using TikTok in 2022 📊📈📰
— Matt Navarra - Exiting X… Follow me on Threads (@MattNavarra) December 8, 2022
🔥👇 Highlights of @risj_oxford NEW TikTok Report 👇🔥 pic.twitter.com/bJxmQvmSQ1
Although TikTok launched in 2018, its growth was boosted by lockdowns during the covid-19 pandemic, when young people, trapped at home, started to experiment with short video and share their experiences. The simple setup and interface make it easy to use, which helped its rapid spread.
Very little is known about the TikTok algorithm, other than that it is very addictive and gets people scrolling for hours as feeds are heavily personalised. Here is how it works: as soon as a video is published, it is shown to a handful of people and, based on their engagement, it either becomes more popular or not. Then it is shown to more people and so on. This makes it highly efficient and allows for highly personalised user feeds.
Unlike Twitter and Facebook, TikTok does not give publishers any preferential treatment. The process of getting 'verified' status is opaque and even established news outlet struggle to get the blue tick.
On the flip side, this acts as a democratising force for content creators. There is little wonder that well-known social media brands like NowThis are leading the way with some 5.5m followers. But TikTok also allowed non-English language newcomers to thrive. Spanish startup Ac2ality, for instance, has amassed 3.9m followers.
There’s an insightful report about TikTok journalism that is out today from @risj_oxford. Here are my takeaways from it - and hello! If you have no idea who I am, I'm a VICE World News reporter + TikTokker who has had more than 130 million views. Ok, let's go 🧵 1/ pic.twitter.com/K7dPKKgBav
— Sophia Smith Galer FRSA (@sophiasgaler) December 8, 2022
However, because of the algorithm, the number of followers matters less for the popularity of the clips than engagement. Those brands who invest in TikTok-specific content, rather than republishing videos from elsewhere, see much higher engagement.
Whatever the popularity though, the lack of monetisation opportunities is a major obstacle for publishers to launch on TikTok. Subscription-based brands, such as the New York Times, stayed largely away, probably for this reason, and so did some public broadcasters like BBC News which was concerned about the fun-dance platform not being conducive to serious journalism. Freedom of speech and unclear rules around content moderation do nothing to entice them.
But the argument with TikTok is the same one that has always been there with social platforms - publishers need to be there because younger audiences are there, even if they do not pay (for now).
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