140journos: Revolutionizing reporting in Turkey
How citizen journalists are using social platforms to fill the gap left by traditional media
It began with a simple premise: after the Turkish media failed to report on a 2011 bombing by the Turkish military, Engin Onder and his friends, then university students, would have to become citizen journalists and do it themselves. And that's what they did, back in early 2012.
"We felt deeply frustrated by what the Turkish media was — and wasn’t — delivering. All three of us were in our 20s, and we wanted to consume news in real time. We all used Twitter, and we asked ourselves: Do we really need microphones emblazoned with the name of a TV station to let people know what’s happening? So we created a Twitter account, calling it 140journos — '140' for the character limit in a tweet, and 'journos' as the slang reference for what we had no training to be: journalists," wrote Onder for Nieman Reports.
140journos relies on contributors from throughout Turkey. The group's work gained a larger audience during the 2013 protests, and the group worked to verify and debunk information in real time. They attracted the attention of traditional journalists frustrated by censorship; they began feeding them news, too.
Now, Onder and his colleagues have expanded their work to even more social platforms, including Medium, and are exploring ways to monetize in order to make their work sustainable. Onder explained what's next for 140journos in an interview with Medium International.
How has 140journos evolved since you started in 2012? How many contributors do you have now?
The evolution of 140journos has been going on in parallel with the transformation of Turkish media and Turkish political atmosphere. Today, giant media conglomerates are being taken over by judicial actions and the remaining distinct voices face pressure by different interest groups. The conditions that led 140journos to be initiated by a group of non-journalists are still in effect.
140journos today gets 50 million impressions per month with its content only on Twitter yet despite that, 140journos has evolved into a peculiar zone where the project itself has defined over the years in a polarized country like Turkey. Probably thanks to the neutral language and non-partisan approach that we have on news, it's created a shield above the project against lynching, trolling, intimidation and disproportionate, asymmetrical pressure by authorities. We are pretty sure that we balance the type of content and the number of followers hiking up reflects a more accurate picture of a Turkish digital user profile.
These are good signs for an independent alternative media outlet that claims to be the main source for its subscribers and followers. 140journos today has around 750 regular content producers. Some send content daily, some do so weekly and some are incidental from specific areas of Turkey.
One important thing is that we extended the areas of broadcast to Whatsapp, Snapchat, Facebook and Medium aside from Twitter in the last term. That created big buzz on social media.
Who is your target audience, and how do you engage with them?
140journos pursues a mission that it calls as “coexistence.” In a country with a vast number of ethnic, religious and intellectual identities, this is a truly hard mission to follow. As a young, colorful, decisive new media journalism project, our primary target audience are 24–35 urban people of all sexes.
These people are active social media users and open to innovation in journalism. People made 140journos a lovemark thanks to its tremendous regular news broadcast on WhatsApp. Whatsapp is not a conventional broadcast platform but a messaging app and people react in a more engaged way. We, content creators, engage with our followers through all available digital interfaces. We give them credit, ask questions, get their opinion on how we’re doing, drag them into the editorial process in many cases. We even opened an online newsroom to let them participate in our decision-making process.
Now, thanks to the sponsorship of Twitter, 140journos will begin going to different Turkish cities and meeting up with university students who are more likely to be convinced by what we have to say.
What are some of the most critical issues you’ve been reporting on so far in 2016?
Curfews in the southeastern Turkey and terror attacks in Turkey's two biggest cities are undoubtedly the most critical issues that we report on. Terror attacks that took place in a row created serious fear and constant doubt in public space. These are domestic issues but on the other hand, they are all connected to Turkish foreign policy so it creates a wide public debate.
The most frequent use of our services takes place during stressful times like after terror attacks. As a reflex, the state prohibits broadcasts of conventional media outlets to cover the issue so platforms like 140journos are obliged to be more responsible and ready for all kinds newsworthy activities. We had to become more professional as a result.
What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced in your work?
Not political, in our condition. Generally economic barriers. Sustaining our broadcast and developing it by preserving the soul of the project are key issues and we’re trying to tackle that barrier.
We developed native ad models and we’re really good at infographics and narrative videos so different people or institutions might subsidize 140journos' research and news so we thought we could use our strongholds like these. Many barriers have been tied to that challenge.
Why did you start using Medium for your work? And why do you plan to publish more on Medium?
We love Medium. It’s so simple and well-designed. We moved our site to our Medium publication (http://haber.140journos.com) which means we will be way more present and active on Medium than before. It’s easy; our editors will save so much time creating and publishing stories from desktop or mobile. And it’s readily responsive and loads content quickly.
More importantly, we believe in the future of the community on Medium. As a platform that defines itself as a content-focused network, our goal in the past term has been to use the most available platforms on the internet for different needs. Editors are exploring Medium currently and the amount of content we create on daily basis will skyrocket soon.
