For this first session of the 2025 Widening the Pipeline launch, it's safe to say that the entire media industry is being profoundly challenged these days by just two words, and those words are 'audience engagement.' As media owners and managers are scrambling to try to figure out why audiences are abandoning their platforms, people like our first speaker, Kelsey Russell, have created their own strategies for engaging the public. Kelsey is a media literacy influencer and co-host of First Stop News. She uses print media as the vehicle for promoting engagement. She has a sense of curiosity and improving media literacy, and my personal feeling is that she's a master of social media branding. Through avenues like reading the newspaper on TikTok, Kelsey has promoted a new approach to accessing information, and she wants to make people fall back in love with media, with reading the newspaper, with learning about the world around us. Kelsey, we are thrilled to have you join us today. Thank you so much for making time out of your schedule to be here. Well, thank you, because first of all, I'm fangirling. Like, I am a big fan of any journalist, of anybody contributing to media, so I'm very excited to be here. And this is a group. Like, when everybody was doing y'all's introductions, you guys were doing fabulous things. So, thank you for having me here. Thank you. So, I sent them some links to learn a little bit about you. And your work. But I have to say, I literally stumbled across your work on TikTok. And I thought, who is this young woman who's, like, holding up a newspaper and teaching people how to whatever? So, we are big on the issue of lived experience and widening the pipeline. So, let's start. Before we get into your presentation, I'm sure you may mention some of it, but tell us a little bit about Kelsey Russell and your background. Sure. So, I'm Kelsey. I'm originally from Atlanta, Georgia. So, I saw some Atlanta and Georgia folks. Hey, y'all. And I started my content journey as a lifestyle creator. I was in college. I went to school in Boston. I also saw some Boston folks. And I hated it. Like, I could not stand Boston with all of my heart. I was like, 'I don't know what I am doing with my black self here.' And it was just the antithesis to what Atlanta is. And I just made content about how much I did not like it there. And it was humorous. It was funny. And I grew a following from it. And then I went to grad school at Teachers College at Columbia. I was getting my master's in sociology and education with a policy concentration. And I felt like I knew everything when it came to sociology and education. I would be at parties, I would be at dates, I would be at dinners, and something about war would come up, something about politics. And as a natural extrovert myself, I was disgusted that I had nothing to say. If it didn't have to do with how your socioeconomic status, and race, and gender might impact some experience you're having in government or in education, I didn't feel confident enough to say anything. And I didn't like that. And then I took a step back and said, 'Well, I'm not even consuming news. Like, I used to watch the news growing up. I used to read the newspaper growing up. And suddenly I realized my news was coming sandwiched in between different posts on Instagram that were so disinteresting to me. Like, a party that maybe I was invited to, but I didn't go to. And then some weird post about how to layer skin care, and in between was a news article. So I realized I just wasn't consuming it. And I said, 'I need to change that.' And I'll get into my story about how there were some other personal things going on that made me choose to go in a print route versus digital. And, you know, when I got the newspaper, I was like, oh, there's like a lot of stuff going on. And journalists are great. And you all are writing in a way that felt accessible to me in print. So I just decided to put that phone down, share what I was learning. And that's how I pretty much got to where I guess I'm sitting today. A million questions, but I think I should probably let you just go ahead with your presentation. And then we'll see what questions to ask later. Sure. Let me step aside and let you take it away. Okay, great. And I also have to say thank you all so much for coming here. Everybody has lives, things going on personally. So the fact that you chose to be here today is a really big deal. And I know you all were chosen for some serious reasons because I have many questions for you. Like I said, I'm so honored to be here. So my name is Kelsey Russell. I call myself a media literacy influencer. Some people ask, what's the difference between a content creator and influencer? I don't know. Like, I don't know. I just feel like for branding, media literacy influencer flows better on the tongue. Everybody loves threes. But I call myself that because I think my content is more about me just reading the newspaper. Right. I realized that I grew up in a household where education was not only an expectation, but it was a value. My mom's side is all educators from kindergarten teachers to principals to science teachers. So teaching and learning was always something that was put in my bones. Right. That education, the only way you're going to know and be educated and have knowledge is by learning and somebody teaching you, and that should always be a process that happens throughout your life, which is lifelong learning. And then my dad's side is all entrepreneurs and business owners. So that side is like, well, if you have a talent, you got to make money. So it sounded like content creation might have been a good path for that. And, you know, I have to go back to this because I wrote these little notes. So I know what to say. And so that background really made it important for me to when I put down that newspaper, I realized when there's a lot of folks that can't read, if we know what's going on in our educational landscape, many people in this country, if not majority, are not being able to read outside the middle school level. So when they go on TikTok, when they go to get their news on Instagram, it's not. It's not always because they're lazy. It's not always because they want a shortened way to see something. It might be because they simply can't read or the things that they are reading are really difficult for them to interpret. So I found that social media was this way for me to connect with people and make them more comfortable with journalism that they might not feel like they know how to interact with. And then I also found that I'm a nerd. Like, I feel like that's why I'm able to relate to journalists. We all love, right? We all love getting information. We like asking questions. We like hearing a notebook, a pen. And I realized a lot of people don't like school. They don't like learning. So I think when they saw me get excited about my pens and my pencils and highlighting, I was able to also teach them how to annotate. How do you read something and then how do you digest it? And then a little bit of milestones, too. I mean, this has brought me to some really cool places. I've been on the Drew Barrymore show to talk about why I love newspapers. I've been able to host public shows about why media literacy is important. And it's taught me some very important lessons. And I think the biggest one is one of the reasons I'm here today is that content creators and journalists have got to work together, I think, in so many ways. It's easy to pin us against each other and think that we're the enemies. But we have so much to learn from you all. And I think in terms of branding and social media, and how to grow an audience, we all could just learn from each other. And that's the biggest lesson is that I think content creation journalism could have a bridge to solve a lot of this. Excuse me. B. S. is going on today. So just a little bit about my philosophy and the work that I do and why I find print as a really cool vehicle. So going back to the ways that I was consuming information, if anybody has social media here, if anybody doesn't, good for you, because I think we all know a lot of the effects can be a little bit more negative than positive. But what I found is that I was getting news based on a positive algorithm feed. So, I mean, we know how this works. But if I consistently show my phone that I like pink, I'm going to get more pink. And when there, if I show my phone, I don't like red. When I get a bunch of red, it's going to show me stuff that's going to make me angry about the red versus make me curious and inquisitive about why people like red. And I would find myself as someone who tends to lean to the left when I would see things that were on the other side, it would make me so angry. And it made me realize, oh, everybody's having this experience on their phone. We're no longer questioning why people think the way they think, even if we disagree with them. I found when I read print, I was able to maybe pick up a source that might be on a side that I don't agree with and not have anger, but simply have curiosity like, wait, who wrote this? When did this source start? Where did it come from? And I found that to be much easier with print. I also found this sense of emotional regulation that goes into that. I don't know about you all. I mean, I guess how many people have ever felt like if you want to raise your hand, you see things on social media and it makes you feel icky like it doesn't. Yeah, I see a mental health reporter like I'm sure that, you know, the detriment that comparison and things on social media can breathe. And when it came to print, I didn't feel that way. It was just me consuming. And if it made me angry, I could rip it up. If it made me happy, I could send a picture to my friends. If it reminded me of somebody, I could actually put it in the mail. And I realized the time that it takes to process information, regardless of how it makes how it makes you feel, is so important. And that's why I just enjoy print more. And then curiosity and conversation. I feel like I became a more confident person when interacting with things because, you know, it's nothing like saying you read something somewhere and they're like, 'Oh, where'd you read it?' You're like, 'Oh, a TikTok video.' Like, no, I could actually say I read this when I picked up The Washington Post. Right. I read this when I picked up The Atlantic magazine, and I was able to cite my sources, which made me just a lot more confident person and also just naturally curious. So I wanted to talk a little bit about my process of how I actually make the content that I make, because I think it's important to say this is completely different from what a journalist does, and I let my audience know that often I am not a source of authority. I am not somebody who is doing the same amount of fact checking that a journalist is doing. What I am doing is if I see an article that is really interesting and I feel like would speak to my audience, I'm going to read it, annotate it, summarize it, and lead my audience to better sources if they want to know more. So the first thing is read, read, read some more. Anything that I see, I'm picking it up. I'm reading it. And then the next thing is, is this naturally interesting? And I think that this is maybe where there's a difference between content creators and journalists. Right. You all have a job, like, well, I have a job, too. But you all are, basically, saying, you know, this is my, this might be an assignment that you all have or there might be something that you have to report on. I think the difference with content creation is it kind of comes from this. I hate to say this, but the selfish place of it naturally interests me. I'm going to share. But the next thing that I think about is what does my audience want to hear? Is this something that I see them scroll on their newsfeed and they often see? Like, for example, there was recently the New York magazine. I don't know if you saw that really popular cover after it was after our last our current president won the election and they were at a party. And it was really popular, like young people partying and things. And I saw a bunch of people retweet and repost the cover. But no one was actually opening the magazine and reading what it was talking about. So that's what makes me think, is my audience seeing something that they might not actually be reading the inside of and just reposting willy nilly? And so when those two things kind of meet, then I annotate, I reread, I keep annotating. And then I just put my phone down and I share what I've learned. I share my insights. I always share the history of the publication. Where did this publication come from? This journalist? Who is the journalist? Which I would love to get you all's opinion on, because I do think you all deserve a lot more protection sometimes. So I would like to get you all's opinion on that, too, and then share what I've learned, maybe share a little bit of my opinion. If I agree, if I don't agree, and also consistently remind people some of the restraints that journalists are under. I often get a lot of complaints in my comments that, why didn't the journalists expand on this? Why didn't they do this? I'm like, well, y'all, they might have liked a word limit, you know, or somebody is editing these things, too, for them. This is a process. It's not like you're just writing a blog post and you can let it live out there. So that is a little bit about my creative process. And then, you know, I think the next part of my, our conversation is about how content creators and journalists can work together better. And I really like this on point report that Poynter put out about the trends that we're seeing in journalism and what the future of it looks like. And obviously in this quote, right, studies have shown that consumers count on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Reels and YouTube for news and information. They rely on news personalities rather than media companies. And that personally, even as a content creator, makes me feel scared because as much as it is great being a content creator, an influencer, you all have a training that we do not have. And while I think it's important personally that people feel connected to the person that's giving them information or interested, I think this is kind of a a scary place we're in where people don't know who to trust and how to trust. And I think the only way we can get over that hump is by working together. Then I just say, 'I don't trust the media because I hear everybody and their mom saying this,' but who is the media? And that's the question that I often ask people when they say, 'I don't trust media.' Who are you talking about? What are you talking about? And I always ask them, how do you trust somebody who you're just seeing on your phone, but you don't trust an institution? You're not looking up the journalists, you're not looking up their training. But then what also comes to mind is that to me, what this is, 'I don't trust the media' is more so that I don't know. What journalists do. I don't know what a journalist is. I don't know what a media company is. I don't know how people write what they're writing. I don't know what reporting is. I don't know what fact gathering is. And I think that this is a definitive statement that allows people to just, not engage and just grow news fatigue versus being more curious and shifting the thinking to what if we learn more about what you all did? What if we could create a content world and an influencer world where we were able to use our platform to showcase what you all do, what would it look like if journalists in a way that has often been so shielded from the public do what they do? What if the public got to know why it's important that you all have audience growth? What if the public got to know the training that you all go through? What if the public got to know what ethics you all are actually following? What if the public got to know if you all do have biases, I think we're in this different lane of journalism where for so long journalism has happened behind a curtain. And that's kind of why it's been respected is that there is just this blind trust. And as we've seen, that trust has been broken. And as a content creator, in my space, I think what you all do is so cool and people need to know more about it. And I also pulled this report because I think this was so funny. I'm a Gen Z journalist and my generation doesn't know what I do. Which I don't know. I feel like I don't know what my friends who are consultants do. I know more what you all do. I'm like y'all over here making decks and doing everything. I don't know what that is. But I do think this article is a really good read and interesting because it made me realize a lot of younger people don't know what journalism is. They have absolutely no clue. And that also goes back to kind of education gaps that I'm discussing. But also, as I'm sure you all have experienced, the privilege, the hierarchies that come in journalism and how hard of it it is a door to enter. So I kind of just have this slide to say, I think journalists have done a really good job in the past couple of years discovering what a content creator is. I think it's been lovely to see you all bring in a news report and ask, 'What are the content creators thinking?' Right. Or when a piece of content is trending, why is it trending? Let's go talk to those content creators. But I don't think we do a good job as content creators asking what a journalist is. How can we cover journalists, especially as one of the news influencers? What does it look like? Why don't we reach out to you all and ask us to help with a piece of content that we're making? And so, I think this has been doing a really good job. But the content creators have been lacking a bit. And I think that that goes back to maybe us not quite knowing what journalism is. And so this slide, I think this is more so just some brainstorming that I've thought of: how do we make journalism sexy? And I know it sounds silly, but if you scroll on TikTok or Instagram, you will see people doing day in the lives of so many different jobs. And I want to see personally more journalists. I would love to know what you all and I think the public would like to know how you put together a story. When you put together writing and you post it digitally or it ends up in print, what was the process to do so? If you're going to a really sticky or dangerous place, how are you being protected? How do you actually make money from what you write? How are your editors maybe basing if you get a promotion off of what you write? I think that these are some very important things for the public to know that not only from an educational standpoint are important, but it makes the industry juicy like, oh, this is how you get in. This is how I can get my foot in the door. So that's the first thing I always think of is day in the lives. And I think there's some very I remember we kind of talked about how do we bring optimism into this? I think there's some really unique ways that creators and journalists can work together. I also talk to a lot of journalists and I understand I don't want the camera on you, right? I want to be behind the camera. And I think that that's where content creators can come in. And what does it look like there for them to film the day in the life and narrate it or walk around the office with you, walk around a day with you and tell their story about it? So I think that there's some really unique ways of respecting the fact that not everybody wants to be on camera. But how can we bring in people who have that brand and have that audience to do so? I think the next thing is clear channels of communication. And this can look like so many different things. It can look like what we're doing now. It can look like our organization will have to partner with this influencer and maybe allow them if, let's say, there's a story about an upcoming election. Can we maybe invite some content creators or influencers into the office and share some things that you all are learning, and make sure that the facts are correct? Are there ways that we can create different partnerships? Are there ways that we can create a long-lasting relationship with an influencer or content creator in a certain space that we're consistently working on or working with? And then I also think the other thing is I think they're really cool opportunities for workshops with creators because we don't know most creators who are new influencers. I don't know if they know how to fact-check, if they know what ethics are, if they know the danger sometimes of getting misinformation. And I think you all are the experts in that and really have the ability to help creators. So, what does it look like to lead those workshops? What does it look like to send an email to a creator and say, 'Hey, I loved your video on this, but this fact was pretty incorrect and it could be misleading.' Would you like to just set up a Zoom call and talk about it? I saw that you're going to do a part two to this. Can we maybe hop on the phone before you put out the next video? And I think that that's the way we can start more so being friendly in this, because it's pretty much going to be up to solve. It's going to be up to us to solve this media landscape that has kind of become really messy and really icky for people. So where am I on time? I actually don't have my watch on. You've got a few more minutes. A few more minutes? OK, good, because that's the end. But but I do want to go back to this in a way of, you know, reminding us and especially you all, my channel is very open and I want this to be the beginning of a relationship between all of us where you all have ideas about content creation and how it can look better, how my content can look better. How do you know any influencers who might be interested in this area? I'm willing to open. I'm willing to share and be open because I want this to be an open channel of communication between all of us. And so that's a little bit of my story. I think how content creation journalism can blend together. And I'm open to pretty much talk about anything that's needed. Well, before I open it up for the fellows, I wanted to run something by you. And that is what I think is the difference between the word influencer and gatekeeper. I saw an article over the weekend. It was actually an op-ed by the editor of the Sarasota Herald Tribune. I'll share it with you guys. But he talked about the fact that Catrice Hardy, the editor of the Dallas Morning News, is stepping aside and going to work for a nonprofit newsroom. And she's an African-American woman, amazing journalist, the history. But he mentioned the fact that there are twelve hundred executive editor jobs in America today and only ten are African-Americans. And so one of the things that I find so genius about what you're doing and the work that you're doing is that you're simply modeling to the public and to the newsroom managers that who is delivering the message matters. Do you agree with my sort of interpretation of where we are in journalism in this moment in terms of public trust and people accessing media? Oh, yeah, I totally agree with that. I agree with your line of thinking. And I think that's something that the Internet did for journalism is to allow people to see who the people writing stories look like and how. If I'm consistently seeing a trend of you talking about people that look like me in a negative way or you're just not talking about people that look like me. When I go on your website and see everybody in your newsroom doesn't look like me or doesn't look like anybody in my community, then it starts to make sense. So I do think that the beauty in what the Internet and also what social media has done is allow people to see what the people who are writing stories about them in their communities look like. And it's also called attention to a lot of legacy institutions like where are the black people, where are the people of color, you know, where are the people that make up the actual worlds that you're talking about? So I completely agree with that line of thinking. Yeah, let's open it up. Are there any questions for Kelsey? Let's start back here. Oh, yes, please do introduce yourselves and where you're from again. Hey, Kelsey, thank you so much for that presentation. Monique Welch from the Houston Landing. I'm a diverse communities reporter. And one of the slides you were talking about how you annotate and you kind of like break it down. You're summarizing right articles that you find interesting. You're not like making it clear that you're not like the authority, and pointing your audience back to like the actual sources. I wonder what that process is like for you, if that is mentally daunting at all. And I ask that because just as a journalist, a lot of times, you know, a journalist's worst nightmare is having a correction and getting something wrong. Right. And policies and laws, anything we're trying to make sense of and digest and break down in an accessible way for our readers. And that is a mentally daunting task, depending on what you cover, regardless. Right. And so I know a lot of journalists deal with that. So I'm wondering for you as someone who is kind of like the second messenger, for lack of a better word, what that mental psyche is like for you. And if you've ever had a conversation, gotten something wrong or had a conversation with a journalist where they were like, 'hey, that's actually not how that went down' and if you give an example about that. Oh, Monique, that's a good question, because yes, I think something is a content creator that I have to learn is your comment section is pretty much. The closest that you're going to get to your community and as soon as you put something in, well, let me just say this, it always happens on the most popular videos. Any time that you get something wrong, it's going to happen when a video is trending. And I think that I've had an instance of that before. Even recently, I just did a video and I I quoted somebody saying something and I set their job title wrong. So, for example, I quoted that. It was actually just the New York magazine I was talking about. And the reporter was quoting somebody who is a I can't exactly remember what they did, but they're essentially a they're a crisis manager for folks who have podcasts, primarily right leaning podcasts in the way that I said it was as if the journalist themselves was quoted saying it and that caused a lot of disturbance in my comments of people. Then. Instead of attacking the journalist and assuming that that's the way the journalists thought and I have to go back and say, no, that was my fault. What I meant is that this I should have quoted this person and this is their job and the journalist was quoting their words. So, yes, that does happen. And it feels terrible. It feels awful, especially in an Internet world where people can run with something. And then almost like gossip, like when you say when you say a little piece of gossip and then you play a game of telephone and seven people come back. And then you're like, oh, I'm a content creator. And now whole new characters are introduced and a whole new setting exists. So I think for my psyche, the one thing I know is that I have a duty, especially as an influencer or content creator, to make sure that misinformation doesn't exist in my comments; it's hard, but also it's necessary because people take what they see on the Internet as face value. And oftentimes I realize a lot of my people who are supporting me, they're not even going to the source. They're taking me as the source. So is it fun? No. Is it embarrassing? Yes. But at the same time, it's important to correct myself. So that's how it feels. I hope I answered your question. Thank you. Can you pass it down? Hi, Kelsey. Thank you so much for your time. I'm Anjali. I cover politics for the Boston Globe. And I guess something I'm curious about. I really, really appreciate what you do in your work, particularly when it comes to pointing back to the journalists who are doing this work and citing your sources and giving credit where credit's due. I think there's a lot of news influencers who don't do that, who tend to just pull information that they see. Sometimes they don't even read the actual story. They'll see a headline and just start spouting off about it. Where do you see the incentive for those sorts of news influencers who have thousands, millions of people following them and just say things that are coming from our reporting without credit? How do you get them to understand that, you know, working with us is better than competing with our content or rather just stealing our content? Yeah, that is a really good question. So my first thought is I'm just going to be very frank here in the influencer world. Some of these influencers, they're a little like bratty; like when you want to reach out to them, if and this is just being on the side of having people who I wouldn't call friends, but are in my my coworkers, I would say. If you don’t come at them with a certain price, like they will not they will ignore you, like if it's a brand deal that’s not going to give them X amount of money, then they don’t want to do it. So I think you can be kind of sneaky in ways that you could work with them. For example, we’d love to invite you into our newsroom and maybe take a tour. And if you’d like to take a video, you can. We'd love to give you access potentially to this conference that we're going to. So I think the way to get around that is by building a relationship with that influencer, that from the jump says we're not really trying to do a brand partnership with you, because also the reality is, as we know, media companies aren't going to give the money that Microsoft is going to give. Like, that's just that is what it is. So I think building a relationship with them and spinning it; how can we support your content in a way does that mean that if we have a speaker coming, we would love for you to come by if we have a book signing. We would love for you to come by and then slowly build a relationship that allows them to say, 'Hey, when you're writing the story, let's just have a Zoom call.' Or if we have pieces that we'd like you to talk about, maybe can we send you them and talk about them before you make the content? So for those influencers, especially ones that might have a lot of followers and I don't want to put all of them in a bucket, but the ones who are not giving you all the credit and are not fact-checking, how can you invite them into your world in a safe way that also respects you all? So I think that's how you can get around it. And also, you know, if you have friends that aren't reporters, ask them to comment. Be like, that's not right. That's wrong. If you don't want your name attached, have people in your community maybe go comment on those videos as well. So that's what I would say. Hi, I'm Chloe, I'm with Al Jazeera English. We have been like really balancing this line for like getting younger, like a younger audience, and I think the big like limitation has been like executives who are like boomers and older sometimes is kind of they're like worried about ruining the brand and like professionalism, like whatever, and then like us who are like no one's reading our articles. No one's turning on Al Jazeera on TV or anymore and no one's listening to our podcast on Spotify. We're like we need to reach out. And like I guess for me, my question is like, what are your thoughts on just like balancing almost like authority and also your real personality in order to get actual engagement? Because I think what I've noticed is like and what you've said is that Gen Z and like millennials tend to like personalities and and I would agree like that's usually the easiest way for engagement. So I guess I just want to know what your balance is, what your thoughts on that. And your question, you're mainly asking, like, what's my balance with thinking about those authoritative figures? Yeah, kind of like just like what do you what would you suggest if like like in terms of like how do you balance this like idea and image of professionalism that comes with the journalism industry, but also like having actual engagement by having personality on? I see what you mean. And I know exactly what you're talking about, because I feel like this is also happening across so many industries right now-that and I think I also always question if this happens in every generational divide of the way folks in a couple of generations above work is no longer working and it will not work for the next generation. So I think. That's a good question, because that's a toughie. I think if there's any way you can bring in younger voices to really like let them know that this is not going to work and I would not read this is always good to have the actual voices in the room, if you can get their physical bodies in there and say how they feel about the work is always a great thing. And I also think what does it look like maybe to or at least what I think is that, you know. When we talk about younger readers, they actually want to know more about what they're reading. They want to know more context. They want to know the history behind why this war exists. How did this person get an office? So I wonder, too, if it's maybe like a conversation about, gosh, like you kind of me stumped because I see like all my answers as they're going through my head, I could see somebody saying that's not professional. But I wonder if there's examples you can give of other people who are creating content. But I think going back to that younger people in the room, how do they want to consume news? And I also think supporting anything with the fact that younger people are really experiencing an educational gap, and it's going to be up to journalism to help fix that gap. So, what does it if we're not going to serve them? We're not going to have them; they're not even going to be knowledgeable enough to interact with our sources. So I wonder what that looks like to also use as a backing for why we need to change the way that we write and consume. Yeah, I want to jump in before we we go back to you all and talk about the issue of branding. And I'd like to see a show of hands amongst the fellows: how many of you are comfortable with the issue of putting yourself out there, maybe having a public image, and how many of you are resistant to that? So how many of you are comfortable with the thought of maybe putting yourselves out there? Complicated. I want to do it. But let's let's get the mic before we well, the reason I ask that is because I do feel it's sort of it can be generational because for me, when I started out in 1986, my whole process was let the word speak for me. So you don't need to know about me. And this is the way we were classically trained. So you just do the reporting and you put the story out there. And I resisted it for so, so long. And it really took engagement on LinkedIn for me to come out of that because I used it sort of as a personal diary and I put my opinions out there and I started to develop a following or whatever. But in terms of your perception of working with the media industry or whatever, is that issue of journalists needing to brand themselves something that's a roadblock or stumbling? I think it's a stumbling block because, well, before I answer your question, do you think I could hear more about why people might have that as a stumbling block or a roadblock? Let's pass the mic to Lionel. Yeah, I was just kind of saying that. Introduce us. Lionel Ramos covers state government at KOSU in Oklahoma City. I just often feel like it's more complicated for me as far as the branding goes or that. That kind of personality type of interaction with the public. Right. Because I feel the need. I have peers, obviously, who I can identify, would reciprocate well if I put things on social media. But I also would like for the words and the work to speak for itself. Right. And I think this goes into a question that I have, which is that of trusting individuals like content creators and individual journalists or institutions. Right. Because when I when people tell me I don't trust the media, to be honest with you, I tell them that I don't either. I trust journalists. I know a handful of journalists whom I trust and I trust them to do the job well. And so, I kind of get stumped there. Right. Because I don't want to make a personality be the reason that people come looking for the information. And so, yeah, that's kind of where my head space is on that. Yeah. Any other thoughts? Yeah. I feel. Oh, yeah. Mark Edwards from Washington Examiner, video producer in Washington, but yeah, it's and this could, you know, being a video guy, I'm definitely more comfortable when it comes to putting myself out there personally. One of the reasons I got into journalism was, you know, back in middle school, high school, there is a channel called SourceFed and they were largely, you know, perusing the news themselves, doing something. But they had their own like news channel and I followed them largely due to personality. And I feel like part of like the disconnect between like people's trust in the in the general in the general media and being able to trust a random face that they saw online is I feel like content creators have a better sense of trust with the audience. Like if I can look you up personally and see all your credentials and background or not really have to look you up, I just on TikTok, you know, you scroll right. And I see your full profile and I can go to your socials, Instagram and things like that. It's like I understand. I understand wanting the words to be able to speak for themselves. But I think also there are occasions where people have felt burned by people like they've trusted and they didn't really know much about so even though our names are on all the articles are like we as people like our credentials aren't like front and center like a content creator would be because having those credentials or wherever your background is, is part of the brand building. So, yeah, no, I see. I just want to put that out there just because I agree with you where I think there is there does have to be collaboration and maybe like even a different role as a journalist where part of the personality is just necessary, I feel like it's just necessary for building trust with audiences now, you know. Pass the mic back. Thank you again for this, Gabriel Cortez, CNBC. And I don't know how if other people have this problem, but I think that the work suffers when you're thinking about putting yourself out on social media and like it becomes an entire paradigm shift. I don't have time for this. Like, I really don't. So that's the bigger issue that I have is that I can either choose my work product. And like you said, Rachel, let my words speak for themselves or let my graphics or let my data analysis speak for itself. And you can go look up my bio page. Should you go? Should you choose to do so? Or I can become a personality. But I really can't do both. And I've thought about this a lot. I do not have the energy for this. There are only so many hours of that in the day. And our newsroom is small. I'm sure that everybody else's newsrooms are small. We have a big channel, but we're a small newsroom. We're overstretched. We're all doing a lot of work. And like, when am I going to you know what I mean? Like that, that's the bigger existential problem that I have with making journalism sexy. It's also not sexy. Like, there's a reason that the journalism movies are not that like it's it's it's like watching Mark Ruffalo make a spreadsheet about priests that had been moved around in spotlight like that's not sexy. Like, that's just like that's that's the work. So I'd be curious, like how you from the influencer side of things, what you think is a happy medium between becoming a personality, putting yourself out there because it's a lot of work versus like doing the actual work that got us here. So many words, so many words. I'm happy I heard from you all because I wanted to understand more of what those roadblocks were. Could I ask one more roadblock? Actually, Richard Seema, Washington Post, Brain Matters columnist, on top of like the additional work. But, you know, the format is also quite different. It's very succinct on social media and it's like, OK, I've written a thousand words and there's a lot of nuance. There's a lot of, you know, researcher-like experts I'm citing. But you can only really get the top line into a short 90-second or less video. So how would you do that without like watering down or like taking that stripping that nuance out in that kind of medium? Hearing the roadblocks from the other side are so fascinating because I these are ones I didn't think of the first thing that came to my mind was you all safety, because as a person, personality, people tend to attack you. And the fact that it's your not only you all that they're attacking, but your work that they're attacking is the first roadblock that came to mind. But when I'm thinking about all of these roadblocks, I feel like in my mind, the way we could get over them is potentially by newsrooms, almost hiring influencers to potentially do that work. Right, because you're right. You will lose some parts of the piece when you put it into a 60 or 90-second video. However, I think what happens is like for me, I don't always have access to the journalists that I'm talking about. But at the same time, I've got to put out content; that's my job. If I don't put out content for a couple of weeks, things could start to fall through the cracks. So I think it will be interesting to see what that model would look like of actually hiring like a full-time influencer who might already have a following, which I think I mean, I see a lot of newsrooms, especially ones that are primarily socially-based, do. And I so hear you on the fact that that's almost an extra job for you all to do is have to put the camera down to edit it, to annotate, to sync the video, to be interesting. So I almost feel like that's somebody else's job who already is doing it well. Let's get the mic passed up this way to Gabriela. Thank you. Hi, Gabriela Nunez with 11 Alive News in Atlanta. So I started in print. I now work in broadcast. And I feel like a lot of our reporters, the 90-second video and et cetera, those are packages that we air or I'll spend three months on a story that gets three minutes on TV and oftentimes in our newsroom, it feels like content creators are the competition, like can we make our video go viral instead? I'm just intrigued to pick your brain about the relationship with broadcast news and content creators, and then also second part of my question is you seem to have a very strict code of ethics for yourself if you can share some of those as well. Yeah, that's that's so real, because even on the new show I work on, they're not even thinking about the full show, they're thinking about. Is this going to be a trending TikTok by the time it comes out? And I think that the conversation has to be. I think the only way we're not going to see each other as competition is if potentially, and this is what I said about the sexy thing. I actually hear you. The journalism isn't sexy, but I think. Yeah, it's right. But I think what influencers and content creators can do is make anything look sexy or interesting. So I think the way to make them not enemies is to bring them into the process. So when you're spending those three months actually creating the story, I feel like there should be an influencer not only wondering, 'OK, how am I going to put all this time she spent into 90 seconds', but actually how can I document your process of that three, those three months and put it into a video, I don't know if it starts a video with. Even though this video is going to be 90 seconds, it took this reporter. It took this investigator three months to put this together. How did how did they do it? So I think that to make us less of enemies, we have to be involved in your process and respect the process and also showcase the process and also think it goes hand in hand, right, like being an influencer as it's fun and you get the PR packages and you get to go places, is still work. There's still really ugly parts of it that aren't sexy, like staying up and editing your videos because you don't want to pay for that or, you know, having to turn down things because you just have to or it doesn't meet your ethics. So I think going into the ethics question, I mean, they align with my values. Like the things I value are family. I value respect. I value happiness. I value love. And I feel like if the message that I'm sending does not align with those things, I am not going to send it. If it is a media organization that even though I really want to interact with it, I cannot agree with their views, I'm not going to share it because it goes against my ethics and my values, but I also feel like a value that I have is communication and wanting to have a conversation. So if a piece shuts me down to the point where I feel disgusted and disrespected, I'm not going to share that. That's not worth it, especially in an algorithm that likes to trend hate more. So that's how I feel. Pass the mic back. Hi, I'm Tamia Folks, a public investigator for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. I had two questions for you. One, was on that safety point that you mentioned, since you are a personality, I'm considering that you probably get a lot of like maybe hate messages. And I'm wondering how you deal with being a personality online and ensure that all of your private information is, you know, staying concealed and you can do so safely. And then my second question is about how you've pivoted your formatting of videos. I know some of them range from like eight to ten minutes. Others are shorter. And I'm wondering, in what way do you find that you get the most engagement on the longer videos? Is there anything in particular that you do to break it up, to make it more engaging for your audience? Yeah. So I'll answer the second question first. The first thing I do is if I want to make a longer video, I just let people know kind of you're doing a presentation. I'm going to talk about this, this and this and let them know where to expect, what to expect. Also, something that helps is if you put the duration of your video. So this is going to be five minutes and sometimes encouraging people to watch it on two times speed. I think lets the audience know like, hey, this is going to be long and if you want to watch it, you can watch it at two times speed. Because I do that. The next thing I do is I also say a big measure of engagement that is not as respected as saves. If people are saving your video, that means they're coming back and looking at it. So, I think that that's a way that also is just more of a validating metric, that even if it might not have as many views or as likes as a shorter video, people are coming back and watching it. And I started dividing my videos into parts because I'm going to be real. The attention span, it can be low. People like to be kept on their toes. They like to know to come back. And I maybe this is rude to my audience. I don't post them back to back. Like if I film them all together, part one, part two, I'm going to release them within a week. I'm not going to release them day to day to day because it'll I know it'll drive people to keep coming back to my page and then the safety thing. Well, it depends what the what side of the bed I wake up. If there are people that are trolling me, I might kind of troll that, but that's just me being petty. Right. Because somebody, especially if it's about appearance or things like that. I'll be like, 'Oh, I'd be interested to see how you look with your no profile picture' or 'Wow.' Right. But that's kind of-that's what I wake up like. I don't feel good about today. The other thing I do is I always try to and I actually was I was talking with a content creator on a panel two weeks ago and she said something that really stuck to me with, you know, a lot of people have, you know, people still want to help if you if you assume that everybody has good intentions and is even saying things that might be a little hateful or rude and they want to help your channel or your page or your newsroom. Then I always try to approach it with a sense of curiosity. If somebody says something, I'm like, well, why do you think that way? Or what made you say that? Or, you know, what is your line of thinking in this? And oftentimes they don't respond because I think if somebody says something nasty and you ask them why they think what they think, they don't want to share that. But I think that that's the way that I deal with it. And then safety, very small things like never posting locations. That are that people will be able to see, never really posting from this anything that's about my place where I'm posting, and then other ways that I can protect myself online, that I can share with you to take one or two more questions back here. Thank you. Thanks so much for the presentation. My name's Nicole. I'm a reporter with Minnesota Public Radio. I specialize in multimedia reporting. My background was in print, and then went to radio. I was hired on a team where we focus specifically on producing videos, vertical video on social media to optimize any stories. And that often means that we'll collaborate with journalists on different teams, like climate or cannabis or politics. And they're sort of kind of need a bite. There needs to be a buy-in for those journalists to want to do the work that they were sort of talking about or their obstacles. I'm really interested in the work that you do, because outside of journalists, there aren't really people that take the time sort of like you do to actually vet information. And that's the reason why I think there's a concern too. You know, you always have to take a double take whenever you watch a video on TikTok because you don't know if the information you're receiving is biased or supporting like a bottom line for the influencer. So I'm just wondering, like, if you could speak to the concern. And you're talking about it's important to collaborate with influencers as journalists, the concern of will that collaboration kind of jeopardize our integrity or the work that we do, which is that we have to be factual, we can't lean one way or the other. And we need to, like, deliver information in an ethical way. Mm hmm. Um. I think a way to balance that and that is, once you start working with influencers, there are going to be people outside there, like that's not credible. That's not newsy. I would say invite them into your world as much as you can versus going into theirs. So like small things with collaborations, if you can get them in your setting wherever you make videos, film with your team and edit it so they're not editing it, they're not sitting in their apartment doing those things, that is a way that I can I can can see if I'm consuming content as a consumer and a creator, that it follows more so your all's ethics. I would also say if you're going to make content with an influencer, the best content I've made with news organizations is when they sit down with me and explain their ethics, when I send them a script, explain why I can't say it that way in scripts are very important. If you're working with influencers checking their script, if they go off script saying you have to rerecord and this is why because of the standards we have to uphold. So I would say inviting them into your world, explaining why they can't do what they do, why they can't film on their camera, why you all need to edit their things is a way to get over that. Yeah. Any more pressing questions? We'll take one more. Hi, thanks, Kelsey. I'm Alicia at States Newsroom. What examples do you have of news organizations making good vertical content? And that translates their reporting into snackable or sexy videos? Yes, that's a good question. Washington Post going through a lot, but they did have a great TikTok. And I do think even though whatever the drama is, the drama. But I will say that they-I think did some great they do some great work on TikTok that are very digestible, very interesting. I think that those are great examples of content when I'm able to see the assets that you all have. When I'm able to see the journalists. Also, you know, there's some people's voices that just sound good on camera. So I would say that they have been a great example of that. And then I would say some do you just ask for good examples, right? But you're right, exactly. But I've always I always have thought that their TikToks have been some of the best. But I also realize, right there, a bigger institution with better with bigger dollars, with more staff. So if you don't mind, if I can maybe send you some later of some smaller accounts that I can't think of right now that also do a great job with maybe a little less resources to wait for one of the bad. No shade, no shade, no shade. OK, I'm from Atlanta, Atlanta. General Constitution's content really makes me feel frustrated because it feels like I'm sorry, I'm sorry I said that because what they do is it just feels like they they take a couple of videos and then just report on what happened. Give me something extra. Give me somebody talking to the camera, explaining it in a different way. But as I use them as an example, because they have resources, they've made this pledge and commitment to do more content. And when I see it, I'm disappointed. But don't tell them I said that because I'm trying to work with them. Don't tell them I said that. Oh, well, we can cross off of our list. I love my city. I still love what they do, but that's an example. That's not my favorite. You have witnessed, I think, what is the secret sauce and the sort of central strategy of widening the pipeline over the past two years? And that is having conversations with really smart, really brilliant people who expand our context about issues and help us understand things in ways that in the day-to-day grind as we're doing our work, we simply don't have the time to do. And so I'm going to ask you to send this group of journalists home with a message about should they be hopeful about media and journalism going forward and their role in their place? And what are your thoughts about that? Absolutely. You should always be hopeful, because if you're not hopeful, then what you're hopeless, and then things go wrong. But I think when you do have I think you all should absolutely be hopeful, because even from hearing what you all do when you all first stood up to the fact that you're so early in your career, excited, you're here. I look out and I'm hopeful because I feel like when my parents were growing up, this is not what journalists look like. The fact that you all are asking questions, wanting to collaborate, thinking about the future of journalism itself is hopeful because you all have accepted that the past will not work for journalism. So you already are hopeful. The fact that you're here means you are hopeful. And I thought that was beautiful. What was said about burnout, and that the fact that you all are in this room, and there are people that are further in their career, and they said they want to protect you from that and they want to help you in that process is a reason to be hopeful, because there are so many industries where burnout is just accepted and it is what should happen, and the fact that there are people leading that at a place like this and say that's not acceptable is beautiful. So be hopeful, and also know that I'm one of many. There are other influencers that want to work with you all. So I say stay hopeful. You all have a cohort of people, too. Like, that's how you get through life is through community. So you have reasons to be hopeful. And like I said, why not be hopeful or else? It's National Margarita Day on Saturday. You've got to look for the little things in life. So that's it. You gave me a reason to be hopeful. There you go. Right. So thank you. So we now have a new member of the NPF Widening family. Oh, you're a member of our tribe now. You're somebody that we will count on and depend on for advice and wisdom. And I'd like for us to take this opportunity right now to show Kelsey Russell, media influencer extraordinaire, our appreciation. So let's do that.