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Ten years ago, nobody knew what “Snapchat” was – because it did not yet exist.
Today, with 188 million users and more content being created on the app than on iPhone cameras each day, it is one of the world’s leading technology platforms. Snapchat Head of News Peter Hamby, a Henrico native and Freeman High School graduate, dissected the ever-changing role of social media within the current political climate – and the eventful path that led to his prosperous career in journalism – during a lecture at St. Christopher’s School in Richmond Oct. 4. His visit was part of the Center for the Study of Boys’ Journeys to Manhood Speakers Series – an engaging conversational program.
“It’s unquestionable that attention is moving toward the mobile screen,” Hamby said. “And we’re at the forefront of that. People are spending more and more time every year on their iPhones.”
This rapid inclination toward mobile device use and social media consumption was a catalyst in Snapchat’s executive decision to begin covering news a few years ago when Hamby joined the company in April 2015. Snapchat’s executives realized that young people were spending 30 minutes per day on the app, and the opportunity to deliver news to them directly was appealing, Hamby said.
Shortly after he joined Snapchat, Hamby hired a team of producers and journalists from outlets such as CBS News, the Weather Channel and CNN to build a news team that eventually became the show he currently hosts – “Good Luck America.” He described the Snapchat show as a documentary series that covers U.S. politics and averages five million viewers per episode.
“[Good Luck America] is what happens when you join Snapchat one month before Donald Trump rode down the escalator and quickly became the biggest story in the world,” Hamby said. “We were like, ‘We’ve got to think about the way to cover this election in a fresh way.’”
With 90 percent of “Good Luck America” viewers under 30, and 75 percent under 25, Hamby has a knack for connecting with millennials.
“I feel really lucky to be able to reach an audience that is not just young and super earnest about the world and wants to learn about the world, but is also grappling with the idealization of news,” Hamby said.
One of the show’s main objectives is to showcase different political perspectives throughout the U.S.
“I really think the values of my show and our political news, generally, is actually kind of old school,” Hamby said. “Go somewhere, listen to somebody, tell a story and show someone perspective for something they might not know about.”
One segment of the show covered an event hosted by a conservative student organization called Turning Point USA and focused on hundreds of millennial women who love Donald Trump.
“In our Me Too era, it seems a little odd that a 25-year-old woman would be a full-throated Trump supporter,” Hamby said. “But they think, like a lot of conservative and Trump supporters do, that the president is under attack and that the Me Too movement is a witch hunt.”
Social media uncertainties
A Georgetown and New York University graduate, Hamby ascended to his career in media by starting as a production assistant for CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer in 2005. He has covered the past three presidential elections, winning several awards including an Emmy for his coverage of the 2012 campaign. He was also named one of the “10 Breakout Political Reporters of 2012” by Politico.
After the 2012 election, he was a fellow at Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, where he published “Did Twitter Kill the Boys on the Bus?,” a study about the influence of Twitter on media and political reporting during the 2012 presidential election.
If anything, though, the influence of Twitter has only grown in relation to political journalism since then. Hamby believes political reporting is dominated by people on Twitter attempting to impress one another, and what’s been lost is the act of going out to talk to people and gathering the best-obtainable version of the truth, he said.
Hamby views Snapchat as more of a personal experience intended for users to share moments with their best friends and close relatives, as opposed to the incentive structure of other social media platforms – many of which pressure consumers to present a perfect image of themselves to the world. With Snapchat, users can be candid.
As social media outreach grows and political views become more polarized, expressing thoughts freely has turned into somewhat of a challenge. Hamby, who tweeted about his concern for people not being able to eat in peace after Ted Cruz was chased out of a restaurant with his family, was told he is out of touch and that he is an elite, afterward.
“Twitter is not the place for nuance or reason, and I try not to tweet sanctimonious things either, but I got attacked for saying that,” Hamby said.
St. Christopher’s Head of School Mason Lecky described the chance to hear from Hamby as an “opportune moment,” for the boys at St. Christopher’s, their families and the rest of the Richmond community.
“I think he’s a great inspiration, seeing the big picture and teaching our children how to think critically, and even teaching ourselves the importance of critical thinking and how we can encourage our children to be more open-minded,” said Dr. Leemore Burke, mother of two St. Christopher’s students.
Hamby acknowledged that with today’s digital overload, he can’t know what to expect within the media industry. Yet, he is hopeful that there will be some sort of cultural yearning to make sense of things and a heightened sense of news literacy in the future.
