In Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood, Mosheh Oinounou, a former CBS, Bloomberg News, and Fox News producer, flipped through Instagram on a recent Wednesday. He began the day reading newspapers and more than a dozen newsletters, then turned many of the articles into posts on his Instagram account, Mo News. A Wall Street Journal story on aging Americans became a post with a picture of a cake declaring, “Record Number of Americans Will Turn 65 This Year: Wealthy, Active, And Single.” Sometimes, Mr. Oinounou, an affable 41-year-old, has appeared on camera with the co-host of his daily news podcast to explain the significance of Republican presidential candidates’ polling and why President Biden was a write-in candidate in New Hampshire.
Mo News has earned 436,000 Instagram followers, turning a pandemic side project into an enterprise with three full-time employees and a bigger spotlight. In December, the State Department offered Mo News an interview with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken. Mr. Oinounou said the agency had told him, “We understand how people are getting their news.”“People are very critical and cynical about information they’re getting from traditional outlets,” Mr. Oinounou said in an interview. “It resonates where this guy on Instagram is breaking down the news.”
Mr. Oinounou is part of a group that has figured out how to package information and deliver it on Instagram, turning the social platform into an increasingly important force in news. Many millennials and Gen X-ers, comfortable reading news on Instagram, have grown more comfortable reposting posts and videos for friends on Instagram Stories. Traditional news organizations, including The New York Times, have large Instagram feeds where they share reporting, but these news accounts hold a different appeal and have become more visible in recent years. They source headlines from major outlets while adding their own analysis and often promise to be nonpartisan.
As of last year, 16 percent of U.S. adults regularly got news on Instagram, according to Pew Research. More than half of that group were women. News influencers have become popular on Instagram despite the platform’s attempts to de-emphasize political content. This includes Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, who has been averse to teaming up with news accounts, but follows a paid subscriber-only account of Mo News on Instagram.
Other prominent news influencers on Instagram include Sharon McMahon, a former high school teacher in Duluth, Minn., who has attracted more than one million followers by explaining the fundamentals of government. There are more overtly political influencers, such as Emily Amick, a lawyer with more than 134,000 followers. Instagram is a platform to mobilize millennial women around issues like reproductive rights. Users are set to continue seeing news from the accounts they follow and via their friends’ Stories.
