Bridging Borders: How to Produce Stories for 740 Million Europeans
👋 Hey there fellow curious journalists,
thanks so much for coming on this email-ride - curating interesting bits and pieces from journalism all over Europe (and occasionally beyond).
🤓A small FYI: Because of my work I have a bias towards all things strategy and visual storytelling. But this newsletter (and me) is a work-in-progress, so with each edition I’ll try to a) expand my perspective and b) cover more and more countries.
🫣Okay, I admit that the title of this newsletter is a bit cheeky. Realistically, we can't reach ALL Europeans with our content. But we can reach big chunks, and in 2024, figuring out how to do that should be at the top of our to-do lists.
Here’s why:
🧯The moral argument: As journalists, we have a central role in democratic societies: helping our audiences make informed decisions. With fake news crossing borders so easily, we should do our best to ensure that real journalistic content follows in its wake. And amid rising nationalism in Europe, it's our job not only to inform and investigate, but also to tell stories that point to solutions, inspire hope and make audiences feel connected - across borders.
💰The economic argument: Over 740 million people, that’s a really big market - for our stories. And the bigger the audience = the bigger the potential revenue. That’s why the Guardian launched a European Edition in late 2023 - because the “European audience is (...) three and half times larger than it was in 2016. European readers are now the Guardian’s most engaged audience group outside of the UK.” Even if you’re not part of a big media company, tapping into a European audience also opens doors to 'niche' topics that may not find a market in a single country but resonate with a larger group across the continent.
🤖The tech argument: It’s now possible. Thanks to AI, Europe’s many languages are no longer such a huge barrier. Translations are becoming much easier and affordable. You can potentially clone your podcast voice into another language or have your reporter speak in another language. Heavyweight Spotify is currently testing multilingual episodes for their popular podcasts - the cloned voice-versions do sound very convincing. And this is just the beginning.
👉 Sure, shaping stories to reach across borders is still extra work, but why not look at it this way:
Susanne Reber, co-founder of Reveal
🔎 So how do you produce content that travels well?
1️⃣ Be selective!
The Global Investigativ Journalism Network has curated a check-list for podcasts. Here are some of the questions you might ask yourself to see if your story has cross-border potential:
👋 Do you have strong characters who make your audience want to relate to their world?
🙌 Does your plot build on a classic story quest so that the audience can root for the characters to overcome obstacles?
🤝Is there a narrator who guides your audience and translates cultural differences for them?
Oh hey, you are new here?
Hi, I’m Isabel, a journalist & digital strategist from Germany.
❤️ finding new ways of storytelling and developing formats for new platforms.
🙌 Goal for 2024: Knowing more about what my European colleagues are working on.
Come along on my journey in this newsletter:
👇 Another observation:
2️⃣ Needs are pan-European
Forget about target groups defined by age and socio-economic background.
🎯Focus on what really unites us: similar circumstances and experiences.
Karin Bjerregaard Schlüter, a format developer and content strategist, shared this very apt advice:
“Think of a format for heartbreak, for example. A broken heart has nothing to do with education. Maybe it's just that the beach where you wrote your name in the sand is in a different place."
Need evidence? → Norwegian Broadcaster NRK started developing the web series SKAM by focusing on a single need and their project turned into one of the most interesting pan-European success stories of recent years.
💡 Finding the right needs through audience research:
The team behind SKAM invested a lot of time in understanding what moves teenagers in Norway: “50 in-depth interviews, 200 speed ones, school visits, social media scanning and the readings of reports and statistics on teen culture.”
🤔 While we might spend this much time researching our stories, when have you ever invested an equal amount in getting to know your audience?
They then zoomed in on one of their key findings - Teens felt overwhelmed by pressure - and formulated a mission statement: “help 16-year-old girls to strengthen their self-esteem by breaking taboos, make them aware of interpersonal mechanisms and demonstrate the rewards of confronting fear.”
The result was a web series that quickly spread across Europe - users became so invested that they translated all the episodes and shared subtitles via Google Docs. Several European broadcasters adapted the show, and there are now German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian and Belgian versions.
Take a look at this survey from Denmark and it’s no surprise that the need “I feel overwhelmed by pressure” resonated across borders:
The sentiment is shared by teens all over Europe.
👀 You can find examples for cross-border needs all around.
If you don’t have time for in-depth audience research, look for obvious communities of interest - like new parents. “Am I doing this right?" is a question asked across borders as parents try to navigate their new roles - in society, with their partners, family, friends. → Why not brainstorm for a format with perspectives from all over Europe that will alleviate their fears?
Starting with a need and adding a European perspective can help showing that things are rarely black and white: There are many ways to deal with love & grief, to find your way into adulthood or to raise your children.
3️⃣ Embrace more storytelling
Fictional films have been successfully crossing borders for years, so why not take a peek at some tried and true story structures from our neighboring industry?
“One reason that true crime podcasts are often so popular internationally is because they are built on a (…) “classic quest arc” or a plot that revolves around adversity.”
Or you could be bold and invent a new approach:
Think about how your audience consumes media and other content - especially for the younger generation this has changed drastically, but our way of telling stories has not kept pace:
“For older generations, “media” floats in a bubble next to family, friends, job, hobbies, and exercise; and for the 12–15-year-olds, media is the bubble in which all other areas (family, friends, school, hobbies, and exercise) are embedded.”
💡Here we can take another cue from SKAM:
Much of its success was also due to innovative real-time storytelling - across multiple platforms. The team found a new way of storytelling that reflects how young people use (social) media and that resonated across borders:
If something in the story happened at 5:32 p.m. on a Friday, the video snippet would be released at that exact time. And if the protagonist was waiting for an answer to a text message, viewers were waiting with him - and had to check the site periodically to see if it had arrived.
💪 It should encourage us journalists to be more radical in trying out ways to "package" our stories.
4️⃣ Be strategic about language(s)
AI makes translation easier, but it is still extra work. At the same time, English proficiency varies widely across Europe.
So a strategic middle ground might be to look at this index that tracks English proficiency and decide which additional languages to offer to reach the most people:
Dubbing or subtitling? is another decision that can effect your reach.
While it's lovely to hear all the European languages, there are good reasons for dubbing:
Case in point: arte often subtitles foreign languages. As you can see in the YouTube comments above, there are people who don’t watch but only “listen” to the video. They are doing laundry, washing dishes, or even driving and because they can't read the subtitles, they miss out on a lot of the content.
👂When deciding on subs or dubs - think about in how many different circumstances the audience might consume your content?
And to finish, a little (non-exhaustive) peek at:
👀 Who has made a move on European audiences in the last year(s)?
English only:
The Guardian - Launched its Europe Edition in the fall of 2023. Visitors from the continent are now presented with a different version of the homepage. The team that curates and produces the specific content includes 11 editorial roles and a dedicated Europe-Live-Blogger.
The European Correspondent - A daily newsletter produced by a team of over 140 local correspondents from across Europe, who promise to cover "only the most important and interesting stories from their country". Their target audience is the Erasmus generation, who move easily from country to country and identify more as Europeans than as national citizens. Each day of the week, a different part of Europe is covered - from the Balkans to Northern Europe - and along with each news summary, correspondents offer additional commentary and context. Each newsletter ends with a song recommendation.
Multi-lingual
ARTE - The OG of European media. Founded in 1991, the Franco-German channel “continues to roll out its European development strategy and now offers a range of programmes adapted in 6 languages on all its digital platforms.” These include ARTE Europe Weekly, a digital news magazine - presented in by four native speakers of German, French, English and Spanish.
ereb - ereb wants to build a more human and socially engaged journalism. The team publishes in English, French and Italian and aims for a well-informed audience that sees cross-border journalism as an added value to the news. To make sure that their stories resonate with their audience, they have a group of beta-testers, who decide wether a story gets published or not. ereb is also focused on creating a membership program - with exhibitions, talks etc. - and building a real-life-community through it.
entr - A European network of content creators - led by a consortium including Deutsche Welle and France Médias Monde. Founded in 2021, the network now publishes content in 8 languages, each on its own social media channels.
Networks
A European Perspective - The initiative of Europe's public service media allows members to contribute and access each other's news. The content is translated into multiple languages by AI and curated into a feed for display on members' homepages.
Sphera - A collaborative hub for alternative media from across Europe.
🫶 Yay, you’ve made it this far - thanks so much for scrolling all the way through!
👆Did you enjoy this issue? Then feel free to spread the newsletter-lover! 💌
🌐Sidenote: If you are wondering: How can I read up on all theses examples in a foreign language? There is this fitting quote I overheard:
“The language of Europe is translation.”
Luckily, translation has gotten quite easy: Nearly every browser has a neat translation function (or an add-on available), a lot of email providers too and there is of course your favourite AI tool to help out.
👋 That’s all - for now.
Stay curious out there,
Isabel
*This newsletter was made with lots of ❤️ and a bit of help by AI for better flow and translations.*