Special Delivery

by Savannah Jacobson

Illustrations by Julie Murphy

Over the past decade, amid the decline of the physical newspaper and the rise of online clickbait, journalists have often been driven by the same question: How do we get people to see our coverage? Audience engagement has grown into a vital, if still underappreciated, facet of many newsrooms. It’s also where some of the industry’s most creative work takes place.

Back in 2014, when WNYC wanted to report on sleep habits, it introduced an app that posed twenty questions about the quantity and quality of listeners’ sleep; more than twenty-six hundred people responded. When, in 2017, ProPublica opened a newsroom to cover the state of Illinois, staffers teamed up with a community theater to hold workshops and connect with residents from different regions. In 2019, Radio Ambulante, a Latin America–focused podcast, established Clubes de Escucha (Listening Clubs) to gather in-person audiences to hear and discuss the show. In 2020, a Pew Research Center survey found that 53 percent of American adults “often” or “sometimes” receive news via social media, so it’s no wonder that journalists have increasingly headed to online platforms—seeking to meet audiences where they are, and to head off conspiracy-fueled rants.

These efforts are not just about growing or serving an audience. They also make journalism better. A few years ago, a CJR report found that, “while many journalists’ decisions are made with readers in mind,” those journalists tend to picture the consumers of their work as “unfocused, imagined abstractions, built on long-held assumptions, newsroom folklore, and imperfect inference.” At some outlets, the old presumptions may still hold. But there are a great number of journalists today whose audience engagement is dynamic, responsive, and effective at delivering information where it ought to go.

DIRECT MESSAGING SERVICES

In the evening, Nigel Mugamu, a journalist in Zimbabwe, uses WhatsApp to send out an “e-paper” of the day’s news. Through his news organization, 263Chat (a reference to the country’s calling code), Mugamu aims to foster progressive civic dialogue and, as he told Jamlab, a journalism project focused

on innovation in African media, to address “the thirst for news and knowledge among low income earners who can’t afford buying newspapers on a daily basis.”

In New York, Documented uses WhatsApp to keep Spanish-speaking subscribers informed about the latest immigration news. In Detroit, Outlier Media invites residents to text “Detroit” to 73224 for updates about housing and, recently, COVID-19. These modes of communication remind us that, at its core, reporting serves to inform the public—and there may be no better direct line to readers than sending a few sentences by phone.

INTERNET FORUMS

After only a couple of years, the Reddit account of the Arizona Republic has grown so popular that, by the platform’s own measure of success, it has received 105,700 “karma points.” Angel Mendoza, whose attentive moderation made the account buzz, reeled in commenters by leading discussions in various Arizona-related subreddits. Fluent in the Reddit tone (inquisitive, jocular) and conversation style (Redditors don’t want quick links, they want community), Mendoza learned “to use Reddit as a way to keep stories alive.”

In China, investigative journalists have embraced Weibo, a microblogging platform similar to Twitter that attracts more than 520 million active monthly users. In a report for Oxford University’s Reuters Institute, the journalist Jiao Bei has argued that, even in China’s repressive media environment, Weibo is liberating: “Perhaps this really is a kind of democratization,” she wrote, “democratization with Chinese characteristics.”

STREAMING

“It’s real, folks. And guess what? Guess what? It is actually, actually real.” So began a livestream from WGBH, one of Boston’s public radio stations, during a virtual “escape room” on Twitch. Last year, WGBH hosted a series of Twitch streams about outer space, featuring interviews with an astronaut, a space architect, and engineers, plus a live two-part spacethemed “escape room” experience—all part of a broader effort to engage young audiences. At least one commenter was impressed: “They finally made it to prime time lol.”

In less family-friendly news, Vice’s food vertical, Munchies, joined OnlyFans, a subscription and pay-per-view platform commonly used by sex workers. (The New York Times has called OnlyFans the “paywall of porn.”) Munchies videos are mostly close-up cooking shots. (Get it? Food porn.) “There’s an intimacy, whether doing something risqué or not,” Clifford Gulibert, the executive producer of digital video for Vice, told Axios. “A platform like this is about ‘deep’ interaction.”

INSTAGRAM AND TIKTOK

Adults have called the Washington Post’s TikTok account a “must follow”; teens have deemed it “pretty funny.” Neither demographic seems wrong. The account has accumulated some 913,100 followers and 36.7 million likes, with videos that occasionally address the news of the day but more often embrace the absurdity that the platform enables. On the TikTok for NPR’s economics show Planet Money, explanatory videos can become fully surreal: recently, the account posted a video called “Werner Herzog presents the Erie Canal.”

Where TikTok plays for antics, Instagram goes for aesthetics. Mona Chalabi, a data editor for The Guardian, creates extraordinary infographics that distill complex subjects—eviction rates, federal taxes, Palestinian history—into drawings. Illustrations like Chalabi’s have become so widespread on social media that some newsrooms are even hiring people to produce them. And if a news outlet’s blaring Instagram bulletin comes out looking less than artsy (see: CNN), the posts are still eminently shareable.

PHYSICAL SPACE

In 2012, Superstorm Sandy tore through the New York area, stranding waterfront communities like Red Hook, in Brooklyn, without power or clean water. A local community center quickly established itself as a hub for relief; residents could find information about available heat, food distribution sites, and how to apply for federal assistance. Over time, the center worked with community groups to launch the Red Hook Hub, which now maintains digital and physical bulletin boards that let readers know about community board meetings, job opportunities, housing lottery applications, and fresh-vegetable distribution.

In Chicago, City Bureau, a local news nonprofit, organizes an event series known as the Public Newsroom, hosted by community members who address everything from banking to sexual assault. Scalawag magazine—with staff based in Atlanta, Durham, and Birmingham—throws “Jubilees” across the Southeast. The events feature authors and stories from recent issues, then pass the mic to local poets, artists, and musicians. When COVID hit, the Jubilees went online. “After a hardfought unprecedented year,” Scalawag tweeted, “we all need a little tradition and Southern hospitality to ground us.” cjr