Full immersion in Reddit
Plus: who will lead newsrooms into the 2030s and beyond + learnings from using SmartOcto's CPI analytics tool
Good afternoon,
Back to the usual format for the What I’ve Been Reading digest this week after two weeks of more in-depth reads, reflecting on the question of innovation in local news and also what we learned from working with Preston’s young people to create Blog Foxton.
Been a few new subscribers here recently (welcome!) so a reminder this is usually a digest of three (or more) interesting things which have crossed my feed/emails etc in the last week or two. I pull them together to hopefully help and be a bit of inspiration, and add some insight where I can. So let’s get to it…
Where the next editor-in-chief comes from - Dmitry Shishkin - this got plenty of debate going about what skills the editor needs in the modern age and going forward. Dmitry argues it is far less likely your editorial leaders of the future will come from the reporting pool (or from the subs desk as they often used to) but will be from within audience teams. A deep understanding of data is crucial, along with the ability to understand what different platforms need. Above all, strong people and inter-personal skills will always be a must (dealing with both internally and externally).
Diving deep into Reddit and spending a year in the threads - Dan Russell - the growth of Reddit in the past two years, in part due to it being surfaced so much more in search results than previously, has been astronomical. On a personal level I see the r/preston thread so much more active than it used to be with people sharing and asking questions. But it’s a large corner of the internet that many fail to understand, home to its own sub-culture and rules. A great post by Dan about what he uncovered from spending a year immersing himself. He’s probably been banned from at least one of the sub-reddits as a result of his post though.
How Blog Preston uses analytics to improve community journalism - SmartOcto - this is an indulgent plug if you’ll excuse me but I recently spoke with Em Kuntze at the analytics tool about how we’ve been utilising their Insights tool on Blog Preston for more than a year now. We’re not a large newsroom operation but it has been invaluable in knowing exactly where to put our efforts - and moving beyond page views as a simple measurement of impact and audience. I talk about some of the tactical ways we use it when making decisions and more.
Hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s digest. It’s short and sharp as I’m hitting the motorway network shortly to head to Liverpool for a belated birthday gift for my wife to see the stage show of the superb TV series Inside Number 9. The best show that it seems no one else has heard of.
As always any suggestions on what you think I should be featuring, send over to ed@almaonline.co.uk and I always take a look.
All the best for the rest of the week ahead.
Keep going.
Ed