Media’s video pivot returns, a decade after the first attempt
A decade after publishers rushed into social video and later retreated, the industry is again confronting feeds built around moving images. The latest shift is driven by platforms’ emphasis on video and TikTok’s pandemic-era growth, though the earlier pivot left newsrooms wary of repeating costly mistakes.
In the mid-2010s, print and digital outlets invested in social video, hiring teams and producing content in hopes of reaching larger audiences and creating new revenue. Many also relied on platforms such as Facebook to distribute their work.
The strategy unraveled after Facebook was found to have inflated video-view figures. Newsrooms that had cut writing and editing jobs to fund video operations later reduced those teams, too, when the expected payoff failed to materialize. The episode left social video associated with layoffs and instability for many in the media industry.
The current push reaches beyond newsrooms. Social media companies have redesigned their feeds to favor video, a change spurred by TikTok’s rapid growth during the pandemic. Media organizations, however, are still catching up and have sometimes been slow to commit, perhaps because of the industry’s experience with the previous pivot.
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