Friday 21st January: The public don't only equate 'news' with 'journalists'

January 21, 2022

Good morning! Today's newsletter is brought to you by Chris.

Here's a really good thought experiment, and one that gave me pause when I tried it myself. Take a look at your news consumption across traditional platforms, social channels, wherever you typically seek out current affairs and analysis. How many of those sharing it would consider themselves to be journalists? I was surprised by how much news I get from people who have never so much as used the word lede, and how specific the niche that the actual journalists inhabit actually is.

For her Time Spent newsletter, Jihii Jolly makes a compelling argument that we need to divorce the terms 'news' and 'journalist': "Are the scientists I follow on Twitter giving me “news”? Does the gossip I heard through my friend become news once I verify and disseminate it? If the New York Times, a TikTok influencer and WebMD all provide me with the exact same wellness information, which one is news? You get the idea."

As we seek to communicate with our audiences it's vital we think about what they perceive to be news, and who provides it to them. I hate to trot out the hoary old term 'mainstream media', but it's clear that the public does not delineate what does and doesn't count as news quite as strictly as we in the biz do.

I've looked at the metaverse all week for The Drum. One thing we didn't have time to explore was whether news has a place on metaverse platforms - and while the answer is obviously 'not yet' there's more nuance to the discussion than you might think. Please do not send me your hate mail for this one; I'm just the messenger.

Really good insight into the BBC's Instagram strategy here from Charlotte Tobitt. The more interesting thing for me, though, was the amount of eye-rolling that accompanied the reasons it's avoided TikTok to date. My Twitter feed was full to the brim with people bemoaning what they see as short-sightedness on the Beeb's part.

We've thought about using Twitter Spaces - so it's good to know we're in good company. "We're starting to wonder, 'Okay, can this work as a social audio conversation? How can we get more voices on this whether from the audience or our sources?'"

This week's podcast:

In this special podumentary episode of Media Voices, Esther talks to four local news start-ups: Borderless, Santa Cruz Local, the San Jose Spotlight, and The Mendocino Voice. They discuss what drove them to start their publication, what business models they’re choosing to use, and some of the challenges they’ve faced launching a media business.

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