... steers clear of imitating TV
The Post is betting on “the right stories for the right platform at the right time,” according to its new video director Micah Gelman.By SHAN WANG @shansquared Sept. 11, 2015, 2:52 p.m.Settling on a sustainable strategy for online video has been notoriously difficult for publishers. Efforts to produce live video shows have mostly sputtered.
The Washington Post is now betting on “the right stories for the right platform at the right time,” according to its video director Micah Gelman, hired by The Post in April. (He was previously director of digital video strategy and operations at Discovery).
RELATED ARTICLE
From “WSJ Live” to “WSJ Video”: Publishers step away from dreams of live TV-style broadcasting online
July 20, 2015
The Post’s PostTV launched in 2013 with lofty promises to be the “ESPN of politics,” but it lost steam and eventually became a repository for wire content and press briefing footage. Its new efforts, rebranded as Washington Post Video, will extend its investment in video, customizing content for various different platforms and turning away from some longform shows in favor of pointed, shorter clips. It’s making a big hiring push for new video editors — including some to work with Post “franchises” likeWonkblog and The Fix — and plans to integrate video reporters and editors into the Post’s many section teams when the paper moves offices at the end of the year.
“The rest of the Post site has become a much more approachable way to get the news,” Gelman told me. “Whether it’s through Morning Mix or Wonkblog or The Fix, it’s been aggregating smartly and offering a bit of perspective — not a bias, but a perspective, a little bit of that inherent Internet attitude.”
In the past, though, the video team had been “more constrained.”
“They felt locked up by the conventions of traditional television storytelling, with a traditional evening newscast style presentation,” Gelman added. “But we don’t have to be TV. We dropped TV from our name. We don’t have to be constrained by those conventions, and we aren’t opposed to experimenting.”
The “appointment viewing” days of PostTV, Gelman says, are over. The success of a video often depends on the context in which viewers are watching it. The Post intends to keep tweaking content to best fit different platforms — whether it’s the same type of content told slightly differently, or creating slightly different versions of a video —working in coordination with its audience development team.
READ MORE AT:
http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/09/in-revamping-its-video-strategy-the-washington-post-steers-clear-of-imitating-tv/
RELATED ARTICLE
From “WSJ Live” to “WSJ Video”: Publishers step away from dreams of live TV-style broadcasting online
July 20, 2015
The Post’s PostTV launched in 2013 with lofty promises to be the “ESPN of politics,” but it lost steam and eventually became a repository for wire content and press briefing footage. Its new efforts, rebranded as Washington Post Video, will extend its investment in video, customizing content for various different platforms and turning away from some longform shows in favor of pointed, shorter clips. It’s making a big hiring push for new video editors — including some to work with Post “franchises” likeWonkblog and The Fix — and plans to integrate video reporters and editors into the Post’s many section teams when the paper moves offices at the end of the year.
“The rest of the Post site has become a much more approachable way to get the news,” Gelman told me. “Whether it’s through Morning Mix or Wonkblog or The Fix, it’s been aggregating smartly and offering a bit of perspective — not a bias, but a perspective, a little bit of that inherent Internet attitude.”
In the past, though, the video team had been “more constrained.”
“They felt locked up by the conventions of traditional television storytelling, with a traditional evening newscast style presentation,” Gelman added. “But we don’t have to be TV. We dropped TV from our name. We don’t have to be constrained by those conventions, and we aren’t opposed to experimenting.”
The “appointment viewing” days of PostTV, Gelman says, are over. The success of a video often depends on the context in which viewers are watching it. The Post intends to keep tweaking content to best fit different platforms — whether it’s the same type of content told slightly differently, or creating slightly different versions of a video —working in coordination with its audience development team.
READ MORE AT:
http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/09/in-revamping-its-video-strategy-the-washington-post-steers-clear-of-imitating-tv/
