There’s no slowing down media’s pivot-to-video 2.0

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How it started
Almost exactly a decade ago, the media industry was in the middle of a video revolution — or so it thought.

In the mid-2010s, publications poured money into burgeoning social media video efforts, chasing the promise of reaching larger audiences and opening new lines of revenue.

Print publications and digital news outlets alike hired teams, pumped out content, and entrusted platforms like Facebook with their reach and distribution.

That pivot-to-video slowly revealed itself to be a lot of smoke and mirrors when it became clear that Facebook had inflated video views.

Newsrooms cut writers and editors in a move to video — and then cut those video teams when they realized the pivot had not paid off.

For many in the media industry, social video brings to mind layoffs and instability rather than the promised abundance.

A “pivot” feels inadequate to describe the current emphasis on social video, not just in newsrooms but in society writ large.

Social media companies have reorganized their feeds to emphasize video, spurred by the massive growth of TikTok during the pandemic.

But the media industry is still playing catch-up, and in some cases it seems to have been slow to jump in (perhaps cautious given past experience).

It took years for some publishers to start incorporating vertical video on their websites, apps, and stories, for example, and it takes coordination and intention to get individual reporters in front of a camera to talk about their work.

In the meantime, YouTube has become the most popular streamer, commanding nearly 16 percent of TV viewing, according to Nielsen.

Twenty percent of Americans regularly get news from TikTok, and that number jumps to 39 percent for people 18 to 29 years old, Pew found.

Viewers favor the stripped-down selfie-style video dispatches from personalities they trust, even if those creators are not themselves reporting and writing the news.

Compared with a decade ago, the barrier to entry and cost of making video content has plummeted: Anyone with a smartphone can become a video creator, no fancy equipment or editing needed.

Social video is fast, personality-driven, casual, and, at times, unfiltered — the exact opposite from what news outlets are used to.

A second pivot-to-video is underway, and the media industry once again wants in.

How it’s going
Video is unavoidable on social media, if not an expected part of how people and institutions show up online.

TikTok’s influence is felt everywhere: on competitor platforms like Meta’s Reels and YouTube Shorts, of course, but also in unexpected places, like LinkedIn.

There are no signs of it slowing down, either: The time spent watching Reels on Facebook was at an all-time high in Q3.

Early tests in other countries suggest Meta is toying with the idea of dropping users directly into full-screen video upon opening the Instagram and Facebook apps.

The appetite for video seems insatiable, and if news organizations won’t lean in, armies of content creators will be happy to scoop up the audiences.

Some news outlets were relatively early to the short-form social video boom.

The Washington Post, for example, found notable success on TikTok before many peers had even created dedicated accounts on the platform. (Dave Jorgenson, the face of the Post’s social video effort, left the paper last year.

He now makes short and longform videos under Local News International — perhaps a testament to the trust that viewers place in individual creators.)
Beyond having a short-form video presence, some traditional news outlets are leaning into formats and styles popularized in the vertical video era.

CNN partnered with Jubilee, the popular channel that produces debate-me-style videos on hot-button political topics.

The CNN town hall with Texas Senate candidate James Talarico was conducted in the Jubilee style.

The New York Times, which for years has produced polished documentary-style videos, recently introduced the vertical video series “The Call.” Unlike the Times’ more buttoned-up videos, the point of “The Call” is to create a sense of intimacy, like you’re getting updates from a friend: The show’s host ostensibly makes a video call to a journalist reporting on the ground to ask them about what they’re witnessing.

News outlets are also directly hiring or working with content creators.

Some outlets like The Washington Post have spun up so-called creator networks, where they partner with influencers to produce content independent from the newsroom.

A new program supported by Poynter and Microsoft pairs content creators with a handful of news outlets so they can create content tailored for social media.

And then, of course, there are the clips.

Podcasts became videos, which became bite-sized clips of podcasts formatted for vertical feeds.

TV shows became web shows, which gave rise to microdramas.

News articles — even major investigations — are now adapted for vertical video audiences.

Individual reporters (myself included) make talking-head clips explaining our reporting.

Earlier this year, I called this phenomenon “the clippening”: the reformatting of all media to be legible in a vertical video feed, even if the original work is neither vertical nor video.

It’s hard to fault the people and institutions putting resources into social video — audiences are consuming it — but it’s also feeling a lot like the past.

One of the misguided beliefs of pivot-to-video 1.0 was that traction, views, or engagement on social media platforms would be enough to offset (and ideally surpass) the cost of making the content.

For many, that ended up not being true, with flawed metrics, of course, being part of the reason: Virality feels nice, but monetizing that attention isn’t always straightforward.

These days, social media companies have largely coalesced around the “views” measurement meaning the number of times a post was served up on somebody’s feed, whether they watched the whole thing or swiped away immediately.

How many people who watch a clip of a podcast go on to listen to the full episode?

Are the people watching my TikToks about my stories actually going to The Verge to read it, or buying a subscription to support my work?

You can’t eat views.

The hope is that we will find new audiences where they’re already spending time.

There are millions of people discussing news that journalists are uncovering — it’s important that we reach them, build trust, and be part of the conversation.

What’s certain is that if reporters and news outlets don’t, a whole slew of creators will be there to take their place.

What happens next
Just as we’re getting used to short form, the ground is once again shifting under our feet.

Not content simply being social media, platforms are looking to be a destination for longer form, higher production quality entertainment.

Tech companies know that people watch videos on their phones, but they would also really like users to watch on their televisions, too.

This spring, YouTube’s pitch to content creators (and advertisers) was to make exclusive shows for the platform.

YouTube is dominating the TV streaming wars, but other platforms like Instagram are pushing in that direction, too: Its recently announced “Features” effort allows for 90-minute horizontal video uploads, and it seems to be specifically angling for television viewing. (Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of questions from creators about what they get in return for posting longer content.) Some news outlets are already thinking ahead and eyeing longform.

The BBC struck a deal with YouTube in early 2026 to create special programming specifically for the platform, then followed it up by announcing a 24/7 YouTube livestream in an effort to reach young people.

Short form isn’t going anywhere, at least right now.

But these efforts to move into longer, more resource-intensive video content could be a harbinger of what’s to come — and what could soon be asked of news publishers and influencers alike.

News media have had a complicated relationship with tech platforms.

On one hand, it’s where audiences are, and platforms allow publishers to reach those people.

On the other hand, tech companies signal to outlets (and creators) what kind of content they should prioritize, and everyone has to scramble to meet the new demand.

Just as soon as journalists start getting comfortable with front-facing selfie videos, we may be facing a whole new beast: videos that are horizontal and longer, with a higher production value and higher barrier to entry that we typically associate with TV and streaming.

By the way
* Instagram is already starting to place horizontal videos in discovery feeds — I recently saw the format bumped to the top of my Explore tab, mixed in with photos and vertical Reels.
* Even platforms like X that are traditionally associated with text-based content are trying to sweeten the deal to get users to post more videos.

The company has an invite-only bonus program that pays creators who post videos regularly.

Screenshots shared by X staff indicate that creators can make thousands of dollars for posting vertical videos under 3 minutes.
* If you feel like you’ve been seeing a lot more New York Times Cooking videos, it’s not your imagination: It’s a deliberate strategy to make video content from non-news verticals at the company.

Read (or watch) this
* It would only be appropriate to include a video here, given the topic this week.

Here’s Instagram head Adam Mosseri trying to explain the about-face the platform is doing around longform video.

The comments on YouTube hammer home a big question: Instagram benefits from more content like this, but what’s in it for creators (and, by extension, news outlets)?
* Short-form audiences were recently described as “rented attention” in the Link In Bio newsletter.

Could longer-form content create more durable, lasting relationships between creator (or news org) and audience?

Longer formats could put pressure on creators to deliver higher-quality, more in-depth material that is harder to fake than in a quick-hit 60-second clip.
* News publishers are in a constant push and pull with the platforms that make their work discoverable — and not just with social media.

Consider Google’s AMP page format, for example, which promised to make the mobile web a better experience for readers.

This quote, from my colleague David Pierce’s 2023 story about AMP, really sums up the relationship:
* “If Google said, ‘you must have your homepage colored bright pink on Tuesdays to be the result in Google,’ everybody would do it, because that’s what they need to do to survive,” says Terence Eden, a web standards expert and a former member of the Google AMP Advisory Committee.