• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, August 22, 2018

Reddit and the Local Media Consortium (LMC) have formed a partnership to educate journalists and media companies on how to build out their digital presence and engage with readers.

Fran Wills, CEO of the LMC, said goal of the partnership is to educate all 75 members representing more than 1,700 U.S. digital properties, from local newspapers and broadcast stations to digital media companies.

Reddit and the LMC have been working together to build a set of topics for webinars. The classes, which began August 15 and will run through September, focus on engagement and how to distribute content on the Reddit platform. Other webinars include a demo of the publisher tools and how to use them, tracking and analytics, and questions and answers to cover any topics that arise.

Alexandra Riccomini, Reddit director of business development and media partnerships, said the platform has been partnering with news organizations for the past two years, analyzing journalists and site visitors. The idea meant to identify patterns in use of content distribution and audiences.

CrowdTangle and Taboola were the first forays into working with aggregated sets of publishers. LMC represents another step in that direction.

Riccomini highlights what makes Reddit different. She said readers typically post national and local news to Reddit daily, along with commentaries about the topic, but many journalists also use the platform to do what the platform calls “Ask Me Anything” (AMA), using the content to write a follow-up article for their respective publications.  

There are 330 million active monthly users on Reddit. Some of the most popular AMA on city and local topics have been from local publishers. Many site visitors want to talk about sports, local politics, and other such as food culture, unique experiences and sports.

SF Gate, for example, often develops interesting content from Bay Area-California communities from best cheap eats in the city or the high cost of living in San Jose.

Publishers have also created content from their engagements with redditcommunities, such as the Boston Globe’s roundup of the best questions from their AMA in r/nfl.