Reverse the Journalism Process

Attention is now the scarcest resource in journalism — and the most sought-after commodity. News producers today must navigate an environment in which consumers have seemingly endless choices. They can no longer rely on a “publish and hope to be found” model and instead must begin with a clear understanding of how audiences may encounter their work and design backward from there.

For most of the past century, news has followed a linear workflow:

Idea → Research → Writing → Editing → Publication → Distribution

Now, a segment of innovative emerging news producers is reversing that flow. These producers first choose their distribution medium — the format and location they will publish. They then become deeply familiar with those formats and platforms and experiment to find what works. Once they find success, they convert that approach into a repeatable template that they then deliver over and over again. The choice of story is an input, not the start of the journalism process.

This represents a new workflow:

Distribution → Idea → Testing → Editing → Publication → Community Engagement

The result is a fundamental reframing of journalistic practice. Rather than producing with the assumption of discovery, news producers design the audience experience first, investing in formats with recognizable value instead of attempting to cover every possible topic. Instead of silos such as politics or crime or sports or entertainment, they build small, cross-specialist teams that manage a channel end-to-end — TikTok, email, print, Instagram, et al.

Be native to the platform, and never shoehorn content for the sake of it

Across traditional news organizations, social and new-format teams often are positioned downstream of core editorial processes. Their output is often treated as a rerun of the homepage, and, as such, the work frequently feels foreign to the platform. Thus, it underperforms.

The inverse also holds. When teams start with the platform’s language — the tone, pacing, visual grammar, humor — the work simultaneously blends in and stands out. It is native enough to be legible and distinct enough to be memorable. In these cases, the format is conceived prior to the story, and editorial calls are shaped by whether a story naturally inhabits the format and platform. Emerging news producers identify an underserved niche (a specific community or topic) or a promising audience need (deep-dives, quick news, humour-led opinion) and proactively develop a recognizable and repeatable style — in essence, a brand. Over time, audiences come to recognize the brand’s promise and rhythm, and that familiarity captures and keeps attention.

“Don't try and shoehorn your existing content onto social media for clicks and to just be efficient. You need to craft your content for social media first.”

“Dave [Jorgenson] is masterful at choosing the right storytelling device for each story. The first time we had to really think about that was after the murder of George Floyd. We’d mostly been doing comedy, but this was a story we couldn’t ignore. We had to find a new way to tell it—still using Dave’s character-driven approach, but with a different tone. Then COVID followed right after, so we were quickly adapting. From the start, our strategy was to be authentic to the platform—not to force news until people knew and trusted us. For the first six months, we barely covered any news. The idea was to build trust first, then inform. George Floyd's murder became the moment that made that transition natural. Later, in 2023, we spent a year tracking mass shootings in the U.S., using TikTok's duet format. It wasn't comedic, of course, but using a familiar format to audiences made the coverage really impactful."

Move beyond the inverted pyramid

The inverted pyramid — long the foundation of news production — remains useful in certain contexts, but it is not the dominant organizing framework for emerging news producers. We observed a shift toward structures that guide learning through experience, such as:

  • Problem - tension - reveal
    Start with a relatable problem, build intrigue or conflict around what is at stake and then deliver insight or resolution that satisfies curiosity.

  • Question - hypothesis - test
    Pose a compelling question, offer a possible explanation and walk the audience through the evidence or experiment that proves or disproves it.

  • Misconception - correction - takeaway
    Begin with a common misunderstanding, clarify what people often get wrong and close with the key lesson or reframed understanding.

Packaging dictates the journalism, and what emerges are formats designed so clarity, pacing and tone draw people through the explanation. In these models, information hierarchy is still present, but it is delivered as a journey rather than a static stack.

“The traditional approach for news – arranging facts in descending order of importance – lacks creativity and flexibility. What’s more, the research says this style alienates younger audiences that crave a ‘more thoughtful, considered and purposeful approach’ to online news. They want it to reflect the reality of their lives, rather than industry norms."

Consume deeply in order to be an authentic producer

Emerging news producers who excel tend to be heavy consumers of the ecosystems into which they publish. The advantage is subtle but compounding: a shared textural sense of cadence, humor and community norms that cannot be transferred by guidelines alone. Successful emerging news producers make finer-grained decisions because they have internalized the environment’s cues. This is less about chasing trends and more about fluency — understanding the dialects of a platform well enough to speak its voice authentically.

“Here’s a key thing: I think you have to be a consumer to be a producer, and I think this is a huge gap. I really think this is a real problem. I think now if I started to get serious about making TikTok videos where I talk to a camera, having watched a lot more, I would be better now. And if I practiced, I’d get better. But the textural sense Mamdani has for the format — you can't just read some packet or jump in from nowhere."