Media Moves

Twitter launches ad campaign to help local journalists

May 4, 2021

Posted by Mariam Ahmed

Twitter will take out advertisements in 28 newspapers across the U.S., including USA Today and the McClatchy newspapers, in a bid to encourage readers to support local journalism and news outlets.

The Cincinnati Enquirer, the Miami Herald, the Detroit Free Press, and the Kansas City Star are among the local papers that will run the ad.

“Local journalists are so incredibly important to the conversation on Twitter,” Niketa Patel, the head of print and digital news partnerships at Twitter, told Axios. “We’re viewing this as a way of ensuring that Twitter is giving local journalists a national spotlight.”

Advertisements will point users toward public Twitter Lists that feature local reporters and newspapers with the ads also running on the local papers’ websites.

The social media giant will also promote the hashtag “FollowLocalJournalists” and ask national journalists with large audiences to use it to share stories authored by local journalists and published at local outlets.

Twitter is also planning on hosting several Twitter Spaces, the company’s live audio feature, with journalists globally.

The campaign is expected to continue for the rest of the year.

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