Gifts you can give your readers … and future readers

To make ourselves relevant, we need nuts-and-bolts coverage of stuff that matters to everyday people, content that can serve as an entry point to building a connection to your organization.”

Rob Tornoe, digital editor and writer, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Thanks to the election of Donald Trump, members of the media have suffered through a relentless amount of self-loathing over the role of news organizations and whether we all need to morph into a version of Joe Rogan.

Mistrust of the media has been a growing problem for decades, fueled by attacks from right-wing media and weaponized by social media. However, news media can mean different things to different people, and surveys by Pew Research and other organizations consistently show local news organizations are perceived better than national news outlets.

What is clear is there is a news gap, where mostly young people are shunning traditional journalism altogether. Recent polling from Data for Progress, a progressive think tank and polling firm, showed voters who followed the news the least drift towards outlets like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

In the spirit of giving, here are a few humble suggestions I would make to publishers, editors and reporters at news organizations looking to win over some of these readers and hopefully pay the bills in 2025 and beyond.

Upend your social media strategy

This just in — Facebook is no longer a major driver of traffic, and X (and Twitter before it) never was and never will be. Simply sharing links and patting yourself on the back won’t cut it in a news environment where young people inform themselves with short video clips and social media posts.

News organizations can reach people where they are. Kelsey Russell is known as “the Print Princess” on TikTok for reading newspaper articles and promoting media literacy. Is there someone in your newsroom that can engage young people on social media? Can you unleash the talent of your social media team to create content not intended to drive traffic back to your website?

Often, I’ll see reporters breaking down their stories on social media in more interesting and engaging ways than the full stories themselves. Or videos and content created specifically for TikTok and other platforms, such as the great work Dave Jorgenson is doing at The Washington Post (including mocking Jeff Bezos’ role in killing the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris).

It’s no surprise the Post has nearly 2 million followers on TikTok.

“The news needs to happen natively on these platforms, where more and more young people are going for their news already,” wrote Rachel Kerten in her Link In Bio newsletter. “Clipping a podcast or breaking down a full story on a social platform doesn’t devalue journalistic work or cheapen a media company’s brand — it simply meets people where they are. You’re fishing where the fish are.”

Ditch X and embrace Bluesky

For years, I have stressed the need for news organizations to end their addiction to X, formerly known as Twitter. It wasn’t perfect before Elon Musk purchased it. However, the platform has transformed almost entirely into a right-wing echo chamber filled with vile speech, dangerous misinformation and the inability to block the most abusive and hateful accounts.

Thankfully, Bluesky is having a moment. The decentralized social media app developed by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey (who has since left the company’s board) has seen a record number of new users jump to the platform following Musk’s full heel turn to an unofficial member of the Trump administration.

Bluesky still has just a fraction of the user base that X currently enjoys — over 15 million users compared to 500 million or so users on X — but a critical mass of journalists, thinkers, celebrities and major brands have begun shifting over. Sports will be the main catalyst for any large-scale transfer, so, notably, teams like the Philadelphia Eagles have started posting directly on the platform.

Threads, Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter clone built off Instagram’s user base, has attracted more total users — more than 275 million, according to the company. While Bluesky embraces journalism and has many of the useful features that made Twitter popular, Threads is outspokenly anti-news and anti-politics. Just like X, its algorithm appears to throttle posts with links. Slate’s Alex Kirshner called it “a black hole for the exchange of news.”

Last month, the Guardian newspaper made a big splash by announcing they would no longer post on X from its more than 80 accounts, totaling about 27 million followers. NPR made a similar move last year after Musk’s platform labeled it as “state-affiliated media” used to denote propaganda outlets. NPR has an active account on Bluesky.

There’s even a handy Chrome and Firefox plugin called Sky Follower Bridge to easily find your X followers and those you follow on Bluesky (and say “hi” to me @RobTornoe when you join).

Fix your damn websites!

It will be hard to convince readers to trust and consume our products — much less pay for them — if our products are garbage.

We’re heading into 2025, and many news organizations’ websites remain bogged down by bad designs, poor usability and a relentless amount of ads. Things get even worse on mobile, where auto-play videos no one wants often overlay online ads no one reads and almost entirely obscure the text users actually came to consume.

There are a bunch that get it right. Reading anything done by The New York Times, whether it’s a column from the editorial boards or a product review by the Wirecutter staff, is always a great experience from a user perspective. NPR, Semafor and POLITICO also have swift websites that are a joy to read, both on desktop and mobile. 

Another standout is The Guardian, which does a magical job balancing page load, stability and presentation. They also save their popups and annoyances to push their own mission of independence, which has paid off — the Guardian raised nearly $2 million thanks to a clever call out for donations following the Post’s and Los Angeles Times’ decision not to endorse a candidate in the presidential race.

Some local news organizations have the odds stacked against them, thanks to chain-wide designs that don’t allow much in the way of local flair or uniqueness. What may work for one market could hinder another, and people coming for local news can spot badly disguised ads and cookie-cutter content a mile away.

Think of new ways to be relevant to readers

Most newspapers-gone-digital stick with the original tentpoles of coverage that have filled their sections for years — broadly speaking, news, business, sports and some form of entertainment or features coverage. Instead of being stuck in those silos, assess the needs of your readers specifically and find ways to attack them.

For instance, I constantly find myself jumping back and forth on supermarket apps near my home, looking for the lowest price for the staples in my pantry. Nieman Lab editor Laura Hazard Owen has a free idea to adopt — build apps and focus coverage on prices, making a simple, clicky feature that has value for everyone who buys groceries in your community.

Or how about here in Delaware, where the News Journal has built a sizable following on social media by focusing on vacant stores and what’s moving in. At last check, the “What’s Going in There?” page on Facebook had nearly 86,000 followers — not bad for a state with less than a million residents. And thanks to the engagement, most of the tips come from readers themselves curious about vacant lots and construction in their neighborhoods.

To make ourselves relevant, we need nuts-and-bolts coverage of stuff that matters to everyday people, content that can serve as an entry point to building a connection to your organization. We tend to focus on the importance of capital “J” journalism, but don’t forget newspapers lured in a sizable number of readers with comics and crosswords.

Rob Tornoe is a cartoonist and columnist for Editor and Publisher, where he writes about trends in digital media. He is also a digital editor and writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Reach him at robtornoe@gmail.com.