Redd (all about) it: The local news stories which got people talking on the ‘forgotten social network’

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Behind Local News UK

4 min readJan 20, 2019

When it comes to the share bar on most websites, the icon of the little alien attracts very little thought from newsrooms when compared to the likes of Twitter, Linkedin and, of course, Facebook.

Reddit claims to the be ‘the front page of the internet’ and doesn’t call itself a social network. But with a structure built on conversations around subjects in channels, it feels very similar to the world Facebook has been advocating in the last 12 months while pushing use of its Groups feature by journalists.

Reddit has rewards for journalists prepared to invest time and effort in becoming part of communities on the platform. Only posting links to your own content or brand is soon spotted by the community moderators and called out in a way it wouldn’t be on Facebook and Twitter.

At the ONA conference in Austin, Texas, last year, a session on Reddit for journalists was packed out. You can hear the audio recording of the session here.

And it’s perhaps because it is so hard to just arrive and post your own stuff and leave which makes it so interesting when looking at the content which does get attention on there. Generally speaking, it will have been posted by a reader, not a brand.

The data below comes from Buzzsumo and shows the number of upvotes and comments articles had. Buzzsumo doesn’t include downvotes to content. The number may not correlate at all to traffic arriving on your website from Reddit as a result, and therefore isn’t an indicator of page view performance, but of what interested readers on Reddit.

As with all of Behind Local News’ social media research, we focus on titles which serve the country’s biggest 70 towns and cities.

If you’ve followed our Social Media Top 50 feature all week, you’ll see that most of the stories below didn’t make the overall top 50 — a reflection of how different types of stories get differing levels of attention on different social networks, with Facebook influencing any global social media engagement round-up due to its scale.

Anyway, here’s the top 25 for 2018:

25. Liverpool set to confirm Nabil Fekir transfer after Lyon playmaker medical (Liverpool Echo, 4,376)

24. Homeless man ‘heartbroken’ after pet pigeon taken away by police (DevonLive, 4,887)

23. This Morning blunder as botched Stephen Hawking tribute annoys viewers (Manchester Evening News, 5,202)

22. Scottish protesters say Donald Trump has ‘no regard for human decency’ (WalesOnline, 5,343)

21. Paris Saint-German superstar Neymar makes shock Liverpool prediction ahead of Champions League clash (Liverpool Echo, 5,385)

20. Cancer survivor slams men for cruel jibes about her appearance (Liverpool Echo, 5,607)

19. McDonald’s diner left “devastated” after biting into mozzarella stick with NO MOZZARELLA (Liverpool Echo, 5,908)

18. Police threaten to ban and arrest people mocking tiny cannabis bust in Yorkshire (Yorkshire Post, 3,006)

17. Vandal named Jesus smashes Hayling Island church window but vows to become a monk (Portsmouth News, 6,863)

16. Lord Mayor Magid Magid brands Donald Trump a ‘wasteman’ and BANS him from Sheffield (Sheffield Star, 6,929)

15. ‘Scrooge Trump’: Call for US President to pay outstanding debt before being allowed in Scotland (Evening Times, 8,194)