Newsrooms rebuild video teams a decade after inflated Facebook view counts drove steep layoffs and cuts.
Media companies are moving money and staff back into social video a decade after the first pivot collapsed. The Verge reports that publishers now treat vertical video as a baseline requirement rather than an experiment, and that platforms keep reshaping their feeds around the format.
In the mid-2010s, print and digital outlets hired video teams and depended on Facebook for distribution. Facebook’s video view counts turned out to be inflated, and newsrooms cut the video staff they had just built. Those cuts made publishers cautious about the second wave of social video.
For operators, the barrier to entry has dropped sharply, because a smartphone now covers most of what a video team once needed. Viewers favor stripped-down selfie dispatches from personalities they trust, even when those creators do not report or write the news themselves. Teams that treat video as a side project face the same mismatch that sank the first pivot.
Platforms are already looking past vertical video toward a new format that The Verge does not name. Publishers must decide whether to fund video staff ahead of that shift or wait for the format to prove itself. YouTube already commands nearly 16 percent of TV viewing, and 20 percent of Americans get news from TikTok.
What matters
- Publishers that cut video teams after 2016 are staffing up again as platforms prioritize short video.
- Vertical video now demands cheap production and fast turnaround, which reshapes newsroom budgets.
- Watch whether platforms push a new format beyond vertical video and how publishers staff for it.
Why it matters
Watch whether platforms push a new format beyond vertical video and how publishers staff for it.
This GenAI News article was prepared in original wording using reporting and materials published by The Verge. Source reference: https://www.theverge.com/column/1026252/video-media-news-tiktok-pivot.
Drafted by the GenAI News review pipeline.