After the last GOP debate, we spoke with The Washington Post about its decision to use social cards to illustrate some notable zingers from the candidates. Last night, the Los Angeles Times brought its own social card game to Twitter.
Alexandra Manzano, director of audience engagement, said the Times hoped to do these during the last debate but didn’t get them together in time. Before last night’s debate, they collected drawings of the debaters from editorial cartoonist David Horsey. Horsey was also at the debate live-sketching and tweeting.
The idea, Manzano said, was “how can we create content that was made for social rather than just pushing traditional content to social?”
Here’s a sampling:
On Wednesday night, the Times mostly focused its social efforts on Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat. At the heart of the plan was the idea of covering an event on multiple platforms in various ways, Manzano said. The biggest social hit for the Times last night came from a piece they had ready on former President Ronald Reagan and his stance on immigration. The Twitter cards were successful, too, she said, and they drove traffic to the liveblog. You can find the entire collection on Facebook.
The Times also handed its Snapchat account over to Javier Panzar and Christina Bellantoni, who offered a behind-the-scenes (and behind-Trump’s-head) looks at the debate.
Here’s a highlight reel, which the Times shared with readers who weren’t necessarily on Snapchat.
“There are so many different types of news events, and live events are certainly ones that we want to plan the best for,” Manzano said, “especially when it comes to social.”
Everyone right now wants to know how to choose the best medium and the best content for event coverage, she said, and how they can surface news in a different way.
“We were telling a story with these quote cards,” she said. “It just wasn’t in a 90-inch story with a photo.”
