RocaNews

Roca has been named small digital publisher of the year! #aop #deloitte "RocaNews are clearly punching above their weight, demonstrating clever insights and using innovative ways to reach their audience, making news exciting and attractive for the next generation. The jury loved how this small team are making a clear impact in an under-served community, reversing a decline by stating clear objectives that they really delivered against, and leaning on a variety of expert publishing methods." https://lnkd.in/ejNaGadG

Roca has been named small digital publisher of the year! #aop #deloitte "RocaNews are clearly punching above their weight, demonstrating clever insights and using innovative ways to reach their audience, making news exciting and attractive for the next generation. The jury loved how this small team are making a clear impact in an under-served community, reversing a decline by stating clear objectives that they really delivered against, and leaning on a variety of expert publishing methods." https://lnkd.in/ejNaGadG

Roca has been named a finalist for AOP's Small Digital Publisher of the year! Thank you to the AOP and Deloitte... See you in London!! AOP Association of Online Publishers Deloitte #news #publishing

Roca has been named a finalist for AOP's Small Digital Publisher of the year! Thank you to the AOP and Deloitte... See you in London!! AOP Association of Online Publishers Deloitte #news #publishing

We the 66 ?? At long last, we have a podcast. Introducing, “We The 66.” We all know what the world is missing…another podcast hosted by two dudes. You’re welcome. But, on a serious note, a podcast is what RocaNews needs. Our biggest priority over the next year – in addition to continuing to deliver fact-based news – is to explore the most important topics that Big News ignores. 66% of people don’t trust the news (hence the name!), and a big reason why is that news companies don’t trust you. They doubt you can think for yourself. Worse, they fear it. We disagree and believe that hosting a diversity of viewpoints — especially ones that Big News ignores — is critical. Also, we believe you can think for yourself. We’re thrilled to release our first interview today. The guest is Dr. Martin Kulldorff, one of the world’s leading epidemiologists and biostatisticians. Kulldorff was recently fired from Harvard for his Covid views. It wasn’t just Harvard that targeted Kulldorff: Twitter blacklisted him, this platform right here banned him (but quickly restored his account), and the head of the NIH labeled him and his colleagues at Oxford and Stanford as “fringe epidemiologists.” We will be hosting a wide range of viewpoints on the podcast (some of the guests whose interviews we’ve recorded vehemently disagree with each other) and can’t wait to share them with you. If you’re part of the 66, please subscribe on YouTube, Spotify or Apple and throw us a 5-star rating. Let’s ride ??

Roca’s first mention in the The New York Times ?? “Other news accounts include RocaNews, founded by 20-somethings who view Instagram as a key way to reach peers who feel alienated by traditional news outlets.” Delivering nonpartisan news on Instagram is essential to keeping young people informed. Most people distrust the legacy news media — for good reason — and most young people primarily get their news off of social media. The “build it and they will come” website/print model no longer works. Reach people where they are. So grateful to the Roca community for the support ??

Shoutout to our co-founder and president Max Frost! He’s come a long way from that Harry Potter review: Today he heads to Senegal for his next Roca Reports trip. So proud to have him as a co-founder and thanks to the University of Virginia for the nice piece. We have three Cavs on the team and always looking to add more!

Surprising middle schoolers with Chick-fil-A thanks to YOU all ?? We told our readers that if you helped us get 1,000 newsletter signups we would spend our daily budget of $1,000 on charity instead of giving it to Big Tech for marketing. We call this Grow for Good, and it continues today. Our goal is 2,000, and if you help us get there we’ll buy $2,000 worth of jackets for homeless people. Sign up at TheCurrent.RocaNews.com today and thanks to the amazing St. Ignatius School, Bronx for their hospitality. St. Ignatius is a tuition-free middle school that helps students break the cycle of poverty. They not only help their kids get a great education but they support them in high school, college, and beyond ??

Yesterday we brought back “Grow for Good.” We promised $1,000 to support a good cause if our Roca community helped us get 1,000 newsletter signups. You all blew it away. The Roca team spent the first $1,000 on Chick-fil-A Restaurants lunches for middle schoolers at St. Ignatius School, Bronx, a tuition-free private middle school in the Bronx for low-income students. We filmed the whole thing, which you can watch below! Now let's keep the holiday spirit going! Send the link in bio to your friends and family, and we’ll keep donating $1,000 from our marketing budget to our community, and not Big Tech!

What's the value prop our daily newsletter The Current? In five minutes, we'll make you the most interesting person at Happy Hour! RocaNews' Executive Director Jennifer Flanagan shared with Dan Oshinsky of Inbox Collective the importance of owning that value prop as well as other lessons learned from growing The Current. "The value prop of what a newsletter adds to someone’s day really matters. I don’t think I understood that right away, and it took me a really long time to get there. You’re competing with other newsletters in someone’s inbox and with someone’s time. And so the ability to truly add value and understand what your product should be — that matters. I was so focused on deliverability, I was so focused on the open rate, and it takes away from that fundamental question of, “Why is someone who’s getting hundreds of emails a day opening this product?” And the second we were able to nail that, everything else just rolled into place."