By: Karen List
Nia Decaille, class of 2015, is an SEO editor at the New York Times where she’s responsible for developing a strategy to ensure the Times’ best journalism is populated and discovered on Google search. Until recently, she worked at the Washington Post as an SEO advisor and as a member of a new team focused on designing and editorial experiments, trying to reach new audiences and testing methods of surfacing diverse stories.
When the Post closed comments on Michelle Singletary’s 10-part series on debunking racist myths about personal finance, Nia led this effort to publish readers’ responses as another way to host conversations about race.
"There are no digital journalists, just journalists. Talking about journalism as two separate entities – print and digital – is outdated. Many social media managers, data analysts, operations editors and SEO wonks have reporting experience or studied journalism or both. Those digital skills have been pertinent in helping legacy news organizations meet the challenges of adopting a subscription model and exploring new ways to scale readership."
"The willingness to become social media evangelists or product liaisons in our newsrooms shouldn't come at the expense of being seen and respected as journalists."