Rethinking Reddit: What the platform means for modern news publishers
Reddit is one of the most-cited sources in AI-generated answers and among the most-visited websites on the internet. Yet many publishers still approach the platform the wrong way, according to Gabriel Sands, News & Lifestyle BD Partnerships Lead, Reddit, USA.
“News publishers who are willing to be on Reddit really need to be approaching the platform from a mindset of participation rather than promotion,” Sands said during our recent World News Media Congress in Marseille.
Unlike platforms built around followers or friend networks, Reddit is organised around communities led by volunteer moderators.
That means doing more than sharing links and learning how to participate in conversations on the platform.
Reddit’s news opportunity starts with a different mindset
“To understand the platform properly, publishers need to re-orient their thinking and avoid placing Reddit into the social media category,” Sands said.
Reddit receives more website visits than Wikipedia and is now the sixth most visited website on the internet. More than 100,000 volunteer moderators build and manage communities, set rules and enforce them.
Users primarily engage through anonymous usernames rather than real-world identities, which creates space for discussions that may not happen elsewhere online.
News is not the only reason people come to Reddit, but it is an important one.
Users consume and discuss news content, creating opportunities for publishers, creators and applications to participate in these conversations and contribute to communities.
“For news, Reddit is where people come to get human perspectives behind the headlines,” Sands said, adding, “People come to Reddit to either have discussions or to read discussions that others are having.”
How Reddit became a go-to source for AI search
Recent industry analyses have found Reddit to be among the most-cited sources used by major AI systems, with strong citation rates across platforms such as Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and ChatGPT.
“We don’t know exactly why we are as heavily cited as we are in LLMs, but we do know that the human aspect of the content plays a large role in that,” Sands said.
Content on Reddit is created by people, moderated by people, and surfaced by people, he said.
Reddit’s algorithm plays a smaller role than on other platforms. Content moves through the system because users upvote or downvote posts and comments. The more upvotes content receives, the higher it appears.
This system has helped make the platform a destination for people seeking answers, discussion and information, he said.
Reddit’s free Pro toolkit for publishers
Reddit Pro is a free suite of tools designed to measure performance, understand communities and identify opportunities for growth. It is available globally to businesses and publishers.
At its core, it functions as a performance and analytics tool. But it also functions as a social listening tool.
Social listening is the process of tracking and analysing conversations about your brand, products, industry, and competitors across social media platforms and online communities.
The feature allows users to track keywords across Reddit. Publishers can create feeds showing conversations that contain contextually relevant mentions of those keywords, helping them discover discussions and communities related to their work, Sands said.
Many publishers receive Reddit traffic not from links they post themselves, but from links shared organically by users, according to Sands.
Reddit’s Links tool aggregates those signals and shows:
- The number of links from a domain shared on Reddit
- The number of posts containing links from that domain
- The number of communities where those links appear
The goal is to help publishers understand their footprint on the platform and identify communities where affinity already exists, he said.
The tool now includes AI-powered recommendations that suggest additional communities for publishers based on the metadata associated with shared links.
Building a Reddit strategy means participating, not promoting
Since Reddit is decentralised, there is no universal playbook, according to Sands. Each community is its own ecosystem with its own audience and norms.
A basic Reddit strategy starts with placing content in relevant communities. But publishing links alone is not enough.
Showing up in the comments is essential.
After posting a link, publishers can provide additional context, answer questions and engage directly with readers.
The platform also presents opportunities for news gathering, particularly for publishers that spend time becoming familiar with communities.
Through Reddit Pro, publishers can connect RSS feeds to receive content and community recommendations and understand where their content performs best, Sands said.
Some publishers are already seeing results. US-based publications MLive and Cleveland.com have used organic engagement on Reddit to reach readers interested in their journalism. According to Sands, they have:
- Seen steady growth in referral traffic from the platform.
- Identified new communities to expand their audience reach.
- Refined their organic Reddit strategies using performance insights.
The on-platform and off-platform opportunities
Reddit divides publisher opportunities into two categories: on-platform and off-platform.
The on-platform opportunity includes:
- Sharing content
- Participating in discussions
- Answering questions
- Hosting AMAs (Ask Me Anything sessions)
AMAs remain one of Reddit’s best-known formats and can generate discussion around reporting and journalism.
The off-platform opportunity involves taking conversations from Reddit back into publishers’ own ecosystems, Sands said.
News gathering on Reddit has become more common, and the company recently began verifying a limited number of journalists and reporters to support that work.
Publishers can also repurpose Reddit discussions into stories.
For instance, a publisher that hosts an AMA can later build coverage around the questions, answers and discussion that emerged.
Professionally produced journalism matters
Reddit continues to send substantial referral traffic to publishers and has no plans to change that, according to Sands.
The platform both receives and distributes significant traffic. Users still click through to read full stories, and referral traffic continues to grow.
He said Reddit’s structure makes user feedback immediate and highly visible. The platform forces publishers to be aware of how audiences experience their content, with users quick to respond when interactions fall short of expectations.
“Professionally produced journalism plays a central role in Reddit’s ecosystem, often serving as the foundation for discussion,” Sands said.
Users are not only looking for links but also for context and informed perspectives that publishers can uniquely provide, creating what he described as the “marriage” between content and community.
