Why Wired is embedding videos in stories

Hanaa Tameez of Nieman Lab looks at how Wired and other publications are embedding videos in stories.

Tameez writes, “When Wired had six reporters follow a robotaxi from autonomous car company Waymo around San Francisco, for example, associate director of social Evy Kwong took vertical smartphone videos and interspersed them through the piece. In a story about a a robot startup, Wired inserted a social video after the second paragraph. The video is anchored by the story’s reporter Will Knight, with a Godzilla poster and a lava lamp behind him.

“Short vertical videos, a staple of Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, are increasingly making their way on to news sites. The format is a hit with audiences — the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) reported earlier this year that 66% of respondents in its global survey watch short news videos every week — but more than two-thirds of that viewing still takes place on platforms, not publisher websites, RISJ found. Publishers are trying to change that.

“‘We’re looking for as many ways as possible to bring the videos that we’re making for TikTok and Instagram [on to] the site,’ Indu Chandrasekhar, executive global director of audience development and analytics at Wired, told me.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.