What’s New at Moderately MOCO, MoCo Feed and Capital Sideline: Slideshows, Talking Heads, and 10 Million Views

Most people do not start their day by opening a news website. Most people open Instagram, TikTok or Facebook first, and whatever is in front of them is what they find out about.

So we moved the news to where you already are. Stories from Moderately MOCO, MoCo Feed and Capital Sideline are now published as slideshows on Instagram and TikTok, and our talking head videos are back.

Our Stories Are Now Slideshows

Every article we publish on Moderately MOCO, MoCo Feed and Capital Sideline is now converted into a slideshow for Instagram and TikTok. You can swipe through the basics of a Montgomery County story without leaving the app and without opening a single link.

Here is the part that matters most to us. The lines on those slides are pulled word for word from the published article. No line on a slide is reworded, summarized loosely or softened for the platform. If a slide says it, the article says it, in exactly those words.

That rule is deliberate. A slideshow is the kind of format where accuracy quietly goes missing, because a paraphrase that fits the slide is always easier than the sentence that is actually true. We would rather the slide be a little plainer and be exactly right.

Slideshow versions for YouTube are coming soon, which will put the same stories in front of a fourth audience.

Talking Head Videos Are Back

We are also bringing back our talking head videos: short, straight-to-camera explainers of what just happened in Montgomery County and why it matters. Talking head videos are built for the way people watch now, and they work for stories a headline cannot really carry alone.

A zoning vote, a school boundary decision or a utility rate case all take a minute of plain explanation before they make sense. That minute is what these videos are for.

Capital Sideline Is Our Sports Site

A lot of readers here still do not know it exists. Capital Sideline is where our sports coverage lives.

Most of it is high school. Football, basketball, soccer, volleyball, baseball, lacrosse, wrestling, swimming and track, across MCPS and the rest of the DMV, covered game by game by people who were at the game. Scores go up the same night.

We also follow the teams people around here actually watch: the Terrapins, the Commanders, the Capitals, the Wizards, the Mystics, the Spirit, D.C. United and the Defenders. That side is still being built out, and it is where most of our work is going right now.

More Opinion, and More Reporting That Starts With a Document

We have been running a lot more opinion lately, and almost none of it comes from regular columnists. It comes from people who live here and had a reason to write. A Wood Acres parent on what the last round of school closures did to her child’s school. Nora Gordon on the MCPS employee property tax credit. One of our student writers on a grading change she had to sit through herself.

Opinion always runs labeled as opinion. We will publish a piece anonymously if the writer asks, as long as we know who they are and can vouch that they are a real person with a real connection to what they are writing about. We also run pieces we disagree with.

The other thing that has grown is reporting that starts with a document instead of a press release. A thirty-year lease of county landfill land that went to a Council vote this week. MCPS audits. The county’s own retail study. This work is slow and it rarely travels the way a photo does, but it is the reason the site exists.

None of This Replaces the Reporting

Slideshows and short videos are how a story travels. They are not the story.

Behind every slideshow is the work Moderately MOCO has always done: in-depth local coverage, opinion pieces from people who live here, and original reporting on county government, schools, development, transit and public safety. A slideshow sends you to the article. The article is where the reporting lives.

It Is Working

These changes landed faster than we expected, on platforms where our accounts are already well established and growth is normally slow.

• Facebook engagements and views have increased fourfold.
• Followers on Instagram and Facebook grew 13 percent in a single month, adding thousands of new followers on both platforms.
• Our posts drew more than 10 million views across all platforms in four weeks, without a single viral post carrying the number.

That last point is the one we are proudest of. Ten million views built on one lucky post is an accident. Ten million views built on steady local coverage is an audience.

Where to Find Us

The fastest way to keep up with Montgomery County is to follow us on the platform you already use most:

• Read the full reporting at moderatelymoco.com and mocofeed.com, and local sports at capitalsideline.com.
• Find what is happening this week on our events app, moco.events, which pulls listings from more than thirty sources around the county.
• Follow us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok for story slideshows as they publish.
• Watch for slideshow videos and talking head explainers on YouTube.
• Sign up for our emails at moderatelymoco.com. We are rebuilding that system right now, and much better email coverage is coming shortly.

If your business wants to reach that audience, our advertising information is on the site, and we are glad to talk through what actually works.

Have a Montgomery County story we should be covering? Tell us. A lot of our best reporting started as a tip from a reader.

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