A new generation for news production

Pictured: NOTICE News staff: Washington Correspondent Angie Castillo and Producer & Anchor Jonathan Low.

Tristan Brown-DeVirgilio
Campus News

Andrew Springer is co-founder and CEO of news startup NOTICE News, a news company based in Brooklyn, New York, targeting a teenage audience. NOTICE News has a presence on Snapchat and TikTok, garnering almost a million followers between the platforms. It also has a website, noticenews.com. NOTICE was founded in spring 2021.

Before NOTICE, Springer worked for several different news outlets in various positions. Such outlets include NBC News, Voice of America, ABC News, Good Morning America, and Mashable. Springer studied at The George Washington University and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Springer notes that much of news today, including older news programs and the more recent social media news, is over-sensationalized or does not focus on the important news. His vision with NOTICE News is to present the news in a way that younger people can more easily understand and accept, so that they 1) get the news and 2) become more informed, engaged, and responsible citizens to help continue what he sees as the greatness of this country.

I wanted to get some of the story on NOTICE News, to understand its backstory, where it is headed, and share with readers what it is. I sat down to talk with Springer. Here is some of our conversation:

TB: A problem younger people today seem to be having is that they don’t understand the importance of the news – why they should be following the news, for example.

AS: Aaron Sorkin once wrote that America is advanced citizenship, that you have to want it, you have to work at it, and part of that is being an informed citizen. And that’s why the news is important. And I think that, by a large, the past five years has shown this to people. Those who were in high school, they were greatly impacted by pandemic policies including mask policies and so forth. These things are not just distant issues; these things are affecting our daily lives, and that’s why the news is important. I think people understand this. But I think it can be overwhelming if you’re a teenager and you have no idea where to start.

 

TB: NOTICE News has a presence on social media. What are the stats on that?

AS: So we’re almost at 300,000 on our main show on Snapchat, but we’ve got two or three other shows that we count in a total population of about 600,000. Currently we have about 193,000 followers on TikTok.

 

TB: NOTICE News has been used by many teachers across multiple states. I know it’s used in classrooms. What are the numbers on that?

AS: NOTICE is currently used by 150 teachers across 22 states.

 

TB: Could you tell me a little bit more about the how NOTICE News is presented, the specifics of the program and how it runs?

AS: Yeah, sure. So on our platform we do a daily show, a five-minute show that teachers can share with their classrooms. For the classroom we produce two stories, each about two minutes long, and in the middle of those two stories is the headline segment. This is sort of to round up the headlines of the day. Then each show comes with teaching resources – discussion questions and writing prompts that teachers can use. We have daily interactive quizzes that teachers can assign. We also have a PDF printout of those quizzes. And that’s just what we’ve started with. In the fall we’ll be launching newer series and hopefully even more video content that teachers can use, or that the students can go on and use by themselves. Also on our website we have a video library, so teachers and students can go and watch specific segments; for example, recently we covered the UN water conference that happened last week. Or you can go in and search student loan forgiveness and watch that or get a bit of a breakdown of where things stand with the TikTok ban, or the war in Ukraine. So that’s what we offer.

 

TB: So it’s a daily show, then?

AS: That’s correct. Yeah, we do it five days a week. Not on the weekends.

TB: How many people make up NOTICE News?

AS: About five full-time staffers and two or three more part-time staffers, including an education director, Amanda Krause, who has her masters and education in curricular development, and she is in charge of the teaching-aspect of NOTICE.

TB: What do you envision the company becoming? How do you see it expanding, and what are some of your goals? What are you aiming at, in terms of the audience you want to reach, how big you want to become, that sort of thing?

AS: There are 40,000 and almost 50,000 high schools and middle schools across the United States. We want to do our best to reach students in those schools and to help them become better, more engaged citizens. Our number one goal is to contribute to society and the American republic to make sure that it lasts. Part of why I left corporate media is because it’s not mission-driven, or its mission is to return value to shareholders. At NOTICE our mission and responsibility is to the American public. Our mission is to help create a new generation of better, more informed, more engaged citizens, and that’s what we’re focused on doing.

 

TB: That’s awesome! When did you leave corporate media?

AS: So I left NBC News spring of 2019, and then I was a consultant for the Voice of America, which does amazing work. And then I left VOA full-time in spring 2021 to focus on NOTICE full-time.

 

TB: NOTICE premiered at the New York State Council of the Social Studies in Albany two weeks ago. What other events have you done?

AS: We went to the Middle States Council for Social Studies, which included New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland. And there were smaller events. For example, last Friday we went to the Long Island Language Arts Conference in Melville, New York. We got to talk to teachers; we talked to maybe a hundred different teachers who came by, talked to them about what their needs are in the classroom, how we can help them on this mission of creating more better engaged citizens through news education and thinking critically about the news and media literacy. It’s was great. We continue to get feedback, and we continue to refine our product and our platform every time we talk to more teachers.

And specifically, we love to talk to teachers. We had several student teachers come by and we talked to lots of student-teachers. One of the great things about teachers-in-training is that they’re eager, they want to try new things; they’re going into a really hard job, with a lot of demand on their time and attention. It’s great to talk to so many teachers-in-training who are going into the classroom or student-teaching right now and they want to try new things. They know how important this is. They’re eager to try using technology. We have this incredible shift right now in our country away from textbooks and away from all the old ways people were doing things. We know so many things now about the way students learn and how students have different learning styles, for example. So how can we get through to students? How can we use technology to get through to them? And the student-teachers that we’ve talked to are really excited about that and really excited about NOTICE, because it’s not the New York Times, it’s not an old newspaper, it’s not something old trying to be new; it’s actually new. So we got to talk to student teachers, as well that are interested in trying us out for their classrooms and in their teaching.

 

TB: Where would you direct someone to find out more about NOTICE News?

AS: Our website, noticenews.com.

 

TB: Do you have anything you want to share with readers? Anything else about NOTICE News?

AS: We’re really excited and we’re really excited to work with teachers that do this and to get students on the platform and everybody’s been really excited. Nobody that’s seen us has been like “Oh, that’s a terrible idea”. Everybody knows how important this is, educators know how important this is. All you have to do is look at January 6 and what happened at the capital, see what happens when you have a public that’s mislead, misinformed and lied to. These skills of not only knowing about the news but also how to think critically about it and media literacy skills are so important that this country’s not going to survive if we don’t have an informed, educated and engaged citizenry. And a key part of that is media literacy and being consistent and knowing about the news.