Turning User Questions into a Follow-up Story

Published on January 16, 2019March 5, 2019 by Joy Mayer | Reading Time: < 1 minute

Screenshot from USA TODAY's Facebook page, highlighting how a story came together: "A USA TODAY reader wanted to know the details. Here's what we gathered" — USA TODAY used a reader’s question to build a story. The news organization could have responded directly to the question on social media but decided to take it a step further and make the answer its own story while highlighting the user and their question. It allowed the reader to get mentioned and feel “really seen” by the news organization.

Joy Mayer

joy@trustingnews.org | Website | + posts

Director Joy Mayer (she/her) founded Trusting News in 2016 after a 20-year career in newsrooms and teaching. She spent 12 years at the Missouri School of Journalism, where she created an audience engagement curriculum and a community outreach team in the newsroom of the Columbia Missourian and also taught web design and print design. She lives in Sarasota, Florida, and can be reached at joy@TrustingNews.org or on Twitter @mayerjoy.