July 8 2015 — Upworthy Editorial Vision

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STORIES FOR A BETTER WORLD.

I arrived at Upworthy in February
2015 and since then, a lot of
people have been asking what
we’re up to. We’ve made a lot...

UPWORTHY SPRUNG TO LIFE BY  
BRINGING MASSIVE AMOUNTS
OF ATTENTION TO STORIES
THAT REALLY MATTER.
18 million people saw Za...

And it worked. Upworthy was crazy successful, the fastest growing media
company of all time. Upworthy was so successful, i...

AND THEN  
(LIKE IN ANY GOOD STORY)
SOMETHING CHANGED.

BUT FIRST, A WORD.

“CLICKBAIT”

Oof.
A lot of people think of Upworthy
and think: “Ugh. I hate those
annoying ‘clickbait’ headlines.”
Yeah, we know. We do...

“WE SORT OF UNLEASHED A MONSTER.
SORRY FOR THAT. SORRY WE KIND OF BROKE
THE INTERNET LAST YEAR. I'M EXCITED
GOING FORWARD ...

BUT IT’S NOT THE BIGGEST CHANGE WE’RE MAKING.

WE ARE MOVING  
FROM CURATION
TO STORY  
CREATION

AND WE ARE BUILDING A WHOLE NEW WORLD
OF UPWORTHY STORYTELLING

Storytelling? Wait, that’s not a hot, new
distribution model. Where are the
“newsonomics”? Where are the future-
o f - m e...

(What’s so crazy-exciting about being
at Upworthy right now is that we get to
work on this question — and do it in the
ser...

WHAT WILL YOU BE DOING
THAT’S UNIQUE?

EMPATHETIC STORYTELLING
THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS THAT WE KNOW ABOUT
CHARACTER EMOTION SURPRISE MEANINGSTRUCTURE
Story nerd...

AUDIENCE MEDIUM ACTIONSFRAMING HABITS
Every day Upworthy is learning more about human actions surrounding digital stories ...

EMPATHETIC
STORYTELLING
DEEP
DATA
BUT HERE’S MY
PROBLEM:
THESE TWO
DISCIPLINES
ARE USUALLY
KEPT FAR APART.

WE ARE ASKING: WHAT IF THEY MET?SO AT
EMPATHETIC
STORYTELLING
DEEP
DATA

EMOTIONS HABITS
WHAT RELATIONSHIPS WOULD WE FIND?
“How do particular emotions stir habit formation?”

ACTIONS
MEANING
WHAT INTERACTIONS WOULD WE DISCOVER?
“What actions lead people to ﬁnd deeper meaning in a story?”

STRUCTURE
MEDIUM
WHAT ASSOCIATIONS WOULD BE REVEALED?
“What structures improve a story’s resonance on each platform?”

WE BELIEVE THAT BURIED INSIDE THE RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN STORIES AND DATA,  
THERE IS THE POWER TO CHANGE THE WORLD.

AND THAT’S WHAT WE’RE UP TO.

IT’S A BIG SHIFT. WE’RE IN THE MIDDLE OF IT.
AND WE ALREADY HAVE SOME INITIAL EXPERIMENTS UNDERWAY.

FRAMING
Mason Wartman abandoned
a life on Wall Street to start a
pizza shop in Philadelphia,
where customers can get a
sli...

2 MILLION
PEOPLE  
READING  
ABOUT  
WORKERS’
WAGES
AUDIENCE MEDIUM
Upworthy does longform? Yep. In this 5,000-word origin...

Getting a story to more people than the entire population of
Canada? Yeah, Upworthy still does that, too. True to our root...

QUALITY
EMPATHETIC
STORYTELLING
FUTURE-OF-NEWS TYPES
AND DIGITAL MEDIA THINKERS
WILL PROBABLY SHRUG.
BUT WE BELIEVE
THAT, ...

Early 2014
Today
Can you measure a good story by the numbers? 
 
If you’d asked me a couple of years, ago, I would have
sa...

And we’re big. With 20 million monthly readers, Upworthy’s audience is larger than the
populations of Chile, New York or F...

HOW IS “STORYTELLING” A STRATEGY, EXACTLY?

The media industry is an
exciting and volatile one
right now. Many of the
things that went into
being a media company
of t...

MISSION-DRIVEN
DATA-INFORMED
STORYTELLING
We believe that high-quality, mission-driven,
data-informed storytelling that wo...

Upworthy has
always had
what we’ve
called, “the
Little Mermaid
strategy.”
We want to be
where the
people are.
By living in...

WE ARE IN A STREET FIGHT FOR
HUMAN ATTENTION.

AND IS GOING TO FIGHT ON THE
SIDE OF THE STORIES THAT MATTER MOST.

And I’m proud to be leading that ﬁght.
Thanks for taking some time to learn about
Upworthy and our vision. I’m happy to ke...

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