Video Strategy for Future News Formats

Nov. 23, 2025 /Mpelembe Media/ — The “Future Formats Accelerator 2025”, specifically focuses onThe “”Scroll-Stopping Stories: How to break through with videos” event hosted by FT Strategies and the Google News Initiative. The core subject is the necessity for news publishers to adopt video content, both short-form and long-form, to effectively reach younger audiences, particularly Gen Z, who increasingly rely on platforms like TikTok and YouTube for news.

The presentation offers a strategic playbook for video, discussing the importance of platform-specific content adaptation and best practices for maximising viewer engagement and retention, including the structure of hooks and climaxes. Furthermore, the material explores the integration of AI tools to streamline production and presents case studies from publishers like The Washington Post and The Financial Times demonstrating successful multi-platform video strategies.

News organizations are successfully adapting their content strategies for video-first social platforms by focusing on mastering platform algorithms, developing platform-native video formats, optimizing content structure for rapid engagement, and integrating specialized editorial workflows. This adaptation is crucial because global news consumption is shifting toward video-based platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, which are key sources of news for young audiences (18–34-year-olds).

Here is a detailed explanation of how news organizations are adapting:

1. Mastering Algorithmic Distribution and Platform Specificity

Successful adaptation begins with accepting that these are algorithm-led platforms, where distribution is based on user interest and driving virality, rather than follower loyalty.

• Investment Focus: To succeed, publishers must invest in three core areas: content quality (worth watching to the end), format fluency (visually and structurally native to the platform), and storytelling style (hooking early and delivering value quickly).
• Avoiding Blind Cross-Posting: News organizations must understand the unique culture and audience expectations of each platform and avoid cross-posting blindly. Blind reposting can damage credibility, signal low relevance to the algorithm, and lead to reduced engagement.

2. Strategy for Short-Form Video (Winning Attention in Seconds)

Short-form videos (typically 15 seconds to 2 minutes on TikTok/Reels/Shorts) are used for “sifting,” where audiences discover news while scrolling. Success depends on a unique formula:

• The Hook, Value, and Payoff Formula:
  • The Hook (0–3 seconds): Must provide urgency and clarity to stop the scroll. Key tactics include leading with the benefit before the topic, starting with the climax, or triggering curiosity by stating a fact and applying a twist. Videos featuring human faces retain viewers 49% longer.
  • Value Delivery: Deliver the core content quickly and clearly using tight cuts, captions, and visual emphasis like zooms or overlays to maintain pace.
  • The Payoff: Rewards the viewer, which increases retention and encourages replays and emotional impact.
• Editing and Technical Considerations: Since over 80% of viewers watch on mute, successful videos include captions to reinforce content and ensure viewers stay engaged. Publishers also leverage trending sounds to maximize reach through audio metadata and focus on loopability to boost watch time.

For example, Capital’s “Next Gen Explainers” is a 1–2 minute face-to-camera series designed specifically for TikTok and Instagram, utilizing animations and review by Gen Z staff for tone and style, achieving 6–8x greater median reach versus their baseline.

3. Strategy for Long-Form Video (Engaging through Storytelling)

Long-form content, such as deep-dive explainers and documentaries (2 minutes to 60+ minutes), serves the audience need to “study” complex topics and provides opportunities for strong editorial control.

• Pre-Video Attention: The hook begins with the title and thumbnail. Titles framed as questions are effective at piquing curiosity. Thumbnails featuring a journalist’s face tend to receive 25–30% more views than those without, as they evoke immediate connection. Publishers with consistent styling in their thumbnails see a 15–20% lift in Click-Through Rate (CTR).
• Internal Retention Structure: Because attention is immediately competing with suggested videos and ads, the first 30 seconds are crucial. Long-form videos should be structured to maximise retention:
  • The Hook: A bold question, fact, or visual to retain viewers past 30 seconds.
  • The Set Up (First 2 minutes): Establish the story’s context and stakes to give viewers a reason to care.
  • The Build (70% of video): Introduce new developments or voices to sustain momentum.
  • The Climax (10% of video): Deliver a turning point or revelation; videos with strong mid-to-late reveals have higher completion rates.
  • The Conclusion (5% of video): End with a clear takeaway or insight to increase shareability.
• Sustaining Engagement: Introducing the stakes helps viewers become more invested. Breaking complex stories into chapters helps viewers follow narratives and skip to points of interest, leading to higher watch time by reducing drop-off.

The Financial Times (FT) found success with its FT Film series, high-quality documentaries (15–30 minutes) that reinforce subscriber value; video viewers are 20x more likely to be regular FT.com users.

4. Operational Excellence and Leveraging AI

To handle the demand for volume and variety, news organizations are adapting internal structures and technology:

• Agile Workflows and Dedicated Teams: Publishers must build dedicated video units and integrate them closely with editorial teams to ensure agility. Expressen TV built agile workflows allowing them to go live within 180 seconds of breaking news and repurpose stories into multiple formats (live streams, short clips, long explainers) to maximize speed and reach.
• Content Repurposing: A single story can be converted into various formats (e.g., a 5–10 minute explainer, short-form clips for TikTok/Reels, and carousels for Instagram) to maximize value across platforms.
• Integrating AI Tools: AI is leveraged for efficient content production without compromising journalistic integrity. Tools like Opus Clip or Descript assist in auto editing, cuts, and finding highlights from long videos to reformat them for Shorts/Reels. Pulse Africa successfully used “digital twins” (AI avatars of real journalists) to scale short-form content production, earning them a WAN-IFRA award for audience engagement.

5. Cultivating Community and Creator-Led Storytelling

Successful adaptation involves meeting the young audience’s preference for personal, conversational, and authentic content.

• Humanizing the Brand: The Washington Post launched its TikTok channel (“We are a newspaper”) to meet Gen Z with a relatable, native voice, using humorous and personality-driven content to humanize the newsroom. This effort resulted in 1.6 million followers and widespread recognition.
• Journalist as Creator: Newsrooms are recognizing that audiences trust people more than brands, and are elevating journalists, such as the FT’s John Burn-Murdoch, as public-facing figures to share accessible data explainers, building trust and loyalty through “creator-style storytelling”.
• Interactive Community Building: Publishers build community through launching recurring series (which builds familiarity and habit) and actively encouraging participation through captions, comments, Duets, or Reels Remixes to invite debate and reactions, making the content interactive and social.

This successful adaptation resembles a media ecosystem shifting from a single broadcast radio tower (traditional news site) to thousands of specialized, personalized shortwave radios (social platforms), each requiring unique frequencies, power levels, and content style to reach its highly segmented audience. News organizations must tune their journalism exactly to the specifications of each platform to ensure maximum reception and engagement.

Traditional news publishers face a significant strategic challenge in balancing the massive reach offered by video-first social platforms (like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok) with the need to maintain on-site loyalty and revenue. This balance is crucial because while platforms offer high visibility among younger audiences (around 40% of 18–34-year-olds get news mainly from these platforms), they typically offer weak monetization pathways and limit data ownership for publishers.

Effectively achieving this balance requires a strategy where off-platform content acts as the “top of the funnel” for brand visibility and audience attraction, explicitly guiding users toward the revenue-generating owned website.

Here are the key ways publishers can balance reach with loyalty and revenue:

1. Differentiating Content Goals by Platform and Format

Publishers must avoid cross-posting blindly and instead tailor content strategy to serve specific goals, leveraging the strengths of each distribution channel.

2. Utilizing Platform Video for Top-of-Funnel Attraction

To capitalize on the wide reach of social media, news organizations must adopt “creator-style storytelling” that makes the brand approachable and uses high-impact formats to break through the algorithmic feed.

• Personality and Authenticity (Humanizing the Brand): Young audiences trust people more than brands, so elevating journalists as public-facing figures helps build stronger connections. For instance, The Washington Post gained widespread recognition by using humorous, personality-driven videos on TikTok, humanizing its newsroom and positioning the platform as a gateway to its broader journalism.
• Targeted Short-Form Content: Short-form video should be designed to hook viewers within 0–3 seconds using tactics like starting with the climax or triggering curiosity. The goal is conversion (leading to the site) or building brand affinity. Capital’s Next Gen Explainers were specifically designed as short, face-to-camera videos for TikTok and Instagram to make complex topics accessible, achieving 6–8x greater median reach.
• Repurposing Content Strategically: Publishers like Hugo Décrypte maximize reach by converting a single long-form story into multiple shorter formats (e.g., short clips for TikTok, explainers for YouTube) tailored to each platform, extending the story’s value and reach.

3. Reinforcing On-Site Loyalty and Subscription Value

The ultimate balance requires ensuring that the high-quality journalism is tied to the publisher’s owned platform, converting casual social viewers into loyal, paying users.

• Long-Form Content as a Subscriber Value Driver: Long-form videos, such as deep-dive explainers and documentaries, are effective because they satisfy the user need to “Study” complex topics. These videos reinforce the publication’s expertise and deliver high subscriber value. For example, the Financial Times (FT) Film series, which produces monthly 15–30 minute documentaries, found that video viewers are 20 times more likely to be regular FT.com users, proving the content’s power in reinforcing subscriber loyalty.
• On-Site Video Integration: To integrate platform habits with the owned site experience, publishers can feature videos directly on their websites or apps. The FT autoplays video within articles to increase engagement and dwell time, while The Economist features a vertical video carousel on its homepage to reflect social video viewing habits, keeping viewers on-site.
• Conversion Metrics: For videos distributed across platforms, efforts must be made to track conversions, such as newsletter signups or direct Click-to-Article metrics, recognizing that long-form video inherently better supports the subscription journey.

By treating platform distribution as a massive, high-visibility storefront designed to attract new visitors, and treating the owned website as the dedicated boutique providing premium, monetized loyalty products (like specialized deep-dive videos and comprehensive journalism), publishers can effectively balance the trade-off between maximizing reach and generating sustainable revenue.

This mayerial is available for download here