A news app offering a gamified daily version of the news hopes to wean Gen Z away from Instagram and back towards having a direct relationship with a publisher.
Newsreel is aimed at 18 to 30-year-olds, a demographic who rarely now visit publisher websites or watch TV news, and are likely to consume most of their online content via platforms like Instagram, Tikok and Youtube which offer readers an endless stream of short videos.
The app has so far raised $200,000 in funding (including $55,000 via Kickstarter) and is now targeting investment of $1m.
It provides a similar experience to language-learning app Duolingo, offering three stories per day with an emphasis on politics and foreign affairs which readers are invited to complete in stages.
Readers scroll through articles broken up into small chunks (similar to Snapchat). Text is interspersed with videos and quizzes which test whether readers have taken in what they have read. Readers log a “streak” by using the app on consecutive days and reading all three stories.
A timeline feature provides context and background on news stories.
On Monday 17 March, the headline stories covered by Newsreel were: “Trump Deports Hundreds Under Rare Wartime Law”, “Trump Moves to Shut Down Voice of America” and “Top ISIS Leader Killer in US-Iraq Air Strike.”
Newsreel founder Jack Brewster describes the app as sitting between social and legacy media with an aim to help “news curious” 18 to 30-year-olds “start to have a relationship with news”.
The app, which has a four-strong editorial team, is also partnering with university and college news providers to provide a new platform for their in-house publications.
Newsreel is typically sold at an institutional level to a university or college which then shares the app with its students. But it may target direct-to-consumer subscriptions and offer advertising in future.
Setting out the challenge for news providers in reaching young news consumers, Brewster said: “I talked to a library at a school of 3,000 people where only two dozen people had signed up for a free Washington Post subscription which had cost them thousands of dollars to buy.”
Brewster said he works hard to introduce students to Newsreel once an institution has signed up. This includes direct marketing, speaking to groups of students in person and recruiting interns to champion the brand on campus. The hope is that this then starts a network effect, where students start sharing the app with their friends on social media and it grows its audience.
He hopes that readers will boast of their Newsreel scores and streaks on social media in the same way that users of Duolingo and running/cycling app Strava already do.
He said: “The biggest misconception is that Gen Z doesn’t care about the news. They absolutely do care, but they want it to come to them.”
Institutions that have already signed up for Newsreel include: Oberlin College, Penn State, Colgate University, Ithaca College and Emerson College in the US and Toronto Metropolitan University in Canada.
Newsreel quotes a Colgate University student in its marketing material who took part in one of its focus groups: “Get off Instagram for a little bit and go on this instead. It’s just as stimulating, but it helps you know more about the world and join conversations you might otherwise miss.”
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