Claudio Cabrera, Deputy Audience Director at the New York Times met with journalism students of the ECCC-UCR
Staying close to its audience by all the possible channels is crucial for the press. The more in detail the audiences are known, the better the press fulfills its public service to offer the information that people need to know (not just what they want to know) to make decisions. The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and audience analytics help a lot for that.
Claudio Cabrera, Deputy Audience Director at The New York Times shared his experiences, knowledge, vision and tips on SEO, the value of professional journalism, its challenges as an industry and on what makes the difference between an outstanding journalist and a forgettable one. He was interviewed by journalism students from the University of Costa Rica (Alejandro Echandi, Josué Cordero, Jenny Barroul and Jhostyn Díaz) on Monday, October 18th 2021, via Zoom.
The interviewee and the SEO workflow
Cabrera, who has more than 11 years of experience in SEO, told the students about his experience and thoughts on the media world today.
In recent years, he has managed to increase the New York Times performance on search engines by more than 100%, which is an achievement one can be proud of.
Claudio Cabrera explained about the SEO team daily workflow at New York Times and how it integrates with the newsroom staff. He also explained the tools they use to keep up with each other such multiple channels on Slack. Throughout the day, editors ask for advice to improve SEO rankings with titles, A / B tests, best URL´s, keywords, trending topics, optimized content from competitors or Express section as Breaking News Hub.
The NYT created a software called MaelStrom which help to prioritize the stories of the day. Eight people work in the SEO team. Other work teams in the NYT newsroom are the Social media Team (Twenty-something people) who post to the main NYT account on Facebook and Twitter and the editors of the sections share those posts, etc. The homepage team is focused on the main topics of the day and they use Chartbeat to identify what works well from New York, London, Hong Kong. The Platforms Team focuses on Reddit, Linkedin, WhatsApp etc. and works with teams from those companies to create content for those platforms.
Every day, the Times publishes between 125-175 articles but they only publish about 50 on social networks.
Audio-visual content in the journalistic world
Answering one of the questions, Cabrera emphasized the importance of visual creation in the journalistic world today. ‘Visual content informs people in a different way’”. In the case of an earthquake for instance, or a visually impressive newsworthy event, visual storytelling is crucial, according to Cabrera.
He added that digitalization allows people to approach to “journalism who may not have entered in the past’. According to Cabrera, Mobile Journalism, photo and video “are things that continue to gain importance’. This statement proved inspiring for students present in the Zoom conversation as many of them aspire to work in the audio-visual field.
The interviewee highlighted the importance of keeping up with technological advancements as a journalist. He explained that it is crucial to be able to switch from traditional news writing platforms to digital platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, etc.
Advice for students starting out in journalism
Cabrera told the students that reading and learning a lot is essential for good journalists as it allows them to broaden their knowledge and awareness of what is being written globally, if not to mention the writing style benefits gained from reading regularly.
Further, he added that successful journalists are the ones that are able to branch out and explore different ways of telling a story.
‘Observe your competitors’, he advised. At the New York Times, it is second nature for journalists to check on what their competitors are doing well and doing not so well.
The New York Times guest recommended to learn how to use very helpful tools including Answer the public, Chartbeat, CrowdTangle, Dataminr, Exploding topics, Google Trends, NewsWhip, Semrush, SimilarWeb, Slack or Trisolute, among others. This is because staying close to the audience is crucial, especially today, in such a globalized world.
When asked about internships in the media field, Cabrera responded that smaller publications ought to be seriously considered as it is one of the best ways to learn and grow in the career.
‘You are a brand’, he said, explaining that each person wanting to go into the media industry can highly benefit from platforms such as LinkedIn and Twitter as tools to promote and share stories and content. He added that ‘Tools like twitter and Facebook are always going to be essential for any journalist.’ He followed with the mention of the fact that hashtags and social media strategies are not actually so important. In fact, in Cabrera’s view, having a good story to tell and telling it in a captivating way is much more important.
Claudio Cabrera offered much more information and advice that you will find in the following video
