Effect of Video on Print Readership

Anna-Grace Veal, a sophomore education major, looks at the Imperial Sugar factory explosion video on the Savannah Morning News website between classes in Tate Center.

by C. Sutherland

Editor: Pricilla Kathe

When 14 people die in an explosion, words just don’t do it justice. Video does.

The Savannah Morning News video explaining how the February 2008 explosion at the Imperial Sugar plant happened was one of the paper’s most viewed videos, said Susan Catron, Executive Editor. “It explains very well how 14 people died,” she said. “I don’t know if we could’ve told that story in a better way.”

Like the Savannah Morning News, many other newspapers have been increasing their use of video to engage their readers. But the idea of readers flocking to Web sites because of video is uncertain.

The Athens Banner-Herald has been using video on their Web site for three years. Melissa Hanna, Executive Editor of the Banner-Herald, said the videos they use are all locally oriented. She said readership “is a difficult thing to determine.”

Loren Omoto, Director of Content for Tampa Bay Online, the online version of the Tampa Tribune, said, “I don't know how you'd tell that, unless you were doing promos to video [in print versions].” Tampa Bay Online gets about 10,000 views a week but does not keep page view information on specific videos.

Catron said she can’t tell if videos are paying off in print readership or not, even though they upload a lot of videos their readers want to see.

“What I think has happened is we have become a brand,” Catron said. “That’s what I want. When people are looking for news, I want them to see us as that source.”

Catron said deciding when to use video depends on which stories are better told in that medium. For some stories, it gives that added dimension, she said.

The Savannah Morning News monitors how many times a video has been viewed and passed on to friends. “That’s key—if it was passed along,” Catron said.

Dave Enna is the Web site Manager for Content at the Charlotte Observer, which has been using video for six years. The paper produces about 15 videos a week. Video page views are only a small amount of the millions of page views the Observer gets daily, Enna said. In spite of this, they continue to see video as a plus.

Enna said videos are good for certain types of content. The Observer recently did a video story about a child with a severe disability due to a brain tumor. “[Readers] could see how the child acted due to the disorder,” he said. “This helped support the story.”

Catron says the Savannah Morning News also provides their readers access to AP videos from their AP feed. Readers pick what they want to see from the feed. The Charlotte Observer also subscribes to the AP video feed. “We get 1000 page views a day from it,” Enna said.

The Observer, the Savannah Morning News and the Banner-Herald all rely heavily on video for sports coverage. At the Charlotte Observer, two videos are produced each week to cover sports. Sometimes the Observer embeds YouTube videos and provides streamlined, live video, Enna said.

The Savannah Morning News also does Web casts for local football in addition to Web casts for movie reviews and music reviews. Catron said they plan to add Podcasts this year to further vary their news delivery methods. “You have to throw [ideas] at the wall and see what makes them stick.”

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