Sophia Smith Galer, while working for outlets like the BBC and Vice, has made a name for herself online through social video. She’s got 550,000 followers on TikTok and 325,000 on Instagram, and her videos have been viewed more than 160 million times. And now she’s bringing what she’s learned to a new iPhone app named Sophiana. Its target audience is journalists — along with academics, authors, and other word people — who are more comfortable writing than talking to a phone screen.
“When people sign up for training with me, the main reason they’ve never made a video before is because they don’t have the skills or the time,” she said over email. “It’s not the will that isn’t there — it’s the spare hour in the day, or the years feeling comfortable on camera, that a lot of journalists miss out on.”
Sophiana’s purpose is to help reporters’ stories transition from prose to vertical video.
