We have no shortage of critical readers, I’m pleased to say. Last week, we received an unexpected visit from someone who kindly conveyed his opinions on our front page news, headlines, and other editorial matters. He even offered to help. Another emailed us recently: “All those articles about INKOM are nice, but apparently, there are a lot more to be found on Instagram. I can’t read them, as I don’t have an account.” He concluded that some of our journalistic efforts aren’t reaching everybody. “Curious,” he noted. He was perturbed that we would choose “a profit-driven company” over our own website. Surely, it can’t be that hard to publish everything on our website, he said.
And granted, it isn’t hard to publish everything we create, from articles to videos, on observantonline, but is that what we want? No.
INKOM is a good example. For years, we wrote short reports, from the market where student organisations promote themselves to the sports event, and then published those on our website. Partway through the introduction week, those would be supplemented with a photo report or pictures of students.
This year, we switched it up – an experiment. Short interviews with first years and an article about INKOM were published on our website, videos and lots of pictures were posted on Instagram. If we want to reach a new audience (first-year students), then we are more likely to find them there, hoping they then click through to our website and read the other articles there.
Admittedly, the Instagram algorithm has a way of getting on our nerves. Over the summer, when the Observant offices were closed, we couldn’t afford not to post anything. So Cleo Freriks, who is in charge of all that, planned a number of timeless articles, as a way of telling Meta, and our followers, ‘yoohoo, we’re still here’. It’s not how we would like to operate, but sometimes you have to choose the ‘lesser’ of two evils (the greater being leaving entirely, and we don’t want to do that either, yet).
That doesn’t mean we don’t talk about it often. We said goodbye to X last year. Deliberately. Since Elon Musk’s takeover, we were increasingly worried about using a medium where hate and outrage are given so much room to breathe. We’ve never been active on TikTok. You can certainly show a target audience you exist there, but does it allow room for nuance, can you go into the background of a news item? We seriously doubt it. You could say that’s inconsistent, because is that possible on Instagram? You may be right, but we are still not convinced.
‘Be informed, be engaged’, it said on the posters that we stuck on our windows during INKOM. Those critical readers who make us think have understood the message, at least.
The editor-in-chief gives a look behind the scenes at the editorial office.