According to a recent Pew Research Data, 26% of U.S. adults get news from YouTube and 72% of these people said YouTube is an important way they keep up with news. YouTube is a new and foreign ecosystem to established news organizations as their dominance is only slightly above independent news creators (49% vs. 42%).
In the entertainment industry, the line between cable TV and YouTube has been blurred—in fact, they create synergy. I saw comedians and singers in a TV show create a YouTube channel together as a spin-off of their TV show. YouTube stars and influencers appear in TV, which in turn helps grow their subscriber base.
My question is… how would YouTube change established news organizations’ strategies to reach out to the audience? Given cable TV’s decline and popularity of YouTube, more and more people will turn to YouTube to get news. How would established news organizations change their business models to make profits from their YouTube channels? Would they collaborate with independent news creators? Would they become more like a platform that harbors multiple channels created by their own reporters and producers?
And more importantly, when “the medium is the message” and YouTube possibly changes the way the news content is perceived, what in the news and its delivery will not change?