What does a successful news publication look like in 2024?
A few of the old institutions are managing to survive (and some even thrive) in the increasingly fragmented news publishing and consumption world. But amidst a confluence of changing business models, diluted and fragmented social media platforms, and the continued rise of creators with varying degrees of credibility and objectivity — it’s more challenging than ever to stand up a media publication and newsroom today.
Daniel Roberts has lived through that evolution, beginning his career in journalism around the same time Facebook and Twitter started to disrupt paradigms and several decades-old news businesses. Earlier in 2024, Roberts stepped into the role of Editor-in-Chief at Front Office Sports (FOS), a publication that Roberts will tell you lives “at the intersection of sports, business, entertainment and culture.” FOS has grown remarkably over the years, starting in the dorms of the University of Miami by a couple of enterprising undergrads, to a widely known, respected and continually growing publication boasting some of the top news breakers in the sports business world. Roberts recognizes the strengths at his disposal and the necessary balance of his reporting team having strong personal brands while also brandishing the FOS name.
“You need to have a unified voice, which is not always easy,” said Roberts, who also called FOS’s social media team and strategy overall its ‘secret weapon.’ “That might sound obvious, but I think lots of news outlets don’t really have a clear voice on social. They just tweet their news stories — and it can’t be that way…
“I also think that reporters must be growing their own personal brand on social. There are some old-school people who still to this day don’t believe that, or they buck against it or they’re unwilling — and you just have to.”
The reporters master their beats — though Roberts noted many often stretch their chops and interests beyond their main concentration — and they know that the FOS brand tying them together as a whole makes them greater than the sum of parts (to use a cliché). One guiding principle for FOS is ‘big,’ to appreciate how even seemingly esoteric stories in the world of sports business increasingly have far-reaching ramifications across “sports, business, entertainment, and culture,” as Roberts stated earlier. Such an approach broadens its appeal to wider audiences as FOS helps its consumers connect the dots between facts, stories, and trends.
“With every story we cover, we want to have it interest as many people as possible,” said Roberts, who spent years reporting for Fortune Magazine, Yahoo Finance, and crypto media company Decrypt, before coming to lead FOS’s editorial. “So even when it might seem niche because we’re writing about one specific quarterback at one school and a weird thing that happened involving that quarterback involving NIL — well, how do you frame it in a big way where you’re reflecting, even in the headline and the social framing, that the reason this is interesting is because it has broader implications, or it’s an example of a broader trend?”
Uncovering bigger picture stories and offering original analysis are valuable elements for a publication like FOS to offer, but a veteran reporter like Roberts knows — and the data bears out — that having exclusive information and stories, and having it before anybody else, continues to be a critical part of the news game. Breaking news drives traffic, enhances reputation, and creates exposure for the FOS brand and its writers. There’s a reason everybody knows what a Woj bomb is (and he was paid handsomely for years by ESPN), even if the half-life of Woj bombs got shorter and shorter over the years, and other publications created their own content in his wake. Scoops are hard, Roberts noted with conviction, and they’re still impactful.
“There is still value (to getting scoops). So much value. It’s pivotal. It’s crucial. Full stop,” he said. “Everything you said is true that in the rapid-fire, quick hit aggregation heavy internet of 2024, being first to something has a shorter tail than ever. You break something, you bask for a couple hours, places that rush to write it up have to credit you and they say ‘first reported by FOS,’ and it’s great, you love that and you pat yourself on the back.
“Also, scoops, being first to things, having an exclusive — that’s what hits for us traffic-wise the most. You get the most juice out of something that only you have, but the amount of time you benefit from that is shorter than it’s ever been.”
Another side effect of the combination of web 2.0 and social media’s effects on scoops is the rise of the aggregators. The individuals and publications who mooch off the reporting of an outlet like FOS and generate engagement, traffic, and stand up businesses through borrowing the information reported by others. Aggregators aren’t on trial here, it’s just a part of life for news publications in 2024.
And aggregation can certainly be a good thing. Attribution generates exposure for FOS and garnishes the brand for the audiences consuming the aggregators’ channels. There’s a spectrum within the world of attribution, though, from full attribution and cursory cuts to excerpting without attribution to straight-up stealing a majority of the story without attribution. Roberts focuses on the positive while remaining cognizant that things can go too far.
“I love when we’re linked and mentioned, especially when we’re cited by name,” he said. “We have a whole Slack channel at FOS called ‘Coverage ‘and people [post] ‘my story was picked up at FOX Sports, my story was picked up by Awful Announcing’…
“The other day we broke something and ESPN grabbed it and sent a push notification and their mobile push alert said ‘via FOS’. Love that, that’s great for us. It’s fine and it’s good. Sometimes you can haggle over, well, do we deserve a link?
“When you’re quoting that liberally, when it’s more than just one quote, I think you could and should name those other details [such as] ‘in an interview with Dan Roberts of Front Office Sports.'”
Just a few years ago, Roberts was part of a story that got majorly aggregated. An ‘in an interview with Dan Roberts’ that went extremely viral. In particular, one question and response in an interview with Drew Brees that led the former NFL quarterback to issue a public apology — and subsequently apologize for his lackluster initial apology. Between algorithms that favor quick hit headlines over nuance and the new-age game of telephone that can amplify and distort sans context across social media, it’s important for reporters to be aware of what a single line in a story can unleash.
“You have to be very cognizant of the soundbites, and I am so aware of how well something [big like that] can hit,” said Roberts. “Sometimes you have to be a little careful and wary because you better make sure that you have the quote verbatim correct, and you also better be prepared for what’s coming.”
The power of a single soundbite, a snippet from a long story, or a combustible excerpt is a feature and bug of modern journalism. A story’s reach can go from thousands to millions on the strength of a remarkable quote. But just like the longstanding principle that content is king, but distribution is queen (and she wears the pants), even the best stories and publications can fall flat if not packaged properly. TikTok is a microcosm of that truth, with all forms of media — books, movies, articles — getting newfound life because a savvy creator nailed the packaging of a piece where others had faltered.
It’s easier said than done, and requires communication and teamwork. The reporters are trained to, well, report and write — and while Roberts has encouraged reporters to create vertical video to add their commentary, they’re not spending hours producing and editing the perfect Instagram Reel for FOS’s brand channels. FOS’s social media is their ‘secret weapon’, as Roberts stated earlier, because they appreciate the importance and value of nailing distribution, packaging, and production. So collaboration is key — for reporting to mind the story, and the soundbites, and work with the content producers to create something compelling and true to form.
“I think it’s nice in theory to say you just focus on the reporting and you do the story and we’ll do the rest, but that’s just not how it is anymore,” said Roberts. Reporters do need to think about the way that the story is going to be packaged…”
He continued: “It’s all about video. It’s looping in audio, it’s putting the right kind of posts on Instagram and amplifying with the most interesting image you have. Picking and choosing what’s the best headline framing for each separate social media app. It all matters, it’s all important. You have to think in a multi-platform approach.”
There’s an important calculus in how a story gets presented — news stories can frame public perceptions and set off narratives. In the ‘fake news’ dystopia of 2024, users on all sides of the spectrum are eager to identify bias and scream subjectivity, whether merited or not. FOS does have opinion columns, but for their everyday stories, facts and objectivity must lead. FOS and its reporters present the facts and help make sense of the story, but they’re not trying to create narratives or set off conflagrations of controversy. That delineation means everything.
“Reporters should not be doing their opinion,” Roberts told me, citing the example of the years-long story of the NBA and China. “They’re just reporting this happened and it’s interesting and here’s why. You can always say ‘Here’s what others are saying about it’, or ‘Here’s what experts say,’ but we’re not saying as an organization, ‘The NBA is going back to China and isn’t that stupid?’ or ‘Isn’t that risky?’ No. We can say ‘Here’s what happened.'”
The news publications that persist in this new era will continue to be defined by the information and analysis they provide, and increasingly by their lineup of respected and well-known reporters. But it’s all the rest that’ll separate the best (and most successful) from the rest.
With reporters building personal brands while carrying a unified voice, and stories thoughtfully packaged to resonate across platforms without sacrificing substance, Roberts and his team are writing a modern playbook for journalism. The fundamentals of great reporting endure, but the art of delivering it keeps evolving.
