Publishers Are Making More Video -- Whether You Want It or Not (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Mic, a website aimed at millennials, used to employ 40 writers and editors producing articles on topics like "celebrating beauty" and "strong women." Ten were let go this month, with most in the revamped newsroom of 63 now focused on making videos for places like Facebook. Critics have called such moves "100 percent cynical" and out of sync with audience demand. Yet Americans are watching more video snippets online, either because they secretly like them or because they're getting harder to avoid. The growing audience for video, more valuable to advertisers than the space next to words, is causing websites to shift resources in what's become known across the industry as the pivot to video. Americans are expected to spend 81 minutes a day watching digital video in 2019, up from 61 minutes in 2015, according to projections by research firm eMarketer. Time spent reading a newspaper is expected to drop to 13 minutes a day from 16 minutes during that time. The question is whether those trends will sustain the growing number of outlets flooding social networks with video clips. Mic, a New York-based news site founded in 2011, was just the latest to fire writers when it announced its pivot to video this month. Dozens of writers and editors have also been laid off this summer at news outlets like Vocativ, Fox Sports, Vice and MTV News. All of the moves were tied in part to focusing more resources on making videos. Publishers are heading in this direction even though polls show consumers find video ads more irritating than TV commercials. Google and Apple are testing features that let you mute websites with auto-play videos or block them entirely. More young Americans prefer reading the news than watching it, according to a survey last year by the Pew Research Center. But many publishers have little choice.

Comments

No big deal

[JohnFen]

Just because they make videos (content or ads) doesn't mean I have to watch them. Create away!

Re:Horribly inefficient

[squiggleslash]

Hi, squiggleslash here, to give you another insight on why things are the way they are, here to add my 2c to any conversation, on any subject. As always, a lot of things to cover today, but I want to focus on just one comment in particular, and that's from fluffernutter, who writes "I find videos horribly inefficient at relaying information. Maybe it's because I'm a fast reader, or I can skim for certain words. Videos for the sake of entertainment, fine, but for the sake of learning unless it's something highly visual I would way rather read it. If I click on a news story and it's a video I exit out. Not worth my time to consume it."

Well, fluffernutter, you're not the only one, but there's another factor I think you should consider to, and that's the format.

You see, when we write, we're typically very careful in what we write, we know the more words about irrelevant topics we add, the harder it is to follow our arguments. We have to be concise.

Concise

...and that leads to an entirely different way of imparting information. Also unlike video, we don't have a single channel, we can impart related concepts, such as ways to encourage people to share our content with others, in graphical form outside of the main body of whatever it is we're trying to communicate.

Other channels

...and that means when you read something, typically you can get it in a few seconds rather than a video where you have to listen to a lot of information that's just completely unrelated to whatever it was you were interested in before you hear what you need to hear.

So did I give you a useful answer? Hey, if you fluffernutter or anyone else on Slashdot wants to give me an answer, just hit the "Reply" button underneath this text, and let's hear what you have to say.

Reply or email

...and remember, you can check out my channel by going to the word "squiggleslash" just above this comment and clicking on it. Don't forget to friend me for more of my stunning insight and interesting posts.

Thanks for reading!