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:No big deal

[JohnFen]

Yeah, we'll see.

I'm reminded that when radio was introduced, everyone got all concerned that it would be the death of print media. It wasn't, because radio sucks at the things print excels at.

Then, when TV became popular, everyone got all concerned that it would be the death of print media. It wasn't, for the same reason as radio.

This is no different. It is literally impossible to replace written word with video -- especially for things like news -- because video sucks at the sort of thing writing is great at.

Re:No big deal

[JohnFen]

I remember a lifetime ago, in a journalism class, we covered the relative strengths and weaknesses of reporting news in print vs in video.

One of the exercises was to take a news broadcast and write up the transcript for it. It pretty much drive home this little fact: the amount of information in an hour's news broadcast fills about 2/3 of a single page of a newspaper.

Some stories work better in video -- but all video has serious time constraints, and so in terms of actual information, video (even long-form video like documentary movies) can only ever give you a summary.

The same hold true for fiction. Movies, for example, are the equivalent of a written short story.

Horribly inefficient

[fluffernutter]

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.

Re:Horribly inefficient

[gachunt]

Maybe it's because I'm a fast reader, or I can skim for certain words.

This is a common habit for on-screen consumption of information. Few "read" a website, most scan/skim for headings, and read the first 5-6 words of the paragraph to determine if the information they are looking for might be in that area.

Videos break how users regularly interact with finding information online/onscreen, and it slows down their ability to complete their task (find the information they want), which is why this practice is found annoying.

Reference: How Users Read on the Web (Spoiler: They don't)

Re:Horribly inefficient

[JohnFen]

Video works if what is spoken is also available as text.

Even if it is, it's still incredibly inefficient. Video has an incredibly low information density -- those transcripts show it: look at how short they are, and how light on information.

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!

I do hate videos, but...

[grasshoppa]

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.

And nothing of value was lost.

I really do hate videos though; won't watch them. They're a waste of time for me, as I am able to read and comprehend faster than any video can present the information.

This is made worse by the fact that folks who make the video seem intent on wasting even more time with intros and other cruft before getting to the subject.

Re:I do hate videos, but...

[Attila Dimedici]

They're a waste of time for me, as I am able to read and comprehend faster than any video can present the information.

While that is true, my objection to videos is that it is easier to mislead with a video. I will give two examples. First, in "Bowling from Columbine" there is a video of a Charlton Heston speech with a cut away to a sign from the audience in the middle...except that it was not A speech, it was two separate speeches. The cut away to the sign was so that the audience would not notice that he was wearing a different shirt in each part of the "speech". They seamlessly combined the audio of Charlton Heston speaking from both speeches with no break in the audio to hint that it was not all one speech. In written text, you would need to put some ellipses in, or some other indication of a break and people would expect you to tell them where the speech occurred. Then if you did not state that it was two separate speeches, they would, rightly, call you out for lying. In the video version, Michael Moore claimed it was an innocent oversight.
A second example was my first exposure to Alex Jones, now of InfoWars. A friend, knowing I am conservative, sent me a couple of videos from Alex Jones. I watched the first one and at one point there is ongoing audio over various video clips. The video clips LOOKED like they were related to what was being said in the audio...and if they were they lent great credence to what was otherwise a suspect idea. Well, I happened to know what the video clips actually were and knew they had nothing to do with the audio. Just as in Bowling for Columbine the video was designed to make you interpret the audio in a way contrary to what logic would dictate.

Make away

[Opportunist]

More and more people are ignoring your bullshit videos. Whether you want it or not.

Welcome to the free market, bitches. If you don't provide it, someone else will.

I must just be old...

[argStyopa]

...am I the only one that DESPISES video-delivered content?

Sure, there are contexts where it's very helpful, like some DIY videos or somesuch.

But in terms of news or general information on a subject, video content is WORSE than a bloody voicemail: it's linear, it's high-bandwidth, it's usually packed full of ads and crap or front/back stingers that are half the length of the video, and ultimately info-lite.

images

[bugs2squash]

Videos rank right up there with my other pet peeve - people sending me pictures of text they want me to analyse for troubleshooting.

They fetched such and such a (huge) URL or they submitted this (huge) query and got such and such an error so they send me a screenshot. Now I have to type the whole thing in to reproduce their issue.

To top it, they usually resize the image to make it smaller for email so now the text is minuscule and blurry too.