Q&A: P. Kim Bui, Editor-at-Large of NowThis
Social video publisher NowThis recently launched Newsroom, which borrows Reported.ly’s social reporting model to deliver real-time breaking news via Twitter. The Idea caught up with P. Kim Bui, formerly of Reported.ly and one of Newsroom’s creators, to discuss plans for Newsroom and her thoughts on a distributed content approach.
The Idea: Can you give us a brief overview of your role at NowThis?
PKB: I focus on breaking news, training and original reporting at NowThis. [Former Reported.ly founder and current senior editor-at-large at NowThis] Andy Carvin and I work as a team — we look at the whole newsroom and try to imagine what we need as a company to get even better at breaking and original reporting. It ends up being a mix of organizing training, strategy, developing projects and protocols and then getting with teams and people throughout the company to get those things achieved.
Can you tell us more about Newsroom, including plans for the future?
Part of the reason we were brought into NowThis was to apply what we learned from Reported.ly to another newsroom. I felt like we had something that was really great and just starting to show its promise when we lost our funding, so we wanted to try again but in a space where we would be a bit more integrated and have the ability to spread our wings. We spent a lot of time learning about the existing breaking news and social reporting model at NowThis then sat down and thought through how a social reporting team would fit in and enhance, not detract, from everything NowThis does. It made sense to NowThis because they wanted to grow into doing more longform and original reporting.
We are starting as a “pop-up” because Reported.ly started and then never seemed to take a breath. Allowing ourselves to pick and choose news stories more thoughtfully will let us get deeper into stories than we have before. We source the same way we always have, transparently and through the use of source lists. It’s a bit exciting to see the name recognition from people when I said I worked with NowThis — the trust is a lot easier to build because of the great work done prior to @newsroom launching.
As for the future, we’re hoping to grow! Albeit, slowly. As we work through our first few stories (St. Louis was a big one), we’re going to evaluate how to fit social reporting into the newsroom even more and grow capacity for staff and stories as we go along. I’m a big fan of small experiments, something other great leaders have taught me, so we’ll be doing plenty of those and adding on as we see success.
Given your background at NowThis and previously Reported.ly, both of which have pursued a social, distributed content approach, we’re curious to hear if you have any thoughts on the publishers and platforms debate.
I still believe the first argument I had for starting a newspaper on social in 2007 holds true — if you are going to grow a new, young audience, you have to be where they are. And they are on social media, on platforms. In public media, there is this chart that membership departments often show, this pipeline of what it takes someone to become a monthly donor. It starts with “you’ve heard of us” then grows to “you interact sometimes with us” until you are so sold on the brand, the worth of that public media outlet, that you decide it is worth paying for. That pipeline holds true for other types of news media. You won’t buy a subscription to the magazine you’ve never seen anywhere but the magazine rack at the airport. You subscribe to the one that people keep sharing links from, the one people keep talking about.
It seems silly to me that we are still having this debate. By the time some places decide it’s worth going all in on social platforms, they’ll be too late and we will start talking about social/platforms the same way we do when we gloomily refer to how late media was to the Internet and how that caused so many problems. On top of that, no one has ever said anyone needs to go all in on distributed. The smartest brands have multiple revenue streams — social, paid custom creative, events, etc.
What’s the most interesting thing that you’ve seen from a media outlet other than your own?
I’m constantly impressed by what Alabama Media Group does. First, their engagement reporting is thoughtful and asks the right questions. Second, the Southern Girls Project is the sort of collaboration that seems integrated and serves all partners involved. The one that really struck me this last year was Whitman, Alabama. The idea of a news group having an artist in residence blows me away to begin with, but it really shows the power of storytelling with a local heart that is rooted in beautiful art. I might be a sucker for this because poetry was my first love, but everyone has to look at this project.
This Spotlight was originally published in the October 2nd issue of The Idea. For more Q&As with inside intel like this, subscribe to The Idea, Atlantic Media’s weekly newsletter covering the latest trends and innovations in media.
