Publishers must play with multiple platforms
No more hand-wringing—it’s time to experiment
The overarching theme of this year’s GEN Summit is the rise of platform-driven news and the consequences it has for the future of journalism.
Major tech companies have access to wider audiences — as well as the finances and the crucial algorithms — to distribute stories on a global scale.
Two media pundits tackled the issue at the GEN Summit’s keynote dialogue today. Meredith Artley, editor-in-chief of CNN Digital and Jan-Eric Peters, deputy CEO and editor-in-chief of upday, a personalised news app that aggregates content.
Both panelists were quick to quash any concerns media professionals may have about the impact platforms have on their ability to make independent editorial decisions.
“Publishers have a huge amount of power,” Ms Artley told the GEN Summit press team. “In my view, there’s way too much hand-wringing. Yes, there are these algorithms on Facebook and all the other players. We don’t control them. But we control what stories we do, how we do them and we control where and when we publish them.”
Mr Peters said that platforms “shouldn’t and mustn’t” influence the quality of journalism and freedom of publishers.
“You shouldn’t make compromises with the rules of Google or Facebook, you should stick to your journalistic rules. But then, it could be a great chance to be on platforms because you can increase your reach a lot… You can reach people you mightn’t have been able to reach before and turn them into loyal customers of your brand.”
There are already a host of platforms in use — Facebook Instant Articles, Twitter Moments, Snapchat Discover and, as we heard yesterday, 360 video.
At the start of the session, Ms Artey introduced CNN’s visualisation of platform publishers, starting with the organisation’s own apps, moving on the “legacy social” like Facebook and Twitter and followed by emerging platforms and partners like Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, Google and Apple News.
Ms Artley believes that it is not a case of publishers versus platforms, but “publishers with platforms”.
She encouraged publishers to experiment and play with platforms, especially through video.
“Publishers that are not experimenting [with video] do so at their peril,” she said. “You don’t need a video-only strategy, but you do need a video strategy.”
CNN experiments with multiple formats for video using a single story.
Mr Peters disagreed. He said that video is only “part of the answer” for how publishers make use of platforms and believes that “it is somewhat overhyped.” He argued that video is not the best format for news storytelling — even for millennial audiences, who find text easier and quicker to consume — and is mostly used for entertainment.
Ms Artley countered that it is actually “amazing, poignant moments” like footage of Anderson Cooper reading the names of the Orlando shooting victims that attracts the most views, not dreaded cat videos.
The bottom line from both panelists is that publishers shouldn’t rely only on single platforms like Facebook, which Mr Peters described as the “largest newspaper of all time”, but experiment with multiple formats and multiple platforms.
“That’s part of the challenge and frankly the fun of being a digital journalist these days,” Ms Artley said.
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