Now with Instagram offering both long- and short-term content, newsrooms are rolling out different strategies for the two similar-but-distinct platforms. I talked with The New York Times, National Geographic, and Sports Illustrated — each known for striking photography and large Instagram followings — to understand how they are trying to make use of Instagram Stories for a new kind of visual narrative. Here, lightly edited, is what they had they say.
The New York Times
Kerri MacDonald, Times social photo editor:
The idea at this point, a week in: We want to keep experimenting with Instagram Stories, and we will be. We want to think of it as a slightly more visual approach than Snapchat, in a sense that we’re going to focus on our visual journalistic photographers, videographers, and reporters who have a great eye. But also try to match what we have going in the Instagram feed. We think of it as a very photographic platform. Our best photography is there, so we want to do a similar thing with Instagram Stories, but a slightly more raw approach than the photos we post on the feed itself.
Cynthia Collins, Times social media editor:
National Geographic
Patrick Witty, National Geographic deputy director of photography:
He downloaded it and tested it on his own account, and then took it over from Wolin, Poland, on Friday, where he was photographing a Viking festival, Viking reenactment battles — capturing these reenactments from the Middle Ages. It was the perfect opportunity for David to use Stories. The response has been overwhelming.
One of the interesting thing about Stories as well is that photographers are able to tell stories beyond just one picture. It gets deeper and behind the scenes of what it’s like to be a National Geographic photographer. With David, we post one or two pictures on the Nat Geo feed that are still photographs, but he was able to expand his storytelling into videos and interviews and portraiture. More than he could do with a single picture on the feed.
Rajiv Mody, National Geographic vice president of social media:
Sports Illustrated
Collin Orcutt, editor, Sports Illustrated digital and video:
Our plan became using Snapchat for a more raw on the ground feel, and looking at what our SI reporters or people are seeing or doing. Because you can upload photos from the last 24 hours on Stories we thought it would be a great chance to give a daily scrapbook of the photos that we’re capturing. There are only so many you can surface on the site, so we’ve been trying to think of ways of how we can utilize those photos that would be creative. We decided that at the end of every day we would take 10 to 15 of the day’s best images, as selected by the photo editors, format those for vertical, and share them on Instagram Stories. We’re giving people, when they wake up in the morning or wherever they visit, a quick 30- to 45-second look at whatever SI thought were the best images of the past day.
There are a lot of sports that look better vertical. I started working in video, and I remember with all of the videos that I was cutting — back when I was still editing — basketball was always a really hard sport, because so much of that action is vertical. It’s a challenge in the same way fitting anything into a magazine is. The cover’s always gotta be vertical. The spreads are a little bit different. I actually think the format in a strange way fits the way our editors have always fit photos into magazines. So it may be an easier transition for us than other places.
