1.   What was the motivation behind forming Nutshell Today?

Initially, our plan was to grab the attention of the audience. We have seen that people’s attention span has been decreasing day by day and in order to grab what’s left of it, you need some short form of content that has to be visually attractive. Since such a product was missing in the news media industry, we opted to grab the market. So, that’s how we felt that the market needs more short-form, visually attractive content in the online medium. We are trying to develop it and if you compare it to the western world you see even Bloomberg, New York times also cover short-form content. Unfortunately, in the Asian region, this was missing and we just wanted to fill that gap.

2.   How did the team of four people got formed?

We didn’t know each other very well before forming Nutshell Today. We just got connected through a common friend and shared our ideas. Luckily it clicked and this is how the team formed initially.

3.   Which group of audience are you targeting?

Currently, our target audience is mostly the youth. Because of the approach we have taken towards our content, it’s very progressive, and also the visual is very much relevant to the younger audience. We also push our limits and experiment with different sorts of content to reach all types of audiences. However, at this point, it’s very much focused on youth.

4.   Apart from Nutshell what other projects are you involved in and what other projects are coming from Nutshell?

The projects we are involved in are mostly from Nutshell itself. We want to scale this up and also thinking of a digital product that will help other news media agencies to catch up as well. We want to build an ecosystem and a platform that allows the other traditional media to participate and connect with their audience, which is missing right now. Our goal is to create a digital product and focus on the platform where others can also join. We don’t want nutshell to be the only player doing it. We want to develop the industry.

5.   So, you are focusing on breaking news only?

Breaking news is a yes. We do it on a regular basis but also do have our own original content. We have an editorial feature which is mostly opinion-based or research-based that we do not collect from other sources. We have our own research team and form our own opinion and from those, we try to give our own content. Sometimes we are partnering with other organizations who want to publish their content and also educate the youth. We work as a news curator as well and we collect news from different sources and publish that. Alongside that, if you check our website you will see our newsletter where you can subscribe to get regular news which is also in short form.

6.   How do you ensure the authenticity of the news sources?

We have our own breaking news team for the purpose and also another team that judges news through multiple sources to check if the news is correct or not. Based on that they transfer the news to the writer who has been appointed for writing the news. And that is how we make sure of the authenticity. Sometimes there is some controversial news and multiple sources telling different stories. In that case, we try to go to the root source but rarely, only if there is a big debate on that issue.

7.   In terms of publishing content, what type of challenges have you faced till now?

We hardly faced challenges after publishing the news but there were times when we had to eliminate so many contents before publishing. It’s because some of them are very much controversial or some of them felt too early to talk about. Sometimes we do not publish even though we prepared the content. But actually, these are rare. We try to do our research properly and try not to take down any content after getting published.

8.   How are you ensuring the news so rapidly and what helps to post the update so quickly?

We have quite an active team of almost 50 contributors. Our content strategist and content writer are all involved in it. To ensure efficiency, we have our operation team to execute it in time.

9.   How does the team keep themselves updated with the regular content?

Our existing team members are very much motivated. Even before joining Nutshell they had this passion and wanted to know what’s happening around them. So, when we hire new people, we make sure they are self-motivated and updated with the trends. So that’s their credit that they are pulling it off.

10.  What types of news or articles get focused mostly?

We want to diversify but initially, we started with some social issues. We have seen social issues are not being covered properly so we want to cover them with a progressive touch and without any filter. Also, we are now pivoting towards business news, sports, and entertainment. We will incorporate those but right now, as per market demand, we focus on the social issues mostly.

11.  What is the ultimate vision of Nutshell?

Well, number one is, we don’t want to limit ourselves in this country. We believe short-form content has a global audience and we think a startup needs to come from Bangladesh that gets a global audience. So, the ultimate goal is to be the hub for short-form content whether the content is given by us or others who can give it through our platform. But we want to be that hub. We want to move together and show the world that Bangladesh can also make quality content.