Snapchat is hiring journalists to cover the 2016 US presidential race and turn submissions from the 100 million users of the photo-sharing app into event-focused stories.
An ad for content analysts politics & news on the Greenhouse recruitment site asks for “political junkies and news aficionados” with “experience in journalism and storytelling of all forms” to join a “new content team”.
The photo-sharing platform has been quietly hiring journalists since late last year and in April picked up CNN star political reporter Peter Hamby as head of news.
Hamby told Politico last month: “[Snapchat] have a big and growing audience, and we’ve seen Discover is a huge success. Their live stories around big events, around places both here and abroad, the potential to take users to new places – we can see some application of that with news.”
The job ad says that as well as covering the presidential contest and other news events, members of the new team will help combine photos and videos contributed by people using app’s Our Story feature into stories such as last year’s snow storms in New York or the Oscars.
The ad lists “having created, edited, or curated media content” and “experience with reviewing user-generated content or moderating an online community” as desirable experience.
Snapchat has struck deals with media outlets including Vice, the Daily Mail and Sky to include specially made content in its Discover section, which launched in January. If the media company sells the ad, it keeps 70% of the revenue, if Snapchat sells it the money is split evenly.
Chinese web firm Alibaba recently invested $200m in Snapchat, valuing the company at $15bn.
Snapchat had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.
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