Categories: OLD Media Moves

How the FT is getting more out of its newsroom experiments

Robin Kwong, special projects editor of the Financial Times, writes about how the newspaper is getting the most out of its newsroom experiments.

Kwong writes, “Whether it’s telling readers to send in tips via WhatsApp or getting a reporter to use Snapchat for live coverage of an event, many newsroom experiments take the form of using a new tool or platform. But it is important not to let the tool frame your goal. So, for example, instead of setting a goal of ‘using Snapchat for the first time,’ you could frame it instead as:

“‘To figure out what type of stories lend themselves to live Snapchat coverage.’ Or: ‘Our target audience is on Snapchat. We want to figure out how we can reach them there.’ Or: ‘We’ve tried it once before and got good results. This time, let’s figure out whether we can simplify the logistics so we could be doing these once a week.’

“This is partly because the goals of the tool or platform may not be the same as your own goals. For example, your organization’s intention to drive traffic back to its own site could clash with, say, Snapchat or Instagram’s goal of keeping users on their platforms.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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