I struggled for over six months to get the newsroom I worked for onto Mastodon. There were lots of reasons why not. And now they’re on Threads with ~10K followers, the engagement they need, and the tools they need to understand their audience. And their content starts conversations and is reaching people who need to see it. This stuff matters.

@ben I remember this same statement being made in 2014. “We have to get on Facebook.” Then “We have to pivot to video.”

You know the rest. There is no one more of a glutton for punishment than news media. There is no rake they won’t step on.

@theinstantwin I actually think it’s the Mastodon project that stepped on this rake. Everyone was aligned - they just didn’t have the tools they needed to be able to sign on, and the journalists who did sign up had a terrible time onboarding (including choosing instances that turned out to be problematic).

@ben @theinstantwin There’s no doubt the Mastodon onboarding process is harder than Meta made it. But if the main goal is engagement and distribution, we already know how this story ends.

And in 2016 i could blame Facebook. But now? I’d squarely blame the pub if I saw even one layoff as a result of “The algorithm is reducing our reach.”

@theinstantwin @ben
Choosing to ignore a market because it takes 'effort' is the most journalism thing I've seen in awhile.

@Dragon @theinstantwin The perception is that it’s a small, skewed market that is not very diverse and is mostly very technical people.