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The news site Mic announced that it was laying off its staff and closing, selling to media company Bustle for a reported $5 million. The announcement came barely a year after Mic announced a layoff of editorial staff and a pivot to video—the idea du jour of struggling media properties in the past few years. As the competion has increased and the battle for ad dollars has become more heated, the idea of moving resources into video, the fastest growing facet of the online experience, seemed to make sense. Mic’s experience belies that assumption.
To be sure, there were huge macro-force winds facing a media startup like Mic from the outset. Facebook, which was once seen as boosting readership of their online partners, instead began cannibilizing it. The sheer proliferation of sites and the low barrier to entry were surely a factor.
But one factor might be more responsible than all of the others to explain Mic’s demise: video is hard to do. There are five main reasons that Mic couldn’t pull off the switch—and why most of the pivot to video experiments will fail.
1. Video costs more. Sure, it seemed easy when Steve Jobs showed off iMovie back in the day, or when you see the ad with a third grader creating a film for her Show and Tell. Scott Schaefer, editor and publisher of fast-growing hyper-local media company South King Media in the Seattle area isn’t surprised that Mic faced challenges. “Video is a major change if you’re running a news website,” Schaefer says. “It just takes longer to do video. You’re changing the entire business model of the site.”
2. You can’t tell a visual story in three seconds. Video has the advantage of being visually arresting, especially on mobile. More than half of YouTube’s views now come from mobile. But YouTube has actually shifted to promoting longer videos, not shorter ones, because longer videos are able to tell stories better and lead to better viewer satisfaction. The news that Facebook was counting three second engagement as views led to a skewed sense of the value of online videos.
3. Video production takes longer. Yes, you can make a video on your phone. And, yes, you can even download an app that can automatically make a video on your phone. But to create a story that’s visually engaging and creative takes time. Schaefer knows: "To do video right, you need a crew. You need to get the right shots. You need to get it onto a computer and edit it. Video production takes much longer than it does to write a story."
4. Video requires expertise. Just because Stephen Soderberg can direct a feature on an iPhone doesn’t mean anyone can. The medium is decidedly not the message, unless the message is that viewers are too dumb to tell if something is good. Great stories require great storytellers.
There's no shortcut to good filmmaking. Schaefer says: "A writer or journalist won’t know how to produce great video right off the bat. It takes years of experience to get proficient at telling visual stories well." Schaefer should know–he's a three-time National Emmy Award winning writer for Bill Nye the Science Guy who cut his teeth in Hollywood writing/directing for Fox TV's late night comedy slate.
5. It’s hard to break news with video. Video does a great job of augmenting a story. There are some things that are much more impactful to show, rather than tell. But for all of the reasons already outlined, focusing on video takes a site out of the breaking news game. Schaefer points out: “The primary purpose of a news site is breaking stories first. People don’t always have time to watch longform video. Once you start to focus on video, your competitors are Netflix and movies, not just news sites.” You end up spreading yourself too thin.
Media businesses come and go, especially in the current environment. The important thing for future media entrepreneurs is to learn from the mistakes of others. Video still has a bright future on the web. So does breaking news. But pivoting from one to the other will continue to be fraught with danger.
