Nieman Journalism Lab | The Wall Street Journal
YouTube reaches a greater part of the population with news at 10 percent than Twitter does with just 8 percent, according to a post by Caroline O’Donovan for Nieman Journalism Lab.
On Thursday, O’Donovan reported on a study from Pew Research, “News Use Across Social Media.” The results are mostly not surprising, she writes. But how far social media platforms reach with the general population might be.
According to Pew, YouTube reaches 51 percent of adults in the U.S., and “even though only a fifth of its users get news there, that amounts to 10% of the adult population, which puts it on par with Twitter. Twitter reaches just 16% of U.S. adults, but half (8% of U.S. adults) use it for news.”
And YouTube’s reach could be ready to grow.
On Nov. 12, William Launder wrote in The Wall Street Journal that Vice Media, Inc. has been adding reporters, and money, to cover the news on YouTube.
Over the past two months, Vice has quietly hired more than 60 additional journalists, increasing the size of its formal news team to more than 100, to cover everything from Middle East war zones to health-care reform through an expansion of its digital video offering, Chief Executive Shane Smith said in an interview.
The company plans to spend around $50 million over the next three years to build up its news operation, according to a person close to the closely held company. The expansion will include a dedicated “Vice News” channel on YouTube, as well as the introduction of a recurring online video series, live coverage of breaking news events and in-depth documentaries—a niche where Vice has already had some success.
Vice aims its content at younger audiences, with videos about A Day With A Russian Billionaire, The Japanese Love Industry and British Nationals Fight With al Qaeda in Syria.
Pew’s study also found that about a fifth of people on Twitter and Facebook get their news from actual newspapers, as Poynter reported Thursday.
