Millie Tran

Below is a selection of my recent work — writing 📝, speaking 🗣, podcasts 🔊 and press 📰 — organized by topic. My skills and experiences are diverse so I hope this will help you better understand the breadth and scope of my work.

JOURNALISM & THE BUSINESS OF NEWS

• 📰 Texas journalists are providing critical information about a disaster they’re living through (Washington Post, Feb. 2020)

• 📰 'Thank God for The Texas Tribune': Power crisis shines light on local news (CNN, Feb. 2020)

• 🗣 Living Through & Learning from Dynamic Political Discourse (Page Up Conference, Dec. 2020)

• 🗣 Tech and the Future of News: The New Creators (Reboot Conference, Nov. 2020)

• 🗣 Technology & transformation -- How will we get news in the 2020s? (FT Future of News, Oct. 2020)

  • Figuring Out The Future Of News: Key Takeaways From FT's Virtual Summit (Canvas8, Oct. 2020)

• 📰 Here’s how the Texas Tribune took a key fundraising event digital (IndieGraf, August 2020)

• 🗣 Informed and Engaged Episode 4 with Millie Tran, Stacy-Marie Ishmael and Neil Chase: What are the investments that need to be made? How can nonprofit newsrooms work together to serve all communities? (Knight Foundation, July 2020)

• 📝 There is no magic — you’ve got this: “Next year will be the year of going back to basics. Play the long game. There is no magic, only work.” (Nieman Lab, Dec. 2018)

• 📝 (Hint: It's about your brand) “If this year was about transparency of the journalistic process and how we do our job, next year it will be about transparency of values and why we do our job.” (Nieman Lab, Dec. 2017)

• 🗣 dotNYC Live (Video) (CUNY Social Media weekend, NYC, June 2016)

• 🗣 What Does a Successful Media Company Look Like in 2015? (Indie Media Camp, Brooklyn, Nov. 2015)

• 📝 How Millennials Get News: Inside the habits of America’s first digital generation (American Press Institute, March 2015)

• 📝 The business behind BuzzFeed’s growth and expansion: 8 good questions with BuzzFeed’s Eric Harris (American Press Institute, Sept. 2014)

• 📝 A new partnership and revenue stream: 8 good questions with Robert Rosenthal of the Center for Investigative Reporting (American Press Institute, April 2014)

• 📝 Revisiting disruption: 8 good questions with Clayton Christensen (American Press Institute, Jan. 2014)

LEADERSHIP & HOW TO THINK ABOUT YOUR CAREER

• 📰 How to be a leader, no matter your role or job title (Lenfest Institute, December 2020)

• 🗣 So You’re a Student in a Pandemic. Where Do You Go From Here? (AAJA, August 2020)

• ✨ What Am I Going To Do With My Life??? I had originally made this presentation for Poynter's Leadership Academy for Women in Digital Media. Before leaving BuzzFeed, I added a few slides and presented it to a group of women there and then had been sharing it quietly with other friends and colleagues who I thought would find it useful. Then I shared it with a colleague at The Times and it found a life of its own.

  • 📝 How to Succeed as Global Growth Editor, One Viral Slide Show at a Time (The New York Times, October 2018)

• ✨ Little Ways You Can Get Your Life Under Control: I jokingly made this to document small (even tiny!) things I've done to create systems that work for me and help me get things done. I've given this as a workshop to several colleagues at BuzzFeed and try to keep it updated every so often.

• 📰 An editor’s guide to creating an online portfolio (Poynter, Aug. 2018)

• 🗣 Time to grow: How to dig deep and stretch yourself in the midst of day-to-day survival (SRCCON, Minneapolis, June 2018)

• 🗣 What Am I Going to Do With My Life? (SND, New York, March 2018)

• 🗣 What’s next: How to nurture growth in the face of burnout (SRCCON:Work, Dec. 2017)

• 📰 5 Tips to Help You Figure Out What to Do With Your Life (The New York Times, Oct. 2017)

PRODUCT & TECH

• 🗣 How The Texas Tribune aligns product and editorial for audience retention (Digital Content Next, Feb. 2021)

• 🗣 Newsletters: The New Flagship Media Product (SXSW, March 2021)

• 🗣 Women in Product — Women’s Leadership Accelerator Summer Series (ONA, Sept. 2020)

• 🗣 Product Management: How news organizations can become more audience-oriented, data-driven and product-focused (Video here) (ISOJ, July 2020)

• 🗣 Why your bot is nothing without a human (SRCCON, Portland, July 2016)

• 📰 'Back to the future – Email newsletters as a digital channel for journalism' (PDF here) (journalism.co.uk, Jan. 2016)

• 📰 What you need to know: How six publishers digest the news for readers (Nieman Lab, Sept. 2015)

• 📝 Minimum delightful to maximum impact: What testing via email taught us about news apps (BuzzFeed, June 2015)

• 📰 Why BuzzFeed wanted everyone to know about its new news app — even before it launched (Nieman Lab, June 2015)

• 🗣 Product managing your newsletter (Online News Association, Los Angeles, Sept. 2015)

• 🗣 Simple, frequent emails that people read (Inbox Awesome, NYC, July 2015)

• 📝 What we learned from a week of prototyping a newsletter in public (BuzzFeed, March 2015)

• 🗣 #wjchat feat. Millie Tran on email newsletters (Twitter, Feb. 2015)

• 📝 Smart filters on the rise (Nieman Lab, Dec. 2014)

• 🗣 Mobile apps: Not just a small screen (ONA NYC, Jan. 2015)

• 📰 Here’s why email newsletters can be so powerful — and valuable (Gigaom, Dec. 2014)

AUDIENCE GROWTH & STRATEGY

• 🗣 Making Analytics Useful to Journalists: Best Practices and Core Principles (ONA, Oct. 2020)

• 🗣 Crescimento, engajamento e relevância: o que vale no diálogo com a audiência (Video here) (Festival 3i, Rio de Janeiro, Oct. 2019)

• 🗣 Facebook, Google, Medium: Comment Mettre Les Plateformes Au Service Du Média ? Le Cas Du New York Times (Video) (Médias en Seine, Paris, Oct. 2019)

• 🗣 Médias-Plateformes : Le Temps Du Dialogue? (Video) (Médias en Seine, Paris, Oct. 2019)

• 🔊New York Times’ Millie Tran: Platforms are now more about private sharing (Digiday, June 2019)

• 🗣 Keynote presentation at ISOJ (Video) (ISOJ, Austin, April 2019)

  • New York Times’ Deputy Off-Platform Editor Millie Tran explains importance of paying attention to stories that thrive on social

• 📝 It’s Her Job to Get More People to Act Like You Right Now (The New York Times, October 2018)

• 📰 How to become a newsroom that consistently engages audiences: Build with communities (American Press Institute, May 2016)

• 📝 How to build audiences with single-subject news products (American Press Institute, May 2015)

• 📝 How to keep readers coming back for more: 10 good questions with Nir Eyal, author of Hooked (American Press Institute, Nov. 2014)

• 📝 The forces that shape audiences online: 9 good questions with James Webster (American Press Institute, Oct. 2014)

• 📝 How to lean against your biases: A conversation with Daniel Kahneman (American Press Institute, April 2014)

INTERNATIONAL EXPANSION

• 🗣 Seeking Growth in an International Audience (ONA Insights, Toronto, May 2018)

• 📝 International expansion without colonial overtones (Nieman Lab, Dec. 2016)

• 📰 How BuzzFeed breaks news in multiple languages (Fortune, July 2016)

• 🗣 Email > App > Global Adaptation (pre-talk write-up) (Society for News Design, San Francisco, April 2016)

• 🗣 Translation, transcription & working with multiple languages (Hacks/Hackers NYC, March 2016)

NEWSROOM CULTURE

• 🗣 Editing HERStory (Mizzou Women in Media and ONA Mizzou, March 2019)

• 🗣 Making better decisions quickly (Slack Frontiers, NYC, October 2018)

  • 📰 5 Takeaways from Frontiers New York, Navigating a digital transformation

• 🗣 Behind the scenes of the BuzzFeed phenomenon (Strelka Institute, Moscow, August 2016)

• 🗣 After the altar call—maintaining momentum, community, and inspiration beyond conferences (SRCCON, Minneapolis, June 2015)

• 🗣 #LetsTalkCulture panel (Vox Media, NYC, March 2015)

• 📝 Infusing design into your newsroom culture: 7 good questions with John Maeda (American Press Institute, May 2014)