From a bottom-up editorial process to prioritizing diversity and using traditional marketing practices to develop journalistic stories, HuffPost Canada was a digital-first innovator. Then it was shuttered.
My interviews and observations at HuffPost were part of data gathering for the Journalistic Role Performance project, an international effort between 37 countries exploring if there’s a gap in journalistic ideals compared to practice.
After collecting thousands of stories in 2020, then coding them and surveying journalists from the news organizations who produced those stories, we’re now getting to the analysis stage. And, by coincidence, we’ve captured some of the last days of HuffPost Canada.
Blast from the past
Right before the first COVID-19 lockdown, I observed practice in the HuffPost newsroom. With wood-planked floors, high ceilings, exposed brick and lots of natural light, it had a different look and feel to it than many legacy news organizations. The “feel” reminded me a lot of Citytv Toronto when it was located on Queen Street West, where I worked as a television news producer and writer in the 90s and early 2000s. One reason was the young and diverse staff. CityPulse News, as it was known back then, was the first to make an effort to reflect the community it served.
In an interview done for students in my first-year journalism class, CBC anchor Dwight Drummond reminded me that when we worked at City together the motto of the newsroom was “everybody welcome, everybody belongs.” He said, for the first time, being a person of colour who grew up in public housing was seen as an asset.
Newsroom diversity industry-wide may have improved somewhat in a few decades, but there’s still a long way to go based on a report from the Canadian Association of Journalists that found “almost half of all Canadian newsrooms exclusively employ white journalists,” about 9/10 have no Latin, Middle Eastern or mixed race journalists, 8/10 no Black or Indigenous journalists and 2/3 have no Asian journalists.
At both HuffPost and City, the focus on diversity didn’t stop with the person reporting or cutting the stories, but flowed through to the use of sources and experts. One HuffPost editor said,
“Our big thing is that we normalize diversity. We don’t have special sections, we just do it–and if that approach can influence other media, that’s a marker of success for us.”
Newsroom culture
In terms of newsroom hierarchy, there was a “striking difference” in practice at HuffPost, according to one reporter who formerly worked for a legacy newspaper. At her previous job, the editorial process was completely top-down. Decisions on what she covered were based on what editors “felt” should get published. At HuffPost she came up with her own ideas. Another employee said everyone “was encouraged to contribute and innovate, and even dissent if they felt a story was inappropriate.”
At an editorial meeting I attended, there was a lot of talk about what was trending, how search engine terms could be leveraged to attract readers, and how social media could be used to promote both stories and engagement with particular segments of the audience. However, there was also a lot of discussion about politics, including an investigative piece coming out of Ottawa.
A study participant from another news outlet acknowledged HuffPost Canada did some good work, but questioned why it was part of our research. He said they were “national” only because anybody could “click on them” but their “repertorial footprint” was “pretty thin.”
This was acknowledged by HuffPost. One editor said it was a small team and there was “no illusion” that they could cover everything. They relied on agencies like the Canadian Press for stories they didn’t have the resources for, and encouraged reporters to focus on what they were passionate about and develop stories they’d be “remembered for.”
He stressed they weren’t just going for “cheap clicks” and that speaking “truth to power” and giving a “voice to the voiceless” was their “brand.” However, he also said there was “no shame” in doing viral stories, and didn’t understand why they were somehow considered “dirty” or labeled as “clickbait.” He compared them to the “water skiing squirrel” of TV news–I wrote about that squirrel(s?) more than once at City. Ratings mattered then and now–there were overall traffic targets at HuffPost.
Putting ‘a face’ to the audience and the journalists
Early analysis from our JRP data shows some notable differences in HuffPost Canada stories compared to the other news organizations in our study, including more prevalence of the use of first-person and the journalist’s point of view. Although recent research shows that the majority of news consumers might prefer a more traditional, impartial style, younger and/or left of centre audiences are more open to it, and there’s evidence that’s who HuffPost Canada was targeting.
Based on audience data, it had created imagined readers including Adam, a “middle millennial” who had a partner named Taylor, and Adela, a “young millennial” who was on Insta at 10 p.m. Reporters were supposed to use this marketing-style audience funnel to put a “face” to who they were writing for before starting a story.
HuffPost recognized that topics like parenting that may be considered as “lighter” or less “important” than politics by other news outlets were really important to their readers. An editor said their role was to ensure all information was delivered in a way that helped people “make smart decisions” about their everyday lives. There were two important questions: “How does this affect me and why should I care?” We called that news you can use when I was at City.
She said HuffPost’s “digital native stance” was based on acting as a “great equalizer” in the distribution of information, because information wasn’t “only for people who can afford newspaper subscriptions or maybe have reached a certain level of education or reading comprehension.” Serving only the most educated and affluent news consumers and the use of paywalls have been noted as growing concerns by the Reuters Institute of Journalism.
Understanding how information moved digitally, following a proprietary process of search engine optimization, and amplifying content through social media were part of everyone’s job, as was building community. On a Facebook page with a focus on housing, for example, information was shared no matter where it came from, including other news organizations. Additionally, they always responded to suggested corrections from readers to try and show a “human face.”
Team spirit
An eye to engagement was also embedded into story-packaging practices. One editor noted that instead of labeling something “politics” it might be called “pointing fingers” in an effort to boost interest. The added pressure of having to package her stories and think about SEO was noted by the HuffPost reporter mentioned previously. When she said she was still learning but getting better at it, from another desk someone shouted out encouragingly, “You are!”
That sense of camaraderie was visible on multiple occasions. As another editor noted, “If someone has a larger project they’re working on, others will pitch in to help” –it was part of managing limited resources, but also evidence of a tight-knit team.
I’m sure there were downsides to working at HuffPost Canada. I didn’t get to spend enough time there to get the full picture–particularly for those who might have been doing contract or freelance work. And anyone who worked in the City newsroom during the timeframe I was there could offer a laundry list of serious issues. But there were ingrained priorities for both of these newsrooms that are transferable to others: amplifying diverse voices, connecting with the community, and breaking traditional formats and practice in order to engage the audience.
When asked to describe the impact of the closure of HuffPost Canada, one study participant emailed this response:
“We combined relevance with irreverence, having fun with the news when appropriate, and digging in with our considerable editorial talents on investigations whenever possible. We prioritized diverse communities’ perspectives and sought out — and featured — the voices not often heard from, and Canadians are seeing less of that without HuffPost Canada’s contributions to the landscape. That feels like the greatest loss, and hopefully as our journalists and editors get snapped up by other outlets, is a change that’s soon seen elsewhere.”
I hope so, too.
An edited version of this article was previously published on The Conversation Canada.
