Shift toward shareable online video crucial, news orgs say

The average news consumer no longer visits a homepage to browse the day’s headlines, opting instead for a social media app where the news comes to them, a panel of top multimedia editors from three of the largest news organizations in the country said at a National Press Club event Sept. 16.

The session, which explored the latest ventures in digital journalism, featured leaders in that field from AJ+, McClatchy and Reuters TV discussing how their newsrooms have adapted to the needs of a mobile generation. They agreed that short, distinctive web video is crucial to attracting and retaining audiences.

AJ+, which sprung from Al Jazeera, is a leader in creating catchy explainer videos for the day’s news aimed at millennials in the United States. The videos live on social media platforms, where users can engage with the content as well as the production team by starting discussions, pitching ideas and, most importantly, sharing the video with friends and followers.

“We’re going to where our [viewers] are,” said Carmel Delshad, who heads the Global Engagers program at AJ+.

Every two hours, a new AJ+ video is published to Facebook, making the network the second largest video sharer there after BuzzFeed. The videos reach 100 million people, Delshad said.

They tell stories “in a way that invites you to react,” and the numbers have shown it’s working, Delshad said. Last week alone, there were 50 million engagements with that content.

Reuters, which launched its Reuters TV app 7 months ago, is also working hard to reach the “mobile-first generation,” said Dan Colarusso, Reuters executive editor of digital.

The goal is to produce video "that becomes habit-forming” the way of network television and the nightly newscast. The app features a playlist of news packages, all shot with reporters in the field in a bid to showcase “authenticity,” Colarusso said.

Reuters wanted to capitalize on its “huge newsgathering resources,” and be “everywhere because you can’t be,” then make that content easily accessible, Colarusso said.

The organization could not remain a business-to-business, subscription-based agency in 2015, he added.

The app - currently only for Apple devices - is free to download but comes with ads.

And while Reuters TV is also publishing its videos to social media platforms, it mostly needs a “sustainable audience,” Colarusso said, because profitability is still crucial.

At The McClatchy Company, which owns 29 newspapers, “video evangelism” across the newsrooms is a top priority for National Video Editor Jon Forsythe.

“We’re just getting started in many ways… the company is in the midst of an evolution,” he said. “We’re trying to change the culture from the legacy of print.”

McClatchy produces longer mini-doc style videos that are character-driven, as well as explainer videos using graphics, that it hopes will be picked up as content for their newspapers' websites.

For Forsythe, that’s the marker of success, and he has plans to expand his multimedia team to cater to the storytelling needs of the various markets.