The People You Meet: Some reflections on Snapchat journalism
Fifteen months ago, I had an idea for a journalism project to do during my study abroad semester. I didn’t know what the project would be, how it was going to come together, who would watch it or pretty much anything else. I just knew that I wanted to do it.
Now it’s done. The People You Meet has its final landing page where you can view all of the stories put together over the course of my semester in Melbourne. It feels weird to not be browsing r/Melbourne 10 times per week for story ideas or sending emails to strangers from across the Pacific, begging them to talk to a faceless journalism student. It’s really over.
Well, almost.
Self-reflection is the last part of any good endeavor, especially one where you try a bunch of new stuff. My project announcement blog post was literally subtitled “A Snapchat journalism experiment.” Any good scientist would tell you that without the final steps of evaluating the data, drawing conclusions and making some notes for next time, there’s no point to having done the experiment in the first place. Hence the reason for this long, painstaking blog post.
As I thought about the project over my 20 combined hours on airplanes back from Melbourne, it occurred to me that the end product didn’t fit neatly into a “success” or “failure” box as I anticipated it would. There are some aspects of TPYM that worked, some that didn’t and a lot of things that still occupy some nebulously defined ground in between the two. After taking a while to reflect and figure out which things belong where — as if there was anything else to do on hour 10 of my flight — it’s time to truly cap off the project. Let’s start with the unpleasant part.
WHAT WAS BAD?
· The worst thing about this project by far was uploading the videos to YouTube. Most of the videos did not exceed 10 views on YouTube and I don’t blame the denizens of the Internet for not wanting to watch these stories on a computer. Vertical video stripped of the ability to scroll through at your own pace doesn’t really make for an engaging way to spend a few minutes. There were things that I could’ve done better — shortening the length of photo/text clips comes to mind — but ultimately it just wasn’t a good format match.
It’s not that people refuse to watch any snap stories on the internet, because I’ve seen embedded Facebook and Twitter videos get pretty good view numbers before. I think it has more to do with timeliness and the particular delivery platform I used. People are willing to watch a snap story with low production values if it’s about something current, like a protest march or sporting event in progress. Putting a soft news snap story on YouTube and Medium, where people expect a high quality, made-for-computer product that Snapchat isn’t equipped to deliver, was the wrong choice.
· Speaking of things that people didn’t really pay attention to, the numbers for the Medium text profiles were similarly dismal. This is another idea that I think had merit and was just executed in the wrong way. A click is a big thing to ask of an audience nowadays, especially a click that will take them outside the website or app they were initially on. The goal of social-native journalism as I understand it is to make the bar for engagement as low as possible. Two taps of the mouse, one to read the Medium story and one to watch the YouTube video at the end, is already too much to ask without even factoring in the minutes you’re also expecting the audience to spend on your stuff.
A better idea would have been to embed the video on Facebook and put the text profile as a status. It would also be nice if Snapchat offered the same text-accompanying functionality to users that it does to big accounts like ESPN or CNN. On clips from those accounts, you can swipe up on some stories to read a web story related to the video in question. That would have made the various elements of a given piece mesh together instead of competing with each other.
· The white border on photos uploaded from the camera roll. Seriously, it’s still so intrusive and I hate it. There’s nothing I can really do about it though.
WHAT WAS GOOD?
· Generally, I’ve found that the more you’re able to plan the events of a particular story, the better it usually goes. I’m really happy with the way my Australia Facts videos went because I was able to pre-plan a sequence that made sense. Once I knew where the story was going and what order to put it in, I could then work backwards to figure out how to tell it.
Take the Sinatra story below as an example. After parsing which details were important, I could then figure out which picture or video to pair with each one in an individual “snap.” The result is that I could avoid the white border and post snaps sequentially like the app was designed to do.
This is much different from one of the core personal profile stories, where I’d only figure out which parts were important after I listened to the interview back, which naturally meant it was too late to go get more pictures or video. Predicting the precise angle of a story before it’s over is tricky enough when putting together a television package and it’s even harder on an app like Snapchat that doesn’t have nearly the same range of capabilities.
It’s not typically advisable for a journalist to choreograph a story in any capacity, but it does play really well on the app. I’d bet my life that the Australia Facts videos were different than any other stories on a given user’s friends list, even if that list contained other journalistic outlets. More importantly, they were entertaining, informative and popular. When I embedded these videos on Facebook, they would get hundreds of views. There’s not much about the project that was an unqualified success (nor was I expecting there to be), so the Australia Facts format falling into that category was a welcome surprise.
· The actual hardware used to complete the project was totally satisfactory. My iPhone 6s took really good quality pictures and video; way better than my old 5s ever could. I used a handheld StayblCam monopod to keep the phone steady for interviews and it worked so well that it’s kind of a no-brainer to start bringing it to press conferences for Facebook Live streaming.
Editing on the phone was actually pretty easy. I found that a lot of interesting sound bytes fit inside of Snapchat’s 10-second-per-frame limit and even if one of them went over, I could stretch the clip into two snaps if needed. Obviously, the iPhone’s built-in editing interface isn’t going to give you nearly the same level of precision that computer software would, which slowed down the process to a mildly annoying extent. For my purposes, though, it was totally fine.
· This project seemed to provide pretty strong evidence that Snapchat stories draw and retain viewers better than other forms of media. I have roughly 120 people who follow me on Snapchat, about 100 of whom have watched any of my snap stories before. An average of 85 people viewed at least the first frame of my Australia stories. Only one story, all of which were at least 12 snaps long, had less than two-thirds of the initial viewers finish the whole thing. Those metrics destroy pretty much every website out there.
On the one hand, the people watching my stories are my friends who likely retain a degree of interest in my life that the average journalism consumer would not have for an unknown content creator. Still, a crowd made up of mostly college students took the time to view stories about people from across the world. The majority of that crowd did it to completion. I can’t imagine a more compelling reason for journalists to get on Snapchat than that. A well-known, affiliated journalist might be able to replicate these results with hundreds or even thousands of people.
WHAT AM I NOT SURE ABOUT?
· Audio was the only technical aspect of the project that fell short. While the phone’s camera was great, the microphone was a little bit shaky, especially if there was background noise or wind. If I were to do the project again, investing in an attachable Lavaliere microphone with a small windsock would have been a good idea. Then again, I have no experience in external microphones for mobile, so it’s possible that would’ve been more trouble than it was worth.
There also weren’t any stories that pushed the iPhone to do things beyond its specifications. Shooting in low-light environments, for instance, is something that the iPhone can’t really do without making the footage all grainy and I largely avoided doing things of that nature.
· Almost all of the stories were about pretty light topics with lots of visuals. Getting an enjoyable snap story out of beautiful Aboriginal artwork or a Chinese dragon parade is pretty easy; just point the camera at the interesting stuff and shoot. Snapchat can definitely be used for journalism; the next iteration of that question is whether or not it can be used for serious, public service journalism. Could you cover, say, the opioid epidemic on Snapchat? How about the impact of a tax reform bill? Climate change? All of those things would be a much tougher sell to an audience than fun profile stories from an abroad semester.
Snapchat journalists also have to deal with the app’s reputation as a vehicle for pictures of pets and drunk people. Some people refused to talk to me specifically because I was doing this on Snapchat — either because they didn’t understand the app or they didn’t like it. Not a lot of people, mind you, but enough that it gave me reason to mention it. That will obviously get better over time, but it’s a problem when even a small number of potential subjects see the medium you’re using as inherently reductive to their stories.
· Much like a science experiment, none of the things you think you know can be taken as fact on the first go-around. I have no idea where Snapchat is headed in the years to come; it’s really hard to predict that when Snap Inc. was adding major app updates while the project was happening. On top of that, the way we consume news changes all the time. As mobile hardware and functionality changes, people might display a preference or distaste for news on Snapchat instead of the ambivalence that mostly persists now.
In short, there are too many confounding variables here to draw a definitive conclusion. Maybe people only viewed the stories because they were my friends and wouldn’t do the same thing for a purely journalistic outlet. Perhaps me being in Australia hurt viewership and it would work way better if I were in the same location as my audience. Custom stories with multiple people contributing might give the next person or group of people to try this project a bunch of new options. All I know is that I know nothing.
YOU’RE RAMBLING, LET’S WRAP THIS UP
Yeah, yeah I know. Sorry to keep you so long. It’s kind of ironic that I’m wrapping up a journalism project based on brevity with the longest, most convoluted blog post possible. I just have a lot of thoughts on Snapchat’s role in journalism and I’ll be damned if I’m not going to spill them all over the internet.
Here’s the “too long, did not read” version of this blog post: some stuff worked, some stuff didn’t work, some stuff kind of had a foot in both camps and I still don’t totally know what to make of everything. It was fun, though. A bunch of cool Melbournians told me about their lives, which definitely would not have happened without this project. It was a great way to get to know the city, not to mention the things that mattered to the people living there.
Alas, it is time to bring this project to its end. If anybody has thoughts about all of this, I’d love to hear them. Suggestions for ways to improve future Snapchat endeavors or what to do with my account now that I’m stateside are also appreciated. Thanks for reading!
