At Missouri Press Association’s annual convention in September, I ran into a familiar frustration: the idea that engagement, somehow, will save us all. But as the millennial news editor of two newspapers that do no publish online, I see things a little differently. Mostly, I see “engagement” as something both bigger and simpler than analytics.
This summer, I did something we do a lot at The Odessan: I gave a tour. We have standing invitations for Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and Newspapers in Education students to come and tour our office. Really, we welcome anyone, which is why when the “Lead on 2019” class gave us a call, we said come on over.
Lead On is a summer school class for third-fifth graders who toured local businesses and organizations. Earlier in the week, I had covered the class’s tour of City Hall for a story I was writing on the return of enrichment, or fun, summer school. When the class arrived, I was ready: after telling them a little about what the newspaper does, I picked up a paper from the counter and read the section where I interviewed two of the members of the class.
“Does that sound like what you told me?”
“Yes!”
My mom showing the Lead On students how the story they were included in looks on the computer.
The kids were delighted; it was Thursday morning, the day the paper appears in the mailbox, so no one’s parents had pointed out the story to them yet. As I talked, I realized I knew many of the kids’ names, which surprised the teachers, who were ready to pitch a name in to help me call on them. So I asked the question: How many of you have been in the newspaper before?
A solid two-thirds of the class raised their hands. Most of them were the ones familiar to me, who I’ve seen grow up racing frogs and turtles, riding the Optimist Train, competing in the Halloween costume contest and more. Others told me they had been in the Kitchen Column with their mom, or included in pictures of family reunions or church events.
As long as these kids live in our coverage area, they’ll keep running into us. In fifth grade, they’re part of the Newspapers In Education program, where they receive a newspaper in class. This year, we debuted a three-part series on understanding news, after a test run of one of those parts toward the end of the last school year. Honors English students in sixth grade receive the newspaper as well, as does the high school life skills special education class. I work with students who take Journalism 1, the class that produces The Growler student newspaper. This year I asked the girls in the Growler class (for the second year in a row, it is only girls who are taking the Growler class) if they had toured the newspaper office. A third said yes.
So, what’s engagement to me? It’s partially that these kids are growing up familiar with our newspaper. It’s good for us — we’re a part of their lives from an early age. It’s good for journalism, too — they’ve had positive interactions with journalists, and know how news gets made.
Of course, it’s not just kids. It’s the senior citizens who come by because they know we have maps in the office, to help them find out how far it is to Oklahoma City. It’s the parents who buy copies of sports coverage to scrapbook for their sons, and call my dad or Kory when they have something to say. It’s the Community pages in our newspaper, filled entirely with submitted content — engagements, weddings, anniversaries, reunions, church events. It’s the record page, where we’re one of the few newspapers left that doesn’t charge for a standard obituary. It’s the youth pages and special sections where we celebrate accomplishments and interview teenagers. It’s my personal column, which some say is frivolous (and rightly so on weeks where I’m too braindead to write about anything other than my cat) but means that most people in town know me on sight and have since I was 10 years old. It’s being a part of the community.
At MPA, during the Hall of Fame induction ceremony, our family friend Kathy Conger explained it well when she said that by marrying into the newspaper family, she married into being involved, going to the meetings and doing what was needed in the Rotary Club. Being a small town newspaperwoman has always been about much more than the paper.
That’s not what you hear during a talk about engagement.
Engagement was new in the newsroom when I was in college. We had worked a little with Tweeting and making Facebook posts on behalf of the newspaper in our editing class, but soon it became a class of its own, with a whole team dedicated to social and reading into analytics. They taught us all along the way — I knew to be proud my story about an election issue kept readers for an average of five minutes and was the fourth-most read of the entire election, including results (its lede broke statewide news). I knew how algorithms reward the number of likes and shares your Facebook page receives by putting it in front of more people. I knew what type of posts come off as authentic and can get those likes, I knew how to consider time of day for posting, I basically learned a lot of the backbone of social, which many still, six years after I graduated, don’t realize is mostly driven by cold, calculated readings of pure data.
Which, in my mind, is the opposite of actually engaging with the public, and a reason to be skeptical when someone suggests making news decisions based on analytics. Expressing this has earned me some disdain over the years, as it’s seen as an old school view. I have friends who have made careers — and done important work! Through social media engagement. But as someone who comes from a newspaper with robust readership, high trust and no content online, I don’t see it as a key part of our business.
It’s different for papers that are wholly online and rely on engagement to get their content in front of people, I get that. But I’d argue that newspapers really need to move away from relying on sharing to get the news out.
My view is compounded by the fact that as a journalist, I inherently don’t trust social. As an industry, we have more than enough evidence the social companies aren’t honest with us.
About a year ago, I started The Odessan’s Facebook page. In doing so, I learned a lot about how Facebook monetizes our content in order to promote it, which turned my stomach enough that I will never promote a post over Facebook, even though I have a feeling even the non-promoted content by those who do occasionally pay Facebook for the honor is seen by a lot more people (fewer than 35% of our page followers see most of our content, and yet our analytics show the page has never been unfollowed).
But you’ll notice, despite this distrust, that I keep expanding our social footprint — as of this past week, we’re taking a crack at Twitter.
Why? It’s fun and people like it. Like I said, I’m a millennial, so I like it even if I don’t trust it. It also creates a chance for those who haven’t grown up with us to see our role is in the community (the welcome we received from OHS Stuco made me smile from ear-to-ear).
But it isn’t going to change what we cover, it isn’t going to move us out of our news cycle, it isn’t going to make us try to be something we’re not. We’re going to stay western Lafayette County’s community newspaper. And we’re going to do that by continuing to engage our way.