Once you have joined a bunch of subreddits related to your interests or beat, you can return to Reddit any time and see what those communities are talking about. But in general: the tighter-knit the subreddit, the more useful it can be. Of course, if a sub is too specific or has too small of a community, it might be totally dead and not useful at all. You have better odds of engaging with a real person, and avoiding trolls and spam replies. YouвЂ™ll see people posting about things that arenвЂ™t already national or international news. Whenever youвЂ™re looking for story ideas or sources, try to find the most relevant subreddit possible. R/USC has 17,600 members, making it even more likely to be a place where you can find and interact with real people. Make a post in r/politics, a default sub with 7.4 million members, and itвЂ™s basically guaranteed to get drowned out.ДЄ post in r/LosAngeles, with 282,000 members, is much more likely to net meaningful responses. Reddit will suggest some of the more popular options, but these are unlikely to be the most useful to you as a journalist.ДЄll of these communities recommended based on my location are great to follow as a reporter covering the LA area.ДЄs a general rule, the more well-defined or smaller a subreddit community is, the more likely it is to be useful, especially as a journalist. Once youвЂ™ve created an account, you can begin to join subs that you find interesting or relevant to your reporting. If you want to post more personal content, consider making two accounts: one for personal use and another where you do outreach as a journalist. This is something you need to keep in mind.ДЄ best practice is to never post anything that can be used to identify you personally in a public space. Reddit has taken some steps to reduce toxicity on the platform, including banning some of the most dangerous subreddits. But its policy of letting communities self-regulate has had hugely damaging consequences.

You donвЂ™t have to be afraid of using Reddit. Taking precautions to protect yourself from trolling, doxxing or worse is a must, especially for anyone facing an extra high risk of harassment. But your username will be how other users identify you.ДЄ note on safety: donвЂ™t choose a username that anyone could use to identify you. YouвЂ™ll need to enter your email and then choose a username. This guide will walk through getting set up on a computer, but the process will be very similar if you prefer to use the app on your phone.Д¬lick вЂњSign UpвЂќ on the Reddit homepage to start creating your account. You can use Reddit on a computer or mobile device. But to get anything out of Reddit, youвЂ™ll need to create an account and customize your account to see the subs you care about. If you just go to without creating an account, youвЂ™ll see items posted in the default subs. The URL to visit any subreddit uses this structure:ДЇor example, the Los Angeles subreddit can be viewed at: The more upvotes, the more people will see a given post. Users post links, images, videos or text within a subreddit, and their posts are upvoted or downvoted by other users. Subreddits are dedicated to a topic, community or theme, and can be made by anyone.

Reddit is made of a bunch of different subreddits, or вЂsubsвЂ™. About half of these users are located in the United States. Reddit has 52 million daily active users as of 2020, according to data released by the company. Reddit can be very useful for journalists, especially for sourcing potential stories and finding sources.Д¬reated in 2005, Reddit rapidly became one of the most popular platforms on the internet.

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