Snapchat's newest media partners: college newspapers
College students are getting more Snap in their lives this fall.
Snapchat is releasing Campus Publisher Stories, where college newspapers will be creating content exclusively for the messaging app that was popularized by students back in 2013. These weekly editions will only be available on Snapchat Discover within the school's district and will feature ads.
Four newspapers—The Daily Californian (Berkeley), The Battalion (Texas A&M), The Daily Orange (Syracuse), and The Badger Herald (UW Madison)—are launching their first editions Friday. More publications will be added over the coming months.
The initiative brings a new revenue source to college newspapers and offers participants new media experience. According to Snap's blog, they see themselves as helping train the next generation of journalists. For years, Snapchat has offered Campus Stories, a collection of user submitted photos and videos, but these editions will be created by students themselves and serve as digital newspapers.
"School newspapers play a critical role in informing and entertaining their campus communities, and they are often where the many leading journalists and editors that we work with got their start," Snap wrote in a blog post.
For Snapchat, Campus Publisher Stories provides another way to entertain their youth audience and a reason for them to explore Discover, Snap's network of media outlets including CNN, Cosmopolitan, and Mashable. As Facebook and Instagram copy Snapchat's core product Stories, Discover offers original content not found elsewhere.
Young people are increasingly access the news from places like Snapchat Discover. Usage increased from 17 percent to 29 percent over the past year, according to a recent report from Pew Research Center. The users who find news on Snapchat are for the most part younger with 82 percent between 18 and 29 years old, according to Pew.
Snap also commissioned their own study through ORC International focused on college students news consumption habits and found that 47 percent of students say their college newspaper is the primary way they learn about campus events.
The study also found that 70 percent of students surveyed read official news sources, like a college newspaper, weekly.
Snap released Discover in January 2015 and has grown it from a handful of outlets to a network of dozens of publications all over the world that are bringing in significant revenues. While its first partners were mostly digital media companies, it has added more magazines like GQ and newspapers like The New York Times. Over the last year, Discover has also added more TV-like content as networks like NBC and CNN create daily news shows.
Building Discover won't be easy for college students. The partnerships requires significant resources since the content is quite different from their other work. Snap typically works very closely with publishers to help them succeed. By offering an ad revenue split, it also encourages both teams to do well.
Topics Instagram Snapchat Social Media
Kerry Flynn is a business reporter for Mashable covering the tech industry. She previously reported on social media companies, mobile apps and startups for International Business Times. She has also written for The Huffington Post, Forbes and Money magazine. Kerry studied environmental science and economics at Harvard College, where she led The Harvard Crimson's metro news and design teams and played mellophone in the Band. When not listening to startup pitches, she runs half-marathons, plays with puppies and pretends to like craft beer.
