Using Reddit As a Journalist

In December, I was writing an article about an experimental treatment for parosmia, or smell distortion. I had identified the researchers I wanted to speak to. But I also needed patients’ testimonies. 

Rather than using X to find sources, I went straight to a different social media site: Reddit. Since Elon Musk bought the platform formerly known as Twitter, cut 80% of the staff, and made a number of chaotic changes to the  algorithm, and made DMs exclusive to verified users, it’s become difficult to use the platform to find sources. 

Journalists were using Reddit for reporting well before Twitter became X, for good reasons. The site is a treasure trove of personal stories. I cover human health,including sometimes rare conditions. There’s a subreddit for almost every health condition—and life experience—possible. 

How journalists use Reddit

The self-styled “front page of the internet,” Reddit was founded in 2005. The site is composed of hundreds of thousands of forums known as “subreddits,” where users discuss anything from the latest cannabis research to their favorite flashlights. In recent years, people have also started to use Reddit as a search engine, either by searching for keywords on the site or just tacking “reddit” onto the end of a Google search. 

“It doesn’t matter if you’re looking to optimize your computer or a place to snort cocaine, a lot of the time, people turn to Reddit for stuff like that,” says Luke Winkie, a staff writer at Slate. He’s wrangled sources on Reddit from couples navigating therapy during quarantine to guys who visit their old dorm rooms to speak with him for hyper-specific trend pieces. “With that kind of broad stroke cultural niche stuff, the most effective way to easily reach people that fill in that category, was to go through Reddit.”

Unlike X, which tends to attract a certain type of extremely online person (and where most journalists hang out), Reddit offers access to a more diverse range of posters.  “It’s a little outside of the echo chamber of onlineness that we exist in,” says Winkie.

A recent Pew Research study found that users of both X and Reddit tend to be white, male, and between the ages of 18 and 29. Still, Maddie Bender, a freelance science journalist, feels the sources she finds on Reddit are more representative of the general population because unlike Twitter, it’s outside of her immediate network of friends and peers. “As someone with training in biology and statistics and rigorous science, it always made me uncomfortable to see how close people were skewing to their own circles when they were doing callouts [on Twitter],” she tells me. She has used the forum to source stories on biohacking and open access data archivists. 

Reddit has a particularly important role to play for local journalists. When poking around Reddit for this story, I noticed a number of local journalists posting in their respective city or area subreddits. Jeremy Jojola, a TV reporter for 9NEWS in the Denver area, is highly active in the Denver subreddit. He told me he often sources stories on Reddit and also answers questions users have about media coverage. He used to use X nonstop for his journalism––calling it an “extra limb.” But he hasn’t logged on since March because of the trolls and general toxicity, and says he won’t return unless the site is “cleaned up.”

Where can journalists find “real” people?

Reddit is not always going to have the answer you’re looking for. “If you’re trying to get the most qualified expert on a particular subject, you may or may not find it there,” said Jeremy Caplan, the Director of Teaching and Learning at CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and the author of the WonderTools newsletter, where he recently wrote his own guide to using Reddit as a journalist. 

Jessica Lucas, an internet culture writer based in London, sees Reddit as effective largely for reporting on very online stories, or stories on niche communities, like, say, DIY penis enlargement. “When it comes to on-the-ground rapid-fire updates, or topics like music, pop culture, politics and activism, it doesn’t match up to Twitter. Reddit just doesn’t attract the same number of people who live—either literally or ideologically—in the real world,” Lucas wrote in an email to Study Hall.

While Bender sees Reddit as less of an echo chamber than Twitter, there’s still a skew of users towards the highly online. “A Reddit user is already not your average American,” Bender says. “They’re someone who has free time to go [online], has access to a phone or computer, [and] can log onto this site. So it’s already a verified weird subpopulation and you need to be mindful of that.”

Winkie also emphasized that nothing compares to being out in the world and talking to people. A few months ago, he attended a 24-hour marathon reading of Moby Dick in person, which he says made for a much better story. “The richness, the color, you can get there is just different,” he says. 

Understanding Reddiquette

Like all online spaces, there are unspoken rules for using Reddit. 

Angel Mendoza, a social media editor at the Washington Post who helps run the paper’s official Reddit, encourages journalists to actually read the rules for each respective subreddit—often posted at the right hand of a subreddit landing page below the title. For example, on r/healthyhoohas, a subreddit devoted to vaginal and vulvar health, moderators reserve the right to “ban suspected fetishists.” It’s important to read the official rules, but you can learn the unofficial ones by spending time hanging around a subreddit. I usually lurk in subreddits to get a sense of what issues are important to a community and the norms and culture of the community before reaching out to any sources, so that I can communicate respectfully and effectively.

When it comes to contacting sources, several journalists I spoke to advised against posting directly in subreddits. It can piss off the moderators and lead to confirmation bias, attracting overly-enthusiastic sources. Instead, they suggest looking through threads or searching for specific key terms, then messaging users directly. Just like in the real world, not everyone will want to speak to journalists––after all, many use Reddit specifically because of the anonymity. 

“In this climate politically, it’s really hard to come by meaningful experiences between readers and reporters,” Mendoza said. “On Reddit, you really have to gain the respect of the audience you’re trying to access, and I think that’s how it always should be.”

Because of Reddit’s anonymity people tend to post more personal and genuine accounts. “From there, you can get your cynical goggles on and dm them,” Mendoza says. That is, sometimes people post for the sake of going viral. It’s important, like with any source, to have  a bullshit detector. 

Contacting sources directly, versus just quoting from posts, is important for a number of reasons. “When you look at a post on reddit, you just see their username. The richness doesn’t manifest to you,” Winkie said. When you actually interview someone, “You might find all these amazing tendrils and details and little motifs.”(To message someone, just click on their username to visit their profile and hit “chat.”) 

When reaching out to sources, transparency is key. Winkie thas a boilerplate message:  “My name is Luke, I write for Slate, I’m writing about TK.” If the post is from a while ago, Bender advises mentioning that or linking the thread, as a person might not remember if they posted a question five years ago. 

You likely won’t be able to verify everything a Reddit source says, but some basic-fact checking is always in order. Unlike on Twitter, people’s professional credentials usually aren’t displayed, and their profession may be very niche. For instance, when interviewing an employee about their experience working at Spirit Halloween, Winkie asked for pay stubs to prove they did in fact work there. When Bender interviews someone about a hospital stay or medical procedure, she asks for redacted documentation to verify.  

“There might be a kernel of truth but you have to do your due diligence as a journalist to vet out the actual circumstance here,” Jojola said. On the flip-side, “95% of the time, there’s more than meets the eye to a post.” 

Reddit has been a way to hone in on certain communities and experiences that aren’t visible on X. The platform is a place where people gather and engage passionately, and it shows. According to Mendoza, when the Post uses Reddit to share articles, the platform routes substantial website traffic, comparable to views via Instagram. Other news organizations like National Geographic and The Dallas Morning News have also built presences on the platform, posting their articles on relevant subreddits, hosting AMAs, and opening threads for discussion.  

Time will tell if the deterioration of X will make Reddit the ultimate source-wrangling destination. For now, X remains useful for networking and having a professional presence. Of course, there are other platforms where sources can be found and professional connections can be made. As the media ecosystem changes, we can’t put all our eggs in one basket.