How we built a scrappy impact journalism team within a big media company

Written By Yaling Jiang

“It’s not about what they want to hear, it’s about what they need to hear. You just have to make sure it’s delivered in the right tone on the right platforms,” said Ian Yee on engaging with young viewers.

Takeaways

  • Impact journalism resonates with Gen-Zers and millennials today because they have increasingly high online spending power, and they are keen to make the world a better place. 

  • R.AGE identifies itself as a “social justice warrior” and believes that journalists should identify both problems and solutions. 

  • Authenticity matters most to a younger generation, so if you’re doing impact journalism, you have to commit to it fully or your audience will call you out on it.

Context

Do Gen-Zers and millennials only want to consume light and cheerful content? Malaysia-based R.AGE has proven that when done right, younger viewers can be highly engaged with serious journalism.

Founded in 2005, R.AGE pivoted from a youth lifestyle pull-out to being an award-winning video producer known for its investigative and impact journalism. It has taken persistence from the team to create such a unit inside the large Star Media Group, which owns Malaysia’s highest circulated English newspaper, The Star.

At Splice Beta Online, Ian Yee, the deputy executive editor and producer at R.AGE, talked about what it took to get the management to approve his proposals to pivot R.AGE while targeting the same audience, and how the team built its format of impact-based journalism.

What’s an example of impact journalism?

  • In June, 2018, UNHCR announced that Chin refugees in Malaysia no longer required protection and would be repatriated by the end of 2019.

  • R.AGE journalists recorded over 50 cases of Chin refugees having UNHCR cards revoked early. And in October 2018, it produced a multimedia feature story Refugees No More, which has created national awareness. The Foreign Affairs Minister of Malaysia responded and so did UNHCR.

  • In February 2019, it launched The Chin Up Project that features about 50 video projects, which was produced by a Chin refugee, who was a film student. The producer asked the Chin refugees about their hopes and worries.

  • After viewers watched the video, a call-to-action option would appear and they can choose to send an auto-generated email petition to UNHCR and the Malaysian government.

  • In March 2019, UNHCR reversed the decision, and noted “specific concerns raised by the Chin community and civil society.”

“Go back to your news values when picking a story. Formats have changed, treatments have changed. News values have not.”

Journey of R.AGE

  • R.AGE 1.0 was launched in September of 2005 as a youth lifestyle pull-out in The Star, Malaysia’s top English newspaper.

  • In early 2014, the R.AGE team proposed a new direction to engage young people with serious journalism and empower them to take actions on important issues through web documentaries. At that time, R.AGE was on the cusp of being shut down as it couldn’t compete with news aggregators, Yee said.

  • Nothing happened in 2014 and 2015 because few believed that young people were interested in anything in the proposal. Yee said he was told by management that he was just not doing lifestyle right.

  • In mid-2015, after Yee sent yet another proposal, the management at The Star took a chance and said if R.AGE could get advertisers for video, they could use about 15-20% of the revenue to start work on investigative projects.

  • In October, 2015, R.AGE released its first-ever documentary The Curse of Serawan, which investigates child deaths in an indigeous village in the Malaysian rainforest. The documentary made national headlines and the government was forced to respond.

  • Over the years, it also produced impactful projects such as The Malaysian Drug Trade and a piece alongside UNICEF in uncovering sex predators in Malaysia.

  • The team has started doing sponsored content. Yee said they have also started testing micro documentaries on TikTok.

Yaling Jiang

Yaling is a reporter at the fashion trade publication Jing Daily, based in Shanghai and New York. She was trained at publications under the Financial Times and Dow Jones and has written for Sixth Tone, SupChina, and SCMP's Inkstone as a contributor.

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