Learning online video from the "White Castle lady"
Here’s a link to my Other Future of News (#ofon) presentation on “making the most of online video.” Please take a look and let me know what you think!
The Other Future of News conference took place on December 12, 2009, and was a response to MPR’s Future of News event that took place earlier this year. Other videos from the event are available here.
Learning online video from the “White Castle lady”
This summer, on the first day of my third internship at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, I was assigned to produce a video on White Castle customer Ariel Wade. Wade was upset because she tried to drive her motorized scooter through the White Castle drive-thru after the dining room had closed and the employees refused to serve her. She contacted the Star Tribune’s Whistleblower team and argued that White Castle had discriminated against her because of her disability (degenerative arthritis). The story ran here with a short video.
Ariel Wade showed me the power of online video after the story ran. First, Huffington Post linked to the video, which is essentially every intern’s dream, and Wade quickly became a viral celebrity. Dlisted, a raunchy celebrity site, embedded the video and it took off. Other similar blogs picked it up and Wade became an “American Hero” who was “fighting the fight.” However, because the Star Tribune’s video player did not allow any sharing or embedding options, a user ripped the video from the Star Tribune’s site and uploaded it to YouTube.
To me, this story demonstrated the powerful potential of local news video to reach new viewers when the content can be emailed, embedded and shared with others. In this case, the primary audience for a White Castle drive-thru story might be on Dlisted rather than unique visits to the Star Tribune. The easy embeddability of the YouTube player allowed new viewers to see the story without any additional cost to the news organization. It also significantly expanded the potential viewing audience by targeting a new set of news consumers.
Shortly after the initial launch, the Star Tribune added the video to its YouTube channel and brought in an additional 25,000 video views, plus 20,000 video views from the previous user (who was asked to remove the video). From the YouTube channel, the video was embedded on nine different channels and even inspired a spin-off video.
In this case, YouTube appeared to be an effective way of distributing video content. However, if the Star Tribune’s video player allowed for sharing and embedding, the 45,000 views would have been added to site’s video traffic and helped maximize pre-roll advertising from the content. While loyal visitors might be easier to monetize, this example showed that this video’s value, along with many others, were not limited to a particular news site.
