Thursday, September 20, 2007
Why we should post to YouTube
This video posted Monday by The Gainesville (Fla.) Sun of a student getting Tasered by police during an appearance by John Kerry made it into YouTube’s "most viewed" list by Tuesday.
The video, shot by a freelancer, was also used by several national news shows on television. Since the paper posted the video to its site, it has attracted more than 20,000 hits, compared with the average 1,000 hits per video (about 3,500 on football game days). But the real coup came from YouTube, where the video drew more than 840,000 hits.
"One of our managers sent it to YouTube," Executive Editor Jim Osteen said. "The thought there is — if it is on YouTube, it brings traffic to your site because it says it is from The Gainesville Sun. There is a certain strategy there."
The video shows how newspapers can use new media and the YouTube buzz. Through these channels, the name and story of the newspaper was reproduced nationwide within hours.
h/t: E&P and Editors Weblog
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1 comment:
Comment fromm Marc Matteo of Sacramento, via Facebook:
"All YouTube does is serve to magnify the audience of a video, not the quality of the video content. Posting to YouTube won't automagically net you 800,000 views, the video itself still has to be interesting. The reality is that video has what people want to see: some guy getting tasered. It is, in short, interesting.
I still maintain that most newspaper video (not all mind you) is dull and boring (and long). It's almost always because newspapers have handed a video camera to whomever is standing there and said, "go shoot."
YouTube will not help that.
Compare that to the experience of the average daily-paper still photographer. In my experience those shooters have usually *decades* of experience before even walking in the door. Why don't we hire videographers like that?"
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