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Journalism is a medium that is constantly evolving with technology and there’s no answer to what it’ll look like in the future. Walkley’s CEO Jacqui Park said ‘whenever we think we’re close to the answer it seems to vanish from us’.
New, innovative platforms that give users instant gratification are increasing in popularity and can be used by news organisations in order to connect to younger audiences in a less structured way. Snapchat has only been around for about 5 years, but with 540,000 snaps sent per minute, I’d say it’s doing pretty well. Brands are beginning to recognise the benefits of having a Snapchat presence, particularly when reporting softer topics. Reporting from Snapchat isn’t limited to only soft news, however. Although the platform doesn’t have a traditional news format, its ability to deliver hard news stories involving politics, protests and business and talk about news worthy issues has been successful thus far.
My chosen story is appropriate for Snapchat because it is a very visual and easy-going report of a quirky street artist. The combination of photos, videos, captions and geo-filters along with narration are ideal when producing a local arts piece. Because my story is focused on online culture influencing artwork, I was able to play around with text, emojis and filters, knowing that my audience would be familiar with these features. Snapchat has recently introduced an upgrade to their app called ‘Memories’. This is a feature that allows photos from your camera roll to be uploaded onto your story, and if you’ve seen my news piece, you’ll know this benefited my storytelling massively.
There are a few obvious challenges of storytelling through Snapchat. The video quality isn’t the best and it’s a very casual platform that, as a result, has nonchalant users. People tend not to take you seriously when you’re filming an interview or your PTC on your phone, and even more so when you’re using Snapchat. But these are the factors we will have to get used to in this developing technological world. That being said, if I were to do this again, I’d actually record more PTC’s and get a few vox pops while I’m at it. I’d also make sure my voice is clear by listening carefully to my snaps before posting them to my Snapchat story. It’s not always easy to check the sound if you’re in a loud public area, but the amount of snaps I had to delete from my story after hearing that I’d been cut off at the start or because the background noise was louder than my voice over was just painful, and it’s such an easy thing to avoid.
