Andy Mendes, a digital designer at The Daily Orange, occasionally gets recognized on campus.

“Hey you’re that dude from The D.O. Snapchat,” he recalls a student yelling out to him while walking down the promenade.

Mendes is the host of a D.O. Snapchat segment called “Andy On The Promenade,” where he interviews students about notable Syracuse University news stories, like the mumps outbreak on campus and Paul McCartney’s concert at the Carrier Dome earlier this fall. The segment has a format similar to Billy Eichner’s truTV series “Billy on the Street” and Jimmy Kimmel’s “Lie Witness News.”

“Did you know Jesse McCartney and Paul McCartney are related?” he asked students in one segment back in September.

“Andy on the Promenade” is one of several quippy yet informative features that appear in the D.O.’s weekly Snapchat Publisher Story. So far, the story — a compilation of videos, stories, listicles and polls — has amassed 1,200 subscribers and at, its peak, 36,700 total weekly viewers in the few months since its launch.

The D.O.’s Snapchat team includes the organization’s digital editor and three digital design editors, in addition to contributing animators and writers.

The D.O. was chosen, along with three other college newspapers, to partner with Snapchat and launch a Campus Publisher Story. The move, which Snapchat announced publicly on Sept. 8, caught the attention of Business Insider, Recode and Mashable.

Snapchat contacted The D.O. in February to express interest in a partnership. Company officials said they set their sights on The D.O. because of its impressive digital presence.

The Daily Californian at the University of California, Berkeley, The Battalion at Texas A&M and The Badger Herald at the University of Wisconsin, Madison also debuted Stories at the same time. Since the initiative’s launch, Snapchat has partnered with six other school news organizations to create Stories.

The social media company and the college papers agreed to split the revenue from advertisements placed on the story.

The D.O’s story, which can be accessed on the app’s Discover section, is akin to what major media outlets — including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and Vice — provide on Snapchat. But The D.O. story only appears in the app’s Discover section for users on campus and the surrounding area. Users outside of Syracuse can view the story by searching “The Daily Orange” or scanning the D.O.’s Snap code.

The story features content already published in print and online, in addition to Snapchat-exclusive content like “Andy on the Promenade.” As in other sections at the paper, Snapchat stories are offered up to writers in a weekly email from Mendes and Digital Editor Emma Comtois. Writers then compile, report and write short service stories, like the best foods to get at the Dome, the coziest things to do on campus and how to access mental health resources on campus, to name a few.

“Snap is about humanizing us and putting us into the everyday lives of students,” Comtois said.

In June, Comtois, Editor in Chief Alexa Díaz, and Managing Editor Alexa Torrens worked closely with Snap employees to conceptualize, design and develop content for the first story, which was released Sept. 1.

During that process, the editors realized The D.O. needed more talent to pull off a weekly story. They recruited two animators with motion graphics experience, Eliza Chen and Katie Czerwinski, to join the staff. Although it’s not an official title, Mendes was brought on to lead the team and be in charge of content in addition to his duties as a digital designer.

The story is released on a weekly basis.

When The D.O. created a designated web team in 2015, it had four people. In the two years since, the paper has steadily increased its digital presence, hiring additional video staff, designers and web developers. With Snapchat, Comtois said, The D.O. is further investing in digital products.

“The D.O’s digital team is the newest section, but it’s growing the fastest,” Comtois said. “We’re growing our digital presence and Snap a relatively untapped resource that we’re getting to explore for the first time.”

Published on November 17, 2017 at 1:14 am

Contact Rachel: rsandler@syr.edu