Vertical Videos latest trend in Journ
By: Nonnette C. Bennett
In the digital era, catching the attention of different generations for urgent social and political issues is the concern of the different media outfits. With the diminishing attention spans of audiences, the three second rule applies as the make-or-break point to get your message across, thus vertical videos are sought to capture the viewer into reading the long forms.
Ms. Mara Cepeda of the Straits Times told journalists from the three islands of the Philippines that this is the challenge that news outfits face in the various social media platforms during the seminar on “Truth in the AI age: Factchecking, Creating Content, Using AI Tools and Monetizing Digital Assets.” The vertical videos are needed to hook the readers or viewers to the longer narratives of current issues or investigative stories. The goal of newsrooms being to appear in the 20-year-old’s newsfeed.
With Facebook as the leading platform taking up 81 percent of the viewers of various posts, You Tube at 76 percent, and Tiktok in the third place at 51 percent, the journalists need to race against the content creators in posting relevant and credible news. She said that newswriters and correspondents should pick up the good practices of content creators but adopt the journalism principles that will draw the difference in legitimate posts.
Cepeda said that ignoring the social media forms like Tiktok and Reels is a folly because there is a need to unlearn the rigid rules of traditional journalism. There is more room to experiment in terms of script writing, on-cam behavior, and editing. Additionally, you live and die by the 30 second rule – 85 percent of children are no longer readers. Pop culture is used today and the references, Gen Z or gay lingo, even a little bit of acting and dancing! Snappy, funny, sassy, trendy caption writing is an art now and one should keep tabs on the videos online.
The Payoff is the answer, the how, but most of the “So What?’ or reason why the audience should care about the issue.
Vertical videos are the here and now for grassroots writers and reporters to cope with the current trends in Philippine journalism.
