Power of Influence: The one-man news network, Mosheh Oinounou

There’s an extremely unique [+ cool] new editorial strategy exploding on Instagram this past year. Meet one-man news network, Mosheh Oinounou. He’s a consultant and your personal news concierge. Mosheh is a news junkie who previously worked at CBS News, Fox News, Bloomberg and CNBC. After he left CBS as the executive producer of the Evening News, he started consulting and began what amounts to his own news network on Instagram. It could become a trend fellow news nerds [and those generally interested in the future of news] should take note of.

Credit: Mosheh Oinounou — *Credit:* *Mosheh Oinounou*

Here’s what he does. He curates news from many sources, builds Instagram stories with screenshots of articles paired with quotes of observations and insights. It’s not just an RSS feed style with links, like Drudge Report.. His voice provides context and background, and because it’s served up in a casual tone - - you get a sense of his personality through what he chooses and how he serves it up. [Bonus for those of you who like lighter stories - he tends to stay in that lane rather than in hard or breaking news]

Mosheh distills what you need to know, and makes it easy for you to access at any time [thanks, Instagram] and archives his content by day in his highlights, so you can really access them at any time once they are published. It’s not an evening news program, but it’s still an enormous amount of work, and highly effective as evidenced by his account’s 66K+ followers.

It’s important to note that news curation is not a new strategy. Plenty of organizations and especially newsletters like TheSkimm or CNN’s Reliable Sources, curate from other sources and serve the information up to a specific audience [in a very specific brand voice]. It’s less about reaching the masses and more about creating a deeper relationship with a niche audience. The difference with Mosheh is that he’s taking a step further from organization down to an individual, which makes a lot of sense when you think about why people choose one news source over another.

It all comes down to; who is curating it, how it’s presented, where it is [and perhaps political preferences nowadays too?]. The X factor that sets Mosheh apart is interaction. It’s unfair to compare nightly news programs one-to-one with Mosheh’s Instagram story feed since the final product on those broadcasts is originally reported video news packages that take an entire staff and days, if not weeks, to produce. But at the same time, is Mosheh on to something?

In an interview with Variety back in December 2020, he referred to himself as a “news concierge,” a role that some journalists are discovering after realizing they don’t need. a news network or newspaper to share information. Journalists have begun creating their own newsletters, like Katie Couric, or podcasts, like Megyn Kelly, while Mosheh landed on Instagram “Where he helps everyone from random followers to a handful of celebrities make sense of current events. He even takes requests to help explain specific topics. Joe Jonas is among those asking him questions.”

This interactive feature plus the access you get to him, (especially while he doesn’t have too huge of a following -- yet), is unique. News programs, shows, and publications are all so big that they have entire digital teams running their social platforms, and even if they were to be fully available for personalized questions and responses, it’s unlikely you’d get much of a personalized response from a large corporation. There are too many hoops [legal & standards departments to name a few] to jump through.

Also notable about Mosheh are the tactics he uses to firmly establish himself as a reliable resource. Coverage of news on a national level is a big undertaking and he’s successful at it. So, even if you’re not a news junky, but looking to establish yourself as an expert in your own field it’s absolutely possible to use some of Mosheh’s tactics.

Here are some things Mosheh is doing to consider for your own digital strategy:

Curation. One of the most straightforward content pieces to create are lists. Resources, to-do lists, grocery lists, music playlists, etc. By putting these together, you are exhibiting your own form of taste + expertise. It’s also a way to show awareness and share the latest information available in a given industry.
Have a perspective and be able to articulate it. It’s one thing to share a publication or person’s work and another to add in a point of view. Whether it is in a caption, a story graphic, a blog post, a tweet, you need to tell your audience why they need to care about what it is you’re sharing with them.
Understand your audience and how to best serve them. Depending on your business and your social platforms of choice, be mindful of effectively presenting information. For example, if you are talking to a younger audience, providing historical context + relevance can be helpful. Or similarly, if you’re talking to an older crowd, breaking down a meme or explaining newer cultural terms like “cheugy” for them can be helpful too. You want everyone in your audience to feel informed and supported in order to have the most productive, valuable conversations possible.
Consistency, consistency, consistency. The key to being a trusted resource is that people need to know they can depend on you. They need to have an expectation - daily, weekly, monthly - and you need to deliver on it. The bottom line, show up again and again.

The challenge for Mosheh looking ahead is scale and monetization. How will he generate consistent money doing this while maintaining the boutique level of personalization he’s already established? Will he niche down to allow for a higher quality overall experience and allow him to go even deeper on key topics? Will he build out his strategy on his owned platforms? We are excited to watch and cheer him on in the process.