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As the year comes to a close, newsrooms often get reflective: what did we do this year, what could we have done differently, and what should we spend more — and less — time on next year?
Social media is always a part of that conversation — a discussion that’s gotten increasingly complicated over the years.
Back in mid-2017, I had just been promoted to assistant editor at Port City Daily, which meant taking the reins of our social media strategy — although ‘strategy’ was a bit grandiose, seeing as we were a team of four, at most.
At the time, the Facebook algorithm was pretty simple. You posted a link and, if a few people liked it or shared it, it would pick up momentum, showing up in more people’s feeds. That meant, with a good story, we organically picked up quite a few followers.
We were also able to manually boost those numbers, by paying attention to stories that had gone locally viral (meaning people who didn’t follow our page were seeing them). We’d go to those posts, scroll through the list of people who had engaged with them (i.e. liked or shared), and invite them to follow our page. It was tedious and time-consuming, but it worked. Within a year or two we’d tripled our followers.
By the time I came to WHQR, the Facebook algorithm had turned on local media. It throttled links, showing them to fewer people — even those who followed a page. Of course, for a price, you could ‘boost’ your content — but the ROI is hard to justify for a small outlet.
Media outlets have tried to find workarounds, like posting a video or photo with the words “link in comments.” This works, to some extent, but the added step creates room for error – like posting the wrong link, or forgetting to post a link at all – and also frustrates some Facebook users who aren’t accustomed to the extra steps of opening up the comment section and finding the link. Plus, Facebook always seems to catch up and get in front of any hack people come up with. The algorithm always wins.
For a small news outlet without a large preexisting social media following (in our region, that would be 100,000 or more people), Facebook is essentially dead in the water as a way to drive traffic to a website. Without a concerted program to boost reach and engagement (and probably a financial investment), Facebook won’t be the best way for our newsroom to get the news to you — at least not in the more traditional sense of sharing an article.
There’s also the issue, which many of you have raised, about whether we want to be on Facebook. Do we want to play by the algorithm’s rules to eke out some modest space among the advertisements, sponsored (i.e. boosted) content, and the increasing volume of posts trending based on ‘engagement’ instead of quality content? Open the app and scroll down, how much of this is stuff you actually want to see? It seems like, to get traction on Facebook, you need to pay for it or generate a virtual melee in the comment section.
The latter has pushed a lot of misinformation. But even if Facebook gets and keeps that under control (a dubious proposition), the algorithm will always privilege sensational over rational — and, if you’re like me, you're a fan of public media because we try to make the opposite choice.
Then there’s Twitter.
When I joined Twitter around 2014, it was fresh, fast, and fun. You could find your chosen family and jump headlong into some of the most interesting conversations happening online. The 140-character limit seemed like one of those fun rules-based writer collective exercises, prodding people to be creatively concise. I met fellow writers, cooks, musicians, academics, and political junkies — a whole menagerie of voices.
Twitter was compelling but also risky. You’d get clobbered for some of the things you said. You’d run into some ideas that really challenged your own. And there was, of course, some genuinely hateful content on there. It was always a balancing act.
A decade later, rebranded to X by Elon Musk, the world’s biggest online troll, Twitter feels different. The spirit has soured — maybe because the national mood has soured, but I think it’s more than that. The ‘blue check’ system, which lets users earn (or buy) the option to silence dissenting voices on their posts feels like part of that imbalance — and oddly antithetical to free-speech absolutism with which Musk’s fans are so enamored.
There’s also been a feedback loop: the more X gets a reputation as the new Wild West for misinformation and bigotry, the more people flock there from platforms like Parler and Telegram, where more of the far-right, the actual Nazis, were previously cordoned off. These users post plenty of concerning content — ranging from conspiracy theories to outright hate speech — which seemed to be getting readily amplified by the X algorithm. That, in turn, further trumpets X as a place where you can unapologetically be your worst self (often under the guise of 'free speech').
I don’t blame anyone who’s left the platform, but I’m still on X — although keep in mind, I’m a journalist. I’m not doing this for fun. For fun, I use Instagram, where I’ve trained the algorithm to show me videos of cats and comedians, guitar riffs and fun recipes.
Part of my job is hearing from people I disagree with, or who are just disagreeable. That doesn’t mean they don’t offer important perspectives. It doesn’t quite feel right to just pack up and go somewhere that feels ‘safer.’ But as a place for dialog and engagement, I feel like there are rapidly diminishing returns. I don’t know if I’ll stay forever, but I know I’m also reconsidering how I might use other platforms — like Bluesky, TikTok, and Reddit.
All that said, the question of social media looks a little different for an institution than it does for an individual reporter.
Many of you have, for example, asked whether WHQR will leave X — either as a moral and ethical protest to the platform’s growing amount of far-right content, or because there are newer, more exciting platforms emerging at potentially useful ways to get news to the public.

Last Spring, NPR left X and, last month, our colleagues at WUNC made a similar choice.
The reaction from right-of-center users was predictable. Conservative politicians and pundits mocked them. Some of this was performative, of course, since WUNC had already ‘left the chat.’
But other criticism from those in the state university system felt more potentially consequential.
Woody White, a member of the UNC System Board of Governors, responded, “For a ‘news’ organization that depends upon donations, I wonder who made this decision and how it squares with the board’s fiduciary obligations to oversee financial management.”
Marty Kotis, a trustee at UNC-Chapel Hill where WUNC is housed, responded to White, “As a voting member of the UNC-CH Board of Trustees - I strongly disagree with @wunc ‘s decision. Actions like this erode the public’s trust in higher education and the media and will likely result in less public tax dollar funding. They should reverse course asap!”
It’s worth noting that, as Kotis wrote, some will probably see WUNC’s decision to leave X in a negative light. But, by the same token, it seems unlikely that staying on X would spare our colleagues from the fallout of Congressional Republicans’ efforts to ‘defund NPR’ (unshockingly, a rallying cry in Musktopia).
But setting politics aside, how useful was X for WUNC? The station had a respectable 34,000 followers — but the average post got less than 500 views (which means that users saw the post, not that they necessarily clicked a link leading them to the WUNC site to read an article).
And the station has many other ways to get news to the public: radio (obviously), but also podcasts, newsletters, other social media platforms, and — the dream option for media outlets — loyal followers who come directly to the website to read and listen.
WHQR, comparatively, has around 5,000 followers on X (about 7,500 on Facebook). If little of our actual web traffic (i.e. people who click on links and read an article, or listen to a podcast) comes from Facebook, still less comes from X.
Responding to WUNC’s announcement, New Hanover County commissioner Dane Scalise posted an insult meme from Ron Swanson — the semi-satirical Libertarian from Parks and Recreation — and added, “Also, it will be interesting to see whether WHQR et al. follow in their footsteps.”
It’s not completely my decision to make. But I think it’s worth considering, as some of the conservatives who threw rocks at WUNC noted, that public media ought to serve the whole public. X isn’t technically the public square, but it was for many years something very similar. Signing off should require some thought.
In my personal opinion, we need to evaluate if there’s still a way to use X to deliver news and engender civic discourse – and if not, perhaps it’s time to show ourselves the door. And, if WHQR exits, and leaves behind conservative members of our community, we ought to find other ways to reach them. But we shouldn’t be required to immolate ourselves in a dumpster fire just because others have happily chosen that fate.
Thinking more broadly about social media in general, I’d like to consider our strategy in terms of how it serves the public, and not what kind of virtuous signal our presence on any given platform might send.
Ok, so, believe it or not, despite all that doom and gloom, I think there are some very exciting opportunities with social media.
A lot of newer approaches work with the flow of social media algorithms instead of against them. Social media companies want you to stay on their app (TikTok would keep you on there until you passed out from dehydration if it could). These companies don’t want you to go to a website unless someone’s paid a premium to lead you there. Using Facebook or Instagram to get people to click on a link to our website is, to put it politely, sailing into the wind (you can probably guess my original metaphor).
But using social media to deliver the news, playing to the strengths (and, yes, whims) of the algorithm, offers some intriguing possibilities.

I look at what our colleagues in Asheville at BPR did with Instagram in the wake of Hurricane Helene. You don’t need the app to check out their work — which played to the strengths and limitations of Instragram’s format. I think of public media as prioritizing depth and nuance, but sometimes a photo and a few words get the job done — especially in breaking news situations, or when people desperately just need the facts (for example, answers to questions like, ‘where can I get clean water?’ or ‘how can I help?’). I think of the way old-school Twitter trained users to be clear, concise, and clever.
My colleague Kelly Kenoyer recently showed me some of what the Pulitzer Prize-winning folks at South Carolina’s Post and Courier have been doing on Instagram. It’s visually appealing, easy to digest, and interesting — all of the things Instagram does really well. It’s also powered by a large team of journalists, engagement specialists, and support staff. So it might be a tough model to imitate — but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from it.
Some folks cringe when they even hear the phrase ‘public media’ — “you mean public radio?” — and would probably balk at the idea of WHQR reporting the news on TikTok. I feel a little uneasy about it myself, to be honest. I know that for a lot of folks, it’s always been about broadcast.
Maybe you feel that way too. But here you are, reading a newsletter.
I’ve been listening to public radio since I was a child, when Terry Gross was on my local station — WHYY in Philadelphia. I was raised on old-school radio reporting. But I also came into professional local journalism working at an online disruptor, where we moved fast and broke stuff. So I can see it both ways.
At WHQR, we always want to hear from you. But on this issue, in particular, I’d love your feedback. Maybe you couldn’t give two farthings about social media. Maybe you’re optimistic that the leading platforms will straighten themselves out — or that newer, better options will prove that community and conversation can trump discord and disinformation. Maybe you’ve got your own ideas about how things could be better. I hope you’ll share those with us.