Inside The New York Times’ Vertical Video Strategy

Can The New York Times steal time and attention away from TikTok or YouTube? Probably not, but the venerable news outlet is moving aggressively in the video space by trying to carve out a strategy that is true to what it is, with less fretting over the specific platform that the videos it produces live on.

“I think our goal here is just to build the largest, the widest and most engaged audience that we can, and we see video as a way of doing that,” says Jordan Vita, vp of product at the Times, in an interview.

The Times‘ video strategy now encompasses all of its core areas: News, of course, but also cooking, The Athletic, and culture. And like every other publication, those videos are increasingly syndicated.

“Our videos live both on our own platform and on a whole range of social platforms, Instagram, TikTok, also YouTube. We don’t make video that would live only or thrive only on one platform,” says Solana Pyne video director at The New York Times. “We’re always thinking about something that we would feel proud to put on our own platform, and that feels appropriate there. But we also recognize that you need to reach people where they are, and so we are also publishing video in a range of places.”

That’s where the Times‘ new “Watch” tab comes in. Located in its app, the Watch tab now features a feed of vertical video stories, though they are editorially curated rather than algorithmically fed, at least for now.

“As people become exposed to us on those platforms, creating a predictable place where they can find that video journalism on our own platform [became a priority],” says Vita.

“We want to be a destination,” Pyne adds. “We want our app to be as satisfying for listening and watching as it is for reading. We’re just really acknowledging that people are getting their news in multiple different formats, and that format you may prefer may vary based on time of day. We want to make it accessible and meet that need. So we view the Watch tab as another way to consume New York Times journalism and to catch up on what the biggest stories of the day.”

Perhaps most intriguingly for close Times-watchers: The journalists are buying in.

Pyne says that increasingly the journalists in the newsroom are being proactive about reaching out to the video team, aware of the benefits of the format. “People are coming to us before the story is published at some stage, some earlier than others, but mostly we are getting involved before the text story publishes, and collaboratively working on a video,” she says. “I think most people really recognize that the way that people consume information is changing. People are definitely still reading, but as we all know, more and more people are watching. And then I think when people work with us and then see their video get millions of views on our homepage or off-platform, it reinforces their enthusiasm, because it is just a way to reach people who we might not have been able to reach before.”

The result is a curated feed that feels like the Times, with elite journalism and explanatory reporting, mixed with cultural takes, sports, newsmaking interviews and even an occasional Thanksgiving recipe tip.

“We have videos from the from opinion, from cooking, from The Athletic, Wirecutter. They’re all independently producing really powerful coverage that feels incredibly valuable as part of the mix here,” Pyne says. “On some days you’ll see NFL highlights and recommendations for mac and cheese, the David Leonhardt interview with [Arizona Senator] Ruben Gallego is in there with our news coverage… That’s partly why this new Watch tab feels so promising, because we have just so many strong stories across such a wide range of coverage areas not just from the newsroom, but from across the company.”