Video: How Policymic is capturing millennials

PolicyMic.com aims at millennials who are dissatisfied with traditional news outlets. It reaches 14.5 million unique users a month, according to Jake Horowitz, co-founder and editor-in-chief. 

 The site started 2 1/2 years ago, and “the goal all along has been to empower young people who want to be a part of the conversation around the news and feel that news outlets historically have done a poor job of appealing to our generation.” 

 “Young people want to read about serious topics, but they want to hear authentic voices. They’ve been lied to one too many times by politicians, they’ve been misled one too many times by news outlets.”

“Young people are not going to news sites. They’re going to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Vine. You have to reach young people where they’re having conversations."

And the different social networks require different presentations. "A Facebook story looks a lot different from a Twitter story, looks a lot different from a Pinterest story, looks a lot different than the home page of the New York Times."

 The site has attracted a little over $3 million in seed funding, Horowitz said, which has allowed them to focus on growth without having to worry for the moment about generating a profit.

More: Startups aimed at millennials thrive in three languages
Tres medios digitales exitosos que apuntan a la generación del milenio


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Mexican blogger builds a business out of political satire

Chumel Torres

Versión en español aquí. 

Chumel Torres is a video-blogger whose satiric take on politics and journalism has managed to attract 483,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel in just one year.

He has made a business out of the sponsors he attracts to his weekly program,  El Pulso de la República (The Pulse of the Republic).

And he has a message for other young people who are frustrated with the coverage of politics by the major media: if you don't like what they are doing, start your own program or news site, he said in an interview.

"If the newspaper doesn't like you, doesn't listen to you, doesn't give you any money, doesn't offer any opportunities, well then, create your own project. Anybody can shoot a video or record a radio program and upload it to the web. The only limitation is what you have in your head."

Court news, videos drive web operation in Colombia

Versión en español aquí.

Just two years after its launch, the local news website zonacero.info ("ground zero") in Barranquilla, Colombia, has managed to attract 200,000 visits a month. This in a city of just over 1 million population.

This small staff of journalists demonstrates how knowing the community and understanding the audience can make the difference between success and failure.

How to decide whether to offer podcasts on your site

Versión en español aquí.

At the moment I am leading a course for Latin American journalists who have created their own digital news media (blog for the course in Spanish is here).

We just analyzed the multimedia aspects of a number of websites and a question arose about the value of offering podcasts. The simple answer is that it depends on the purpose of the site and the characteristics of the audience. 

There are tools available to offer a bewildering array of different services on your site, but before you deploy any of them, consider these questions:

• How likely is it that this new service (podcast, video, audio, poll, blog, forum etc.) will attract a new segment of the target audience?
• Do our competitors offer this service? If we can’t do it better than they do, maybe we should not consider it.