Yeko Photo Studio
Creased paper
Isthmus posted its first tweet on Nov. 3, 2008, asking, “Could election day traffic overwhelm Twitter? It’s already operating strangely and it’s only Monday!”
Isthmus publisher Jason Joyce, who was the paper’s digital media director from 1998 until 2013, says Isthmus signed up for the social media platform at a time when a lot of other journalists and media organizations were doing it. “Not because we knew what it could do for us but because people in our industry said it was going to be big and interesting.”
But it was not clear how useful Twitter would be until February 2011, when massive protests erupted at the state Capitol against Gov. Scott Walker’s Act 10 legislation, which effectively ended collective bargaining for most state employees. “My observation is that an awful lot of people jumped on Twitter at the time to pay attention to what was happening,” Jason continues.
Jason and Kristian Knutsen, now a senior digital editor at PBS Wisconsin, organized Isthmus’ efforts to “live tweet” from the protests and other events, with reporters on the ground recounting in real time what was happening. These tweets were aggregated under #wiunion, which became the go-to hashtag for the protests.
“That drove news and it took time for the dailies to catch up,” recalls Jason.
Over the years Twitter has been a good way of staying in touch with our readers and community, though it’s become less and less effective at driving traffic to our website.
Recently we have seen little engagement with our content when we post stories to X, as the platform is now called under new owner Elon Musk. Part of that is likely due to changing algorithms, over which we have no control, and diminished trust in the platform. Many organizations and individuals have abandoned X under Musk’s ownership due to changes in how the platform functions, the lack of regulation of misinformation and hate speech, and Musk’s own controversial tweets or “posts” as they are now called. NPR stopped posting fresh content to Twitter in April after the platform falsely labeled it as “state-affiliated media.” (Six months in, they saw little impact on traffic from leaving the platform.)
Last month, we decided to take a break as well. We haven’t posted anything to Isthmus’ official account, which now counts 42,100 followers, and our reporters and editors have done little on their personal accounts as well.
We continue to post stories to Facebook, though engagement is down there as well, and Instagram, where engagement is high. But the benefits of Instagram are limited because you can’t post links to stories. Instead we post about four paragraphs from the story along with the lead art; we get a good number of “likes” on our posts and comments, and perhaps some are interested enough to find their way to our website to read the full story. But that’s not really the point.
“Our goal there is to deliver our journalism to readers and to stay in front of them,” says Jason.
We are also looking at alternatives to X, including Threads, which is an Instagram app, and Bluesky.
Given our small staff size, and lack of a dedicated social media manager, deciding where to direct our efforts to engage readers is no small question. Isthmus is not alone in trying to figure out next steps.
Sam Cholke is manager of distribution and audience growth for the Institute for Nonprofit News, which now has more than 400 nonprofit newsrooms as members, including Isthmus. Cholke recently took stock of the future of journalism in 2024 in an article titled “News confronts reaching audiences in a post-social world.”
“The last year has reminded many news organizations how brittle online audiences can be,” he begins, noting the sharp decline in traffic from Facebook and Google News sites.
In an interview with Isthmus, Cholke says that news organizations were hopeful that social media traffic would plateau in 2023 and are frustrated that it declined more than expected. The deeper frustration, he adds, is that the menu of options is “very, very short.”
“For a lot of folks they’re trying to grow their direct audience and places like Instagram and TikTok just don’t do it. You’re feeding Instagram’s audience, not yours. And it’s very difficult to move people from that platform on to yours…. The number of options where you could build an audience of your own and not just build someone else’s site feels frustratingly short now.”
We are not yet in a post-social media world, but moving towards one, he predicts. “This is the year we really have to start grappling with it.”
For starters, media organizations might have to consider traditional marketing strategies, he says.
“Most organizations have to spend money on marketing to make people aware of what they do or to get them interested or keep them interested. We’ve been able to go for a really long time without having to spend on marketing but now we have to figure it out. All those free pathways to reaching people are going away for us.”
News organizations are experimenting with different options. Some nonprofit media organizations are looking to use Google ads to advertise their publications, says Cholke. The Montana Free Press put up billboards in downtown Helena.
Events — community forums, film screenings, panel discussions — and things like “office hours” in public libraries are a way to reach new audiences.
Email newsletters are another engagement tool. We send three out weekly: On Tap, Word of Mouth and Isthmus Insider. They have high open rates and are a direct way to deliver content to readers, including stories and sponsorships from local companies and organizations.
But they have their limitations, says Cholke. “You are preaching to the choir: reaching people who are already engaged in the news. It only takes you part of the way toward your mission.”
How to reach people who are not engaged with the news is the real dilemma, and the underlying point of Cholke’s article.
“As recently as a decade ago, the news and news stories were a consistent part of daily life for Americans,” he writes. The news was on the TV in the dentist’s office and news magazines were on the table. And in the early days of the internet, Facebook was chock full of news stories.
This “incidental exposure” reinforced for most Americans that the news was important, Cholke writes. “There were signals all around to convince me that the news was important to most people and they were paying attention — and there was a societal expectation that I should too.
“Almost all of those signals are gone or severely weakened now.”
Surveys by Pew show the extent of the damage. In 2016, 51% of U.S. adults said they followed the news all or most of the time; only 38% did so in 2022.
This is sobering as we head into another crucial election cycle. The challenge in a post-social world, says Cholke, is to find new ways “to get the news to people that aren’t actively searching for it.”
