💡 Third episode in our case study series, in which each month we explore the practices and strategies of Europe’s independent press, along with our advice on how to implement them: technological independence, business models, offer diversification, and more. This series is produced as part of Sphera, our network of European media, for media leaders and creators across Europe. This guide is also available in French.
Often associated with influencers and content creators, video is nonetheless a format that news outlets are increasingly embracing. For decades, print and then the web dominated the media landscape. Today, that era has given way to social platforms, and with them, video.. In 2026, for the first time , social networks and video-sharing platforms have become the world’s most common way of accessing news online, ahead of news outlets’ own websites and apps, according to the latest Digital News Report.
At first glance, you don’t need much to get started: a phone to film with, an app to generate subtitles, and editing software. While all this may seem very simple, and can be tempting for many newsrooms, including video in your output requires a genuine strategy. Making a video isn’t just “filming an article” ; it’s a full-fledged editorial format that needs to be thought through as such. Newsrooms often turn to video first as a way to repurpose existing content, but this instinct is limiting and stops the format from reaching its full potential.. Launching into these new productions means new roles, new production rhythms, technical investment, and editorial choices.
1. Does This Apply to Me?
The first question to ask is: why do you want to bring video into your editorial offer? Is it about reaching a new audience, or highlighting your editorial identity? There are a thousand and one reasons to get into video, and as many ways to do it. Beyond formats, you also have to choose where to distribute them. Social networks, thanks to their ease of use and large user base, may seem like an obvious choice, but you could also choose to publish your videos on your own site.
1.a Building recognition and visibility: If your target audience is present on one or more social networks, the question is simple: what could you publish there so they learn to recognisze you? These platforms are a good lever for gaining visibility, provided you show up regularly. They let you reach your existing audience while also attracting new ones.
Spotted elsewhere: On L’Informé’s Instagram account, two journalists, speaking directly to camera, revisit the long-form investigations published by the outlet. Using diagrams and cut-out figures made by hand rather than digitally, the videos pedagogically illustrate the outlet’s investigative work.
Example of videos on L’Informé’s Instagram account.
1.b Strengthening trust with followers: Video also allows for embodiment. In a context where trust in the media is challenged, putting a face to the news makes journalistic work feel more human and more accessible. Speaking directly to your audience, into the camera, creates a closeness that writing doesn’t always allow: people no longer just follow an outlet, but people they recognise and can place their trust in. This works especially well on social networks, where content featuring real people generally generates more engagement.
Spotted elsewhere: Some show hosts, such as Élise Lucet of Cash Investigation on France 2, have their own social media accounts designed to complement the programme. Published on the journalist’s own account, as well as on France Télévisions’ and Cash Investigation’s accounts, the videos preview the subject of the upcoming episode. They let the journalist address her audience directly. In some, she explores a question in a pedagogical way, choosing a topic that directly relates to her audience’s consumption habits. In others, she takes viewers behind the scenes of the show and her work.
1.c Reaching a younger audience: Younger generations get their news mainly through social networks, and particularly through video and fairly short formats. 64% of 18-24-year-olds get their news via social networks, with Instagram and TikTok leading, followed by YouTube. If you want to skew younger, or target part of the youth audience, video is an essential starting point. This audience is especially drawn to presenter-led formats, particularly when they’re fronted by people who look like them. Young journalists often succeed in capturing their audience, who more easily identify with people from their own generation.
Spotted elsewhere: A presenter-led approach isn’t the only way to reach a younger audience, however. By cleverly reusing its archives, INA has built a community of nearly a million followers on TikTok, with some videos surpassing millions of views. INA, for instance, picked up on a viral trend on the platform: showing change over time through photos or videos, always set to the same song. A video devoted to Céline Dion, featuring clips of the singer’s TV appearances set to Madonna’s “Hung Up”, topped 13 million views.
Example of archive reuse by INA on its TikTok account.
1.d Boosting subscriptions: Faced with declining search traffic and slower subscription growth, several outlets have folded video into their subscription offering, or even made it a subscription tier of its own. The videos are available on their apps and accessible only to subscribers. In 2026, the Wall Street Journal changed its strategy: previously videos were distributed on free platforms like YouTube; now they put them behind a paywall. Their revenue source is no longer the platforms but the subscription itself. “We create journalism worth paying for, and our video is no different. So video really should increase the value of a Journal subscription and also convert high-intent audiences into subscribers. So we need to be making video that’s worth paying for”, explained Taneth Evans, head of digital at the WSJ.
Spotted elsewhere: This year, The Economist launched a pilot offer, “The Economist Play,” a discounted subscription (compared to a full subscription) aimed at younger readers. It grants access to the outlet’s videos, podcasts, newsletters, and games, but not to its website. This new offering follows the October 2025 launch of Insider, its dedicated video platform for long-form content, also reserved for subscribers. High-value long-form content is no longer available for free on YouTube but sits behind a paywall.
2. Where to start?
Video can serve several purposes: it’s important to identify yours and prioritise them. Before embarking on this digital venture, you also need to make sure you have the means to do it and are ready to commit for the long term. Making video isn’t just about having a good idea: you have to shoot it, edit it, and distribute it. This work requires people with those skills and the time needed to produce thoughtful formats aligned with the overall strategy.
2.a What do we want to say: Your social media account acts as a showcase, just as much as your website’s homepage or your publication’s table of contents. Make sure this overview reflects who you are and what you do, or you risk failing to capture users who would otherwise be interested in your subjects and themes. Faced with what can feel like endless possibilities, it’s sometimes hard to know what you want to produce: videos with a host on camera, voiceover edits, illustrations? To start, identify the content that already makes up your editorial output and which pieces seem most adaptable to video and/or in tune with social media conventions. This is the simplest approach, but you can also be more ambitious and directly imagine a video editorial product built from the ground up, for example, a series of reports with no written article at all.
Spotted elsewhere: During its daily editorial meeting, Le Temps asks a simple question about every article on the day’s agenda: what purpose does it serve? This question applies to every piece of editorial output. The newsroom has drawn up a list of four objectives, each corresponding to a different target and determining how the piece is distributed: strengthening Le Temps‘s image (free), retaining subscribers (paid), reaching a wide audience (free), and winning new subscribers (paid). For each of these objectives, KPIs have been identified to measure whether it was met. A question worth asking when launching a video strategy for each piece of planned content.
Every morning, this document is updated and shows, for each commissioned article, the assigned objective. On the right, notes on the most suitable commercial strategy and distribution.
2.b Resources and business model: Producing videos can mean buying equipment, expanding your team, or providing in-house training. This can vary considerably depending on the format chosen, so it’s worth estimating the resources needed for each production and weighing them against your goals. This investment raises another question: that of monetisation and the outlet’s business model. An ambitious strategy can be justified if it generates revenue, whether through content reserved for paying subscribers, partnerships, or revenue from the platforms themselves. Thinking through resources and questioning monetisation go hand in hand: the latter often helps offset, or even justify, the former.
2.c Prioritise: Once ideas are laid out, it’s important to think about which formats are most essential to you and to the goals you want to achieve. For example, publishing cultural recommendation videos might be an interesting format, but if your editorial line is built on investigative reporting, users won’t identify you that way. This is also the right moment to translate the resources identified earlier into a realistic publishing frequency and set of formats. .These elements should guide your priorities: balancing videos that are quick to produce, speak to your audience and reflect your editorial line, against more ambitious, time-consuming productions that bring something new to your outlet.
2.d Set a publishing calendar: While there’s no fixed rhythm required on social networks, consistency and a publishing schedule are essential. You don’t need to publish every day on every platform you want to invest in, but you do need to know which formats you want to publish there and how often. All the more so since formats differ: on YouTube, long-form is favoured, whereas on Instagram videos over 3 minutes aren’t favoured by the algorithm. Production times for these two formats differ as well. It’s therefore essential to understand the work time required for each format in order to build a coherent strategy suited to your needs, and to your means.
2.e Build a team: Once you’ve identified the skills you need, you have two options: draw on skills in-house or hire externally. Some newsrooms choose to hire journalists who specialise in video. That’s the choice L’Équipe made in 2024 with journalist Paul Bonnaud to develop its video strategy on social networks, notably through presenter-led content. Until then, the videos had been produced by community managers.
Hiring externally is sometimes the simplest option, but also the most costly. In-house training is another solution. Many newsrooms have decided to train their journalists so they can handle every stage of video production themselves: concept, writing, and distribution.
In March 2026, the New York Times hired a video training editor to train its journalists and editors. The Wall Street Journal also set up a Talent Lab team to train journalists in-house to present their own content on camera. This can involve video, but also podcasts and newsletters, depending on each journalist’s strengths. The result: around 200 of them have been trained. To bring video into its editorial offering, the WSJ set up a cross-functional approach involving editors, photojournalists, product leads, and audience managers.
In many cases, the team responsible for video production isn’t kept separate from the rest of the newsroom and teams; it’s quite the opposite. Audience, marketing, and product teams work alongside video journalists to shape the overall strategy. In some cases, the marketing team merges with them entirely, to take a cross-functional approach to formats that is both editorial and marketing-driven.
Spotted elsewhere: In 2023, the BBC launched its Creator Lab in the United Kingdom: a training program, run in partnership with TikTok, for content creators on the platform who want to develop the skills to work in broadcasting. More than 90 participants took part in the program and were subsequently able to join various BBC teams. Since then, the broadcaster has run it again with a program dedicated to sport, and another on gardening and horticulture is coming up. A good way to draw on expert skills and train them in-house in broadcasting and in the channel’s own practices.
The BBC’s Creator Lab.
3. What comes next?
3.a Experiment: When it comes to social networks, there’s no magic formula for whether a piece of content will perform well or not. What’s more, the notion of “performance” will differ depending on the goal being pursued: do you want to build community, or give visibility to an investigation you’ve just published? Platforms have their own conventions and algorithms, which mostly work in very opaque ways, but we can never be certain before publishing what will really work: sometimes it flops, sometimes there are pleasant surprises. Don’t hesitate to test things out, invent formats, and find new ways of telling stories. The most important thing is to talk to your community and see how they respond!
On social networks, testing formats doesn’t happen in a matter of days. If you publish new content and it gets few comments or views, that doesn’t mean it won’t work. Keep testing it over several weeks (about two months) and look at the overall statistics at that point to decide what needs adjusting.
3.b Measure your impact: On social networks, users aren’t a uniform group. Depending on age or interests, each community is different. Their needs, digital habits, and points of reference are specific, and you’ll only understand them by asking. Social networks are a good way to communicate with your audience, through the comments section as well as private messaging channels. Having such direct access to feedback from your community is a good way to find out not just whether they like your work, but what it actually brought them.
4. Limitations
4.a Platform moderation: This privileged relationship with your community via social networks is very valuable, but it can end overnight, subject to the whims of platform moderation rules. Accounts can be banned, or certain posts taken down, at the platform’s discretion. Sometimes you can simply lose visibility overnight with no explanation or notification. Your community, even if they follow and support you, will then no longer see your posts.
The other risk is having your account deleted altogether, and losing your content along with it. Appealing such decisions is difficult, especially when you have no one to reach directly about the situation.
4.b Safeguarding your work: Preserving your independence, both editorial and technological, means finding a way to safeguard your productions. Many outlets publish their “social” videos on their own apps as well. This is the case for the New York Times, for example, which has added a “Watch” tab to its app that works like a video feed. For the past two years, arte.tv has included a similar tool in its app, which redirects users to the original content on its own streaming platform. A good way to feed your own app without abandoning other video platforms like YouTube or Instagram.
The video tabs of Arte’s app (right) and the New York Times’ (left).
