NAA mediaXchange

NAA mediaXchange is the largest annual gathering of industry executives in North America, offering unprecedented networking opportunities that combine an exchange of information and ideas with programming designed to generate results. The conference is designed to provide valuable ideas and insights to help newspaper professionals grow audience and revenue for their print and digital products. Sessions highlight leading-edge thinking about media strategies, successes in product and revenue development, new ideas and innovation inside and outside the industry, and tactics and techniques to employ in print and digital.

Video: The sequel

By Varun Saxena

Video is a space worth watching, panelists agreed at this session Thursday.

The Wall Street Journal does 4-1/2 to five hours of live video a day, said Alan Murray, deputy managing editor and executive editor, online.

The iPhone has made video stories easier to produce and less labor intensive, he said.

Murray said it also uncovers top talent, such as reporter Jeremy Page, who produced a live broadcast about the death of North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-il.

"They [the audience] get it that this a real reporter on site doing real reporting, and they're getting in on it," Murray said.

The Journal receives 12 million monthly video views, half of which views come from offsite partners such as YouTube, for which it provides premium content.

Best of all, Murray said, ad sales are backlogged.

Jim Bernard, senior vice president for digital at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, said his paper has experienced a strong upsurge in video views and revenue due to a recent strategy revamp that included spending more money on a high-quality online player.

Ads known as prerolls, which appear before the video, are the main method of monetizing video, and metrics show that half of all viewers click away before the ad ends.

Panelists debated the optimal length. Bernard said he favors 30-second prerolls because metrics show that the retention rate is similar for 15-second prerolls.

Autoplay is another lightning rod, but the speakers agreed that allowing videos to play automatically increases viewership, and they are employing the tactic at their papers.

"Video is about singles, not home runs," Bernard said, because 3 percent of videos generate 82 percent of all views.

Popular topics include sports and the weather, he said. But, Murray noted, "you don't always know what ones are going to be the hits."

One of the top videos on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch site was about a two-legged dog, Assistant Managing Editor Bob Rose said.

Placing videos within the context of a print story increases viewership, he said.

The optimal length of an online video is "totally in flux," Murray said. Three minutes used to be considered long, but that's changing, he said, as he held up his iPad. Metrics show that people watch longer video on iPads.

The editors agreed that the trend is toward less editorial control of video due to live streams and the proliferation of outside content. 

"We're already in the self-publishing world," Murray said. The Journal is considering launching a blog onto which reporters can post video directly, he said.

"The mere act of publishing makes it viewable," he said. With the advent of Internet-enabled liquid crystal displays, he said, expect the trend to accelerate.

Varun Saxena is a student at the University of Maryland. He is one of several local university journalism students reporting live from NAA mediaXchange 2012 in Washington, D.C.

About Amanda Knowles

Amanda Knowles is Web & Social Media Manager at the Newspaper Association of America. Before coming to NAA, Amanda spent four years working in print journalism, both at the college and professional level. She has worked as a copy editor and news page designer for two daily newspapers in northwestern Pennsylvania, The Erie Times-News and The Meadville Tribune. Most recently, she collaborated on The American Observer, the online magazine edited and produced by graduate journalism students at American University in Washington, D.C. Amanda believes strongly in the secure future of the newspaper, and is excited to be a participant in the movement to integrate traditional print media into the burgeoning digital world.