Tag: #future

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“Everyone should be required to do something to innovate every year”

For our study on Gen Z and news consumption for Mediengruppe Wiener Zeitung I interviewed the independent news creator Sophia Smith Galer. Sophia used to work for the BBC and Vox Media before going independent, she doesn’t only do journalism herself but also helps other journalists getting better at publishing on platforms like TikTok where younger audiences tend to be. Among other things, she serves on the Future Board of Mediahuis.  

Sophia, what do media organizations need to know if they want to reach young people today? 

Sophia Smith Galer: They need to understand young people’s viewing habits and reading habits and where they feel overserved and underserved. 

Is there something like “the younger audience”, or how would you segment it? 

Young people are not one monolith. Their habits vary depending on every demographic mix. Proper audience needs research would reveal those differences in detail. But it takes a lot of time of being on these platforms to figure out how to give audiences what they want. For example, young men can be reached more easily on YouTube, female audiences on Instagram. But ever since I left my BBC job, I never had the remit of reaching young people. My remit is just that I reach people.

Some media brands have experienced that: If they aim to reach young people, they discover they reach broader audiences.  

A lot of people will say that if they grow on platforms associated with young audiences like TikTok, YouTube, or Instagram, they will find growth, discoverability and awareness rising amongst audience far older. If you grow, you grow.

You worked for the BBC and Vice and turned to be an independent journalist creator in 2023. What do you know about the audiences you are reaching? 

To take Instagram where I’m the most active, my audiences are primarily in the 25 to 34 age bracket. That makes sense: I am 31 years old, a lot of creators tend to reach their own age group. But there are factors beyond one’s control. I’m British, but Americans are my biggest audience on Instagram, even though I spent just a few weeks of my life in America. So, it’s a great tool for discoverability across borders. 

You left the BBC in 2021 to get more creative freedom. These days you are advising Belgium-based Mediahuis on their Future Insights Board. What do you think about the ability of legacy media to advance with younger audiences?

A lot of the newsrooms that are making high-quality social media content on places like Instagram and TikTok are halfway there. That is if they have prioritized vertical video which is the growth engine right now. The big but is that publisher accounts simply do not have the reach or appeal that individual accounts have on these platforms. Audiences are drawn to influential expert individuals, and I think that more journalists should be occupying those roles and disseminating information themselves. 

So, it is key for legacy organizations to empower their individual journalists?

Definitely. Many journalists have to rely on a small, very underresourced video team in their newsroom that is in charge of the newsroom’s entire digital presence. That’s simply not how social media works. Social media is a peer-to-peer network of individuals. 

Do you see examples of organizations doing a good job at this?

In the marketing and commercial worlds, you’re seeing companies taking advantage of concepts like EGC – employee-generated content. Some offer staff incentives and training to be better ambassadors of their work. And to do that safely and freely and have fun with it and get benefits from it, staff need to have the freedom to post without being micromanaged. In fact, journalists could be very good at this because they are used to standing up for their work. A print journalist may appear on broadcast media to represent their work, for example. This is not different from representing your work on a platform like TikTok.

But even that is challenging for many journalists who have been trained to keep a low profile as individuals and disappear behind their reporting and their brand. 

A lot of journalists I have trained or surveyed say they don’t have the video skills, and they don’t have the time. But if they have too many obstacles to become ambassadors of their work, they will remain invisible online. And if they are invisible, their work will be invisible. That’s what really worries me, even more because a lot of the information on Instagram and TikTok is not good. It could really be improved if we had better storytellers there.

You just published a report on a sample of 526 UK journalists, revealing that the majority lacks a strong following on the platforms that matter with the public. They hang out among themselves on X when they could be reaching audiences on Insta, TikTok and YouTube. Is that because they don’t want to or because they don’t get the opportunity by their publishers? 

There are two groups: those who want to do this but haven’t been able to and those who really don’t want to do this. They do not think it is the job of a journalist today to amplify their work on social media. Obviously, I disagree with that personally. But I do come from a public service journalism background where it was really drummed into me that if I do journalism, the whole point is that as many people as physically possible can see it. If you’re not a public service journalist, maybe you can afford to not want to upskill yourself to put your journalism on social media.

Is it also because many journalists still expect people to come to them rather than the other way round?

They may possess quite hierarchical views of the newsroom. In the UK, we’re still seeing an environment where the output of the social media teams may not be seen as prestigious as the output of other teams. We need to stop talking about vertical video as innovation and start talking about it as platform risk mitigation. We need to make sure that we remain visible in an increasingly fragmenting online space where video is getting more important and where a lot of us are digitally homeless following the exodus from X.

What would you advise editors-in-chief to do? 

Newsrooms get the best results if they work with reporter talent who do original, distinctive journalism that is connected to the signature content of the newsroom and wins paying subscribers. This is a way to really amplify not only what you stand for, what you write or film or publish about, but what’s why you’re worth being paid. Identifying that talent and nurturing them and keeping hold of them is its own art, but there are plenty of frameworks from existing journalism structures to rely on. It isn’t reinventing the wheel, but it does take a bit of digital ambition and newsroom culture shift around what it means to be a reporter. It is not just you publish the story and that’s that, and you have nothing to do with the impact or discourse that is created around it. 

What are the major mistakes you have been observing in the media industry?

If a newsroom is making demands, but has not bothered to invest in resources and training for the staff to meet them. Also, in many newsrooms pioneering new formats or taking an interest in the sustainability of the organization does not figure in somebody’s career progression. What’s needed is a cultural shift: The entire workforce should have a vested interest in the future of the company that they’re working for. Everyone should be required to do something to innovate every year. But many senior journalists can’t see the crisis I can see because I am so chronically online. And for junior staff, it can be quite hard to translate that to those who have the power and decision-making abilities. Senior decision makers must become better listeners. This would retain junior staff because they would feel they were having a greater impact on the company’s future. Also, there has always been this church and state separation in newsrooms between commercial and editorial. But there is not a single content creator who divides church and state. They all have to be very editorially and commercially minded.

Is there anything on the content and format sides that could be improved?

 At the moment we’re seeing a lot of high-quality vertical video explainers that look identical to each other. I don’t think it’s sustainable because ultimately, you’re not building communities around your work. It’s within those communities that you’re going to do those important conversions that everyone in the business side of your newsroom is desperate to win over.

You have been very successful as a female creator. But there is a huge gender gap in the creator economy. In a study published by the Reuters Institute, 83 percent of the creators that were mentioned by those surveyed were male. One major reason seems to be that women shy away from online harassment – they are way more exposed to it than men.

That worries me, too. In the data set of my study, the highest profile women are individuals who have big jobs in TV. They’ve had strong backing from the traditional television industry and were famous pre-social media, they entered the race with a big following. As social media platforms may have become increasingly toxic or dangerous experiences, these women have a lot of institutional power and real-life resources and money that can help keep them safe. Whereas it’s the people who are yet to acquire these jobs and sort of fame who have to navigate this toxic environment without these resources. Many will not be able to make it because of how awful an experience they’re going to have online. 

You have embraced the AI age decisively by creating the Sophiana App that helps journalists to get proficient on TikTok. Could you explain your thinking behind this?

From the work I’ve done, I identified a clear need for a tool that could help journalists make vertical video more quickly and at a higher quality. And we know from research that news audiences are happier with journalists using AI tools if it keeps the human in the loop. Sophiana helps translate the written work into a TikTok friendly script that the journalist would have otherwise not been able to do at all or to the quality I expect. It includes a teleprompter so they can film it quickly. The tool centres the journalists’ work, helps them translate it, amplify it, keeping them front and centre and in total editorial control.

How do you think the AI environment will shape the way we all consume news? 

The most pressing change is the decline in website traffic. People are getting answers from speaking to AI agents, but where will the newsroom stand to make money in that new environment? I don’t see a lot of people who are worried about AI misinformation and AI slop. Audiences are really annoyed about all of that, that’s why they are on our side already. A bigger problem is audiences knowing who we are and how to support creative industries in this time of flux. They’re not going to know about it unless we talk to them about it.  

Data suggests social media usage peaked in 2022 and has been declining. Is this just a post-pandemic effect, or could there be more to it?

I think a lot of social media platforms have become less pleasant to use because of how much advertising is forced on people and how changes to what appears on a feed can put you off spending loads of time on it. I agree that there’s going to be a dip because people want to get back to real life. But I don’t think a decline in social media use is going to be an issue we have to deal with in the next three years minimum. 

This interview was conducted as part the study “A miss is as good as a mile: A qualitative study on Gen Z and journalism in Austria, featuring perspectives from users, media professionals, and international experts.”  You can find more information and the full study here. The study was commissioned by Zentrum für Medienwissen der Mediengruppe Wiener Zeitung, Co-Author was Jana Koch. The interview was published here.

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Why climate change should be at the heart of modern journalism

The best insurance against misinformation is strong journalism. Professor Alexandra Borchardt explains how climate journalism and the data and verification skills we need to do this properly can transform our newsrooms.

It is often said that an abundance of questionable information drowns out facts. In climate journalism, the strategy should be to do the opposite: make journalism about global warming, its causes, and its remedies, so pervasive, that everybody everywhere can tell facts and reality from greenwashing and wishful thinking; drown out the misinformation with factual journalism.

This requires rethinking climate journalism from it being a “beat” or “specialist subject” to something that frames all our storytelling, particularly business reporting. This is a tough call, of course. Many obstacles hold media organisations back from prioritising investment in climate journalism. Climate issues often lack a newsy angle. They may be complicated and difficult to understand Coverage may mean expensive travel, and stories can be depressing, politically polarising, and if the journalism is delivered in a less than spectacular way, may fail to attract big audiences. All of which makes the commitment even harder.

Nevertheless, climate journalism is not optional. Journalists have an ethical responsibility, even a mandate to inform the public of threats and help them to make better decisions for themselves, their children, and their communities. Media has the duty to hold power to account and investigate wrongdoing. And a lot has gone wrong. Far too often publishers and broadcasters have kept global warming in the silo of science journalism, rather than at the heart of wider business and news coverage, even though it has been known for decades that the core issues are primarily economic, with powerful interests at play.

The good news is it might help editors and media managers to know that an investment in climate journalism will generate all sorts of benefits for their organisation. Precisely because climate journalism is so complex, the lessons that newsrooms can learn from doing it well can also be applied to other fields. To put it differently: sustainability journalism can make media more sustainable. This is the major conclusion of a report recently published by the European Broadcasting Union: “Climate Journalism That Works – Between Knowledge and Impact”.

It identified seven such benefits:

  • First, climate journalism is about the future. Today’s journalism is too often stuck in the now. It needs to develop strategies to increase its legitimacy in the attention economy. This is especially true for public service media, which is under attack from various political camps. Who else should have a clearer mandate to contribute to the protection of humankind through better journalism? This way, public service media would also meet the needs of younger generations they are struggling to reach. Above all, it is their future.
  • Second, climate protection needs hope. People only act if they believe they can make a difference. In contrast, today’s journalism focuses on conflict, shortcomings, and wrongdoing. Constructive and solutions-oriented journalism offer a way forward. A project called Drive, in which 21 German regional publishers pool their data, recently proved that inspirational pieces were the most valuable digital content when it came to subscriptions.
  • Third, in climate change, it’s what’s done that counts. Today’s journalism still focuses too much on what has been said. The “he said, she said” type of journalism that dominates political reporting tends to be highly unpopular with users though. Modern journalism should be based more on data than on quotes. Fact-checking and verification come in right here: both need to become second nature for any journalist. Climate journalism is an excellent training ground.
  • Fourth, climate journalism that works approaches a variety of audiences with respect and in languages they understand. It explains. Today’s journalism often elevates itself above its audience in a know-it-all manner. Journalism must become more diverse and inclusive if it is to reach people, inspire them, and move them to action. This applies to formats and protagonists.
  • Fifth, climate journalism must be rooted in the local. In contrast, today’s journalism too often strives for reach, neglecting the specific needs of communities. To make itself indispensable, journalism should reclaim its importance as a community-building institution. Those who use or even subscribe to a media product often do so because it makes them feel they belong.
  • Sixth, climate journalism must have an impact, otherwise it is meaningless. It should therefore reflect on its own practices and use insights from research, especially from communication sciences and psychology. Today’s journalism does this far too rarely. Journalists tend to be curious but often surprisingly resistant to change. Media companies could gain a lot if their managers and employees developed more of a learning mindset and trained their strategic thinking.
  • Seventh, climate journalism benefits from collaboration. In today’s journalism, old-fashioned competitive thinking still dominates far too often. Yet so much potential could be leveraged through cooperation. This applies to networking within organizations among desks and regional bureaus, as well as to devoping links with external partners from within the industry and beyond. The journalism of the future is collaborative.

This blog post was published in March 2023 by the BBC’s Trusted News Initiative.