Snapchat is launching a new partnership with news data organizations to help journalists find, verify, and share breaking news from their platform, Axios reports.
The social media group is giving news organizations with subscriptions to four news discovery and verification services—NewsWhip, Storyful, SAM Desk, and TagBoard—full access to their publicly visible Snaps. Media organizations with subscriptions to these services will be able to access public Snapchat stories the same way they currently access public Facebook or Twitter posts, Axios reports. There will be no additional charge for the data, as Snapchat will be providing it for free.
The initiative is a part of Snapchat’s effort to get their stories off platform, reaching a wider audience and hopefully encouraging more people to sign up to the social media network.
The partnership also aids smaller news networks, who might not have the resources to send journalists to the site of breaking news. Tagboard Chief Revenue Officer Nathan Peterson told Axios the data will be available to nearly 200 local news stations, owned by groups like Tegna, Sinclair, NBC, ABC, Fox, Telemundo, and Univision.
“Even though this is a tool for journalists, I do think publishers and media organizations will find this useful, because it gives them access to footage during breaking news situations that is otherwise very expensive to obtain on their own,” former Storyful executive Rahul Chopra told Axios.
Chopra is currently head of Snapchat’s “Stories Everywhere” initiative and will head this new program. The data will give journalists faster access to breaking news video, primarily through the geo-location services on Snap Map.
“The geography data from Snapchat is really trustworthy compared to other platforms, and it can be very targeted, which makes the content compliment text-based journalism on Twitter really well,” James Neufeld, CEO and founder of SAM Desk told Axios. “Using our AI, journalists can combine the two sets of data to find facts and break news that much faster.”