Alexis, who is 26-year-old, is coming from New York. She studied History and English Literature and she is BIRN’s Social Media Manager. She has been working for the organization since 2017.
Social media, posts, algorithms, audience, numbers, statistics, a job that needs creativity, speed, patience, wit and observance. Nowadays, people are “consuming” news through social media. Many people believe that it’s an easy job to do, but it’s not, especially when you are working for a news outlet like Balkan Insight, with readers from the Balkans and all over the world.
Social media needs from you to be fast but news is circulating fast as well. “When we get breaking news, or have ongoing events, protests, trials, then we can be some of the first people to get information out to the public. On the other hand, I have gone through our archives and love sharing evergreen stories that readers have forgotten about, but are still very relevant,” states Alexis.
Alexis is telling us that the hardest part of the job comes with how much you need to stay on top. “When I was beginning, I was so overwhelmed with knowing who is who, where different things were happening, things like that. Now, I feel like I know more about the region than I know about in New York, where I am from. It takes a lot of effort to stay informed and to fact check in order to publish facts for our followers,” she adds.
Her favorite part of her job is when she is following live events. “There is an energy in the team, where we are all working intensely and sitting on the edge of our seats waiting to see the outcome of something,” she says.
What Balkan Insight’s readers prefer to read? Stories about Former Yugoslavia, are quite popular. “I think that many people have very varying emotional ties to the former country and its history. It’s interesting to see how people respond to these stories because they are always impactful,” states Alexis.
Alexis suggests that the best “recipe” to be good at your job is to ask questions: “Make sure that you understand a story before sharing it, because you can sometimes get burned that way”.