Snapchat is working with college newspapers to produce local Discover Stories
Snapchat’s latest experiment involves college reporters. In recent months, Snap has asked several college newspapers to make stories for its Discover section, according to a report from Business Insider. The stories are similar to the ones created by publishers like The New York Times, BuzzFeed, and Vice, except they’ll be unique to certain colleges.
A Snapchat spokesperson confirmed to The Verge that the company soft-launched the college publisher feature this past spring. The stories were tested at UCLA, Stanford, and Dartmouth, among others.
As Business Insider points out, this is the first time Snap is dropping hyper-localized stories into its Discover feed. The stories will only be available to watch on a particular college campus.
These new Discover Stories are different from Snapchat’s Campus Stories, which first launched in 2014. Campus Stories are communal snaps from individual users, captured from live events on college campuses. The new college publisher stories are created by student journalists and editors.
Several college newspapers across the US will be creating stories for this upcoming fall semester, according to BI.