Maral Usefi, Wall Street Journal head of video. Picture: News Corp
The Wall Street Journal has revamped its video strategy around the central aim of making “ video journalism that’s worth paying for”.
The strategy has six pillars: original/investigative journalism, breaking news, topical explainers and analysis of the news, strategic live video around a major news event, habit-building franchises, and IP-based scripted and unscripted projects via WSJ Studios.
The WSJ hired Maral Usefi, former vice president of news and editorial operations at Vice Media, as head of video in September. Since then the video team has grown by a third to 65 people.
Usefi was tasked with developing a video strategy that would complement editor-in-chief Emma Tucker’s overall “audience-first” vision that would bring in new subscribers and get them to engage with the brand as much as possible.
[Read more: WSJ editor Emma Tucker on how title grew digital subs by a third to 4.3m ]
Previously the WSJ was mainly focused on off-platform video revenue via the likes of Youtube and Linkedin.
“Everything was optimised for Youtube,” Usefi said. “There were a lot of franchises, a lot of things that moved in a way that the algorithm really rewards.”
But Tucker felt WSJ subscribers should be delivering for the audiences on its own platforms.
Usefi noted that the WSJ is “ not a cheap subscription ” and said they want to “deliver on that value”.
She added: “In a world where you never know what a Youtube decision maker is going to do, or Instagram or Tiktok… we have a lot of control over our own platforms. And so prioritising that, especially right now, with so much of the AI stuff going on, makes a lot of sense.”
The aim is to keep the Youtube business “as healthy as possible” from advertising and brand partnerships, but bringing value to subscribers and potential subscribers on-platform is also a key business goal.
This means making decisions like, for example, when to turn off autoplay ads for videos on the website and app (which they currently do for breaking news moments).
Usefi said that when looking at the WSJ’s video output they “stripped out some franchises that weren’t working or didn’t really have a value premise, and stripped out also a lot of things that were not original reporting”.
“Because I think the main point for our video department is really to make video journalism that’s worth paying for.”
[Read more insights aimed at US-based readers of Press Gazette via our weekly Future of Media US newsletter ]
WSJ original journalism extended further into video
This original journalism is “probably the most important” of the six pillars of the strategy that will set the WSJ’s video apart, Usefi said.
“There’s a ton of original journalism and a ton of exclusive access, but that hadn’t been happening as much in video.”
Tucker has given Usefi and her team “a runway” to “take the time” to build up these projects, some of which are six months in and not published yet.
New hires on the video team under Usefi have been largely focused on “who can report, who can break stories… that’s really how we’ve rebuilt the team in a lot of ways, because that’s really the money, right? We need to nail that to be able to deliver that value.”
Usefi said they had also been working on changing the mindset of the newsroom to think from the beginning of a story about the best format for it and whether they should be collaborating with the video team.
“Is it hyper visual? Does it have an amazing character who you really want to capture on camera? Then maybe it’s just a video, or maybe it’s a video in combination with text, or maybe it’s a photo essay plus this.
“We’re all really focused on: how do we take our original journalism and build it in different ways and in the way that really people want to consume it?”
VIDEO
Quick breaking news videos: ‘People want to see those moments’
Breaking news is “low-hanging fruit in a lot of ways but that has to be on our site”, Usefi said of another pillar of the strategy.
She gave the examples of a soundbite from Trump, a funny moment from a late-night TV show or the demolition of the White House East Wing.
“You don’t want to drive people off platform because you don’t have it… people want to see those moments. They don’t need a lot of context around it. They don’t need to wait three days for you to analyse it.”
‘News bounce’ explainers: ‘What’s beneath that headline?’
Usefi also spoke about what she called the “news bounce”, which she defined as explainer videos and analysis from reporters about what’s happening in the news.
In March a video entitled “How Iran Is Holding the Strait of Hormuz Hostage” received more than 657,000 views on Youtube. The video caption tells viewers: “Some days the high-speed news cycle can bring more questions than answers. WSJ’s news explainers break down the day’s biggest stories into bite-size pieces to help you make sense of the news.”
“There’s so many brilliant minds in this newsroom that we hadn’t been capitalising on,” Usefi said. “And so instead of the headline, it’s like, what’s actually beneath that headline? What matters about this story that people aren’t reading about somewhere else?”
She said finding that exclusive angle is “tricky because there are tons of media organisations repeating the same thing, and it really forces us to analyse a news story in a different way.
“What’s the Journal’s angle? What is reporting that we have that no one else has, and how can we get that in front of people?”
VIDEO
Building habits around video franchises
Next, Usefi said, is utilising the video franchises that work well on Youtube so that they are maximised on the WSJ’s own website and app too.
These franchises include Coveted , which looks at the stories behind luxury items like a $10,000 Eames chair (290,000 Youtube views in five days) and $35 guitar picks (602,000 views), and The Economics Of , which looks at businesses like Build-A-Bear (96,000 Youtube views) and Labubu maker Pop Mart (1.3 million).
Usefi said these series bring “a bit of levity” and are “more fun” in tone than other types of reporting.
“But what we’re trying to do with those is build habits around them so it’s almost like an episode drop of something that you then want to go watch on a consistent basis.”
VIDEO
Live video: Adding value in ‘noisy’ space
In terms of live video, Usefi said the WSJ is trying to get its journalists more involved in video coverage so it feels like another subscriber benefit.
For example, rather than simply running Trump’s State of the Union speech in February, this year the WSJ had a panel of journalists breaking down his policies in the lead-up to the address. The Youtube video featuring the discussion and full speech received 22,000 views.
Usefi said this is “another way that these brilliant minds are adding value in a space that’s very noisy.
“We don’t want to become cable. We don’t want to be always on. But we’re trying to see [in] what moments can our journalism and our journalists really shine…?”
Oscars win in Wall Street Journal’s future?
Finally WSJ has a Studios arm which is aiming to develop long-form scripted and unscripted projects based on its reporting.
Potential partners can approach the newsbrand looking at work they are interested in optioning and then they go through a development process together to decide whether it could be a feature documentary, a documentary series, or even a “scripted series where we’re really building a universe that’s kind of inspired by this writing and reporting,” Usefi said.
“Then what happens is we take it to the market, so we have partners in Netflix and Hulu and HBO and Apple, and try to get sales off of that.”
Usefi noted the WSJ “has done a couple of projects over the last decade, but not nearly as many as we should be doing,” adding that this presents a “really excellent opportunity to be able to take that reporting and bring it in front of a completely different audience.
“We have some projects in the works there that we’re really excited about, and hopefully it will be done-deal form soon.”
WSJ video hires: ‘Are you a good reporter?’
Usefi has overseen a bolstering of the video team to 65 people, mainly based in New York (about 45 people) but with staff also in London, Singapore and Washington DC.
This has taken the team “back to healthy mode”, following the departure of former WSJ chief content officer of video Amanda Wills, who left in March last year to join CNN Worldwide , and some other staff.
Building the team back up has allowed Usefi to adjust the roles they had so each staff member is less focused on “specific lanes” like Youtube explainers.
Usefi said that now everyone can get involved in different aspects of the video strategy but the key question is: “Are you a good reporter? Can you get the journalism? Can you get the access?”
They also looked for creativity: “Video is fickle, like video audiences are fickle, and you constantly need to be innovating and developing new things, instead of the copy paste world that some organisations I think, honestly, live in. I think sometimes people find something that’s successful and then sort of want to make that exact thing and continue doing that. But that’s really not how video works anymore.
“You really need to be on top of trends, on top of what people are consuming, how they’re consuming it, meeting them where they are, then pushing them a little bit to consume things that you want to innovate on.”
WSJ app improvements and centring long-form journalism
Product improvements are part of the video evolution, with Usefi noting most WSJ subscribers are consuming via the app.
She said two ecosystems for video will be rolled out in the app: an algorithmic, social-style feed for “quick bites” and a more immersive section for long-form journalism.
Emphasising the importance of the latter category, Usefi said: “One of the things that we’re very focused on is not to become a vertical-only or reporter-led video-only type of organisation.
“We want that variety, because we know that depending on the time of day, depending on where people are consuming something, that having longer-form journalism is really valuable – and having it in that beautiful, cinematically shot way.
“I think a lot of people are pivoting to their reporters as the face and focusing on podcast-style vertical video, and while that’s super important to us and we are really actively trying to raise the profile of all of our brilliant reporters and get their reporting out there in that way too, there is this side that I think we would be remiss not to pay attention to.”
Usefi said there has also been a “really big audit” of video equipment since she joined. Cameras, lenses, lights and reporter self-filming kits have all been upgraded while the studio and control room is going to be fully gutted and rebuilt with a members’ club aesthetic.
Usefi said she has a “very specific idea of what I want things to look like”, adding that she wants it to be a coherent look across all WSJ video.
“I think that matters, because people are used to the self-shot stuff that’s raw and rough on Instagram and Tiktok, but that’s not what they expect from a massive news organisation that we are trying to get people to pay for. And so quality matters a lot.”
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