As short-form video reshapes how people discover and consume news, what are the opportunities for local outlets?
With the rise of TikTok since 2018 and as social platforms have increasingly pushed vertical video in their algorithms, short-form video has become an essential distribution channel for many news organizations. For publishers hoping to reach younger audiences or simply expand beyond their existing readership, social video is no longer optional.
According to the Reuters Digital News Report 2026, this year marks the first time more people (54%) turn to social media and video networks than news organizations’ own websites (51%) to access the news. The shift is even clearer among younger audiences: More than half (52%) of respondents aged 18 to 24 now say social media, video networks, and AI chatbots are their main way of getting news, and Instagram alone is now the biggest social platform for news among that age group, reaching 42% of them.
Many legacy publishers are already embracing vertical video on their own platforms, as well as in their distribution strategy. By the end of 2025, outlets such as the New York Times, the Economist, Newsday, The Washington Post and CNN all built and launched their own watch tab for video viewing within their apps. They resemble a social media feed, except users can’t comment for now, and the video stream isn’t infinite. The Daily Mail hired a creator squad that generates millions of views across short-form video platforms. And nearly every major legacy publisher now puts its reporters on camera or is developing a roster of public-facing journalists who regularly explain and expand their reporting on vertical video.
On a local level, people get their news from social media and video platforms too, and local press enjoys relatively high trust thanks to the proximity of on-the-ground journalists to their communities. However, incorporating vertical video is much more challenging for small, local newsrooms than for well-resourced legacy publishers. Competition is fierce, and producing compelling short-form video requires skills, time, and resources that many hyperlocal newsrooms simply can’t prioritize. At the same time, low click-through rates from social platforms to owned news products make it difficult to convert viewers into website visitors, subscribers, or other forms of support and revenue.
However, according to a 2025 Pew Research Center report, local audiences watch vertical video too: 36% of US adults now say they at least sometimes get local news from news influencers, just as much as they get it from local daily newspapers. Among 18-29 year-olds, that number jumps to 51%, meaning a majority of young folks already get their local news from news influencers on social media. That’s a generation for whom a vertical video creator is already a more familiar local news source than a newspaper – something local outlets can’t ignore when they’re trying to reach the next generation of subscribers, donors or even just readers.
All of these point to a bigger question: How can hyperlocal newsrooms benefit from vertical video? How might algorithm-based distribution create value for their business? And which business models benefit the most from investing in vertical video?
Case Study: LA Taco, For-Profit
One local publisher already succeeding at vertical video is LA Taco, an independent digital outlet founded in 2006 that covers immigration politics, local communities, food, and culture in Los Angeles. The outlet has built a loyal readership over the years – loyal enough that when financial constraints forced LA Taco to furlough three staff members in 2024, the community stepped in within 24 hours, buying enough merch and signing up enough new members to bring the full staff back.
LA Taco had been producing vertical video for years, but its views took off in spring and early summer 2025 as anti-ICE protests escalated across LA and the outlet's ICE raid coverage started to break through. The outlet pivoted to a social-media-first approach starting that June.
For this analysis, we scraped data from LA Taco's social media accounts and analyzed the performance and engagement depth of vertical video between July 2025 and July 2026.
On Instagram, its most active platform, LA Taco has 366K followers as of July 2026. From July 2025 to July 2026, the outlet posted almost 400 Reels with views ranging from 6K to 7.5M. Median views per reel were 72K, and the median engagement rate (likes and comments combined, divided by views) was 4.97% – well above typical Reels benchmarks. This indicates that viewers are interacting with the content, not just watching it. Rather than chasing viral moments and reach, LA Taco's videos reflect the kind of journalism their audience expects from them. Engagement has also grown over the course of the year. Comparing the oldest quarter of posts to the newest, median engagement rate climbed from 4.62% to 5.48%.
These numbers reflect how well the staff have translated their street-level reporting and distinct voice into vertical video. Their reach and the community they built on social media is also the foundation for their revenue model.
Engagement and subscriptions grew together. Follower growth + subscription growth? Click through rate/Referrals from social media?
As a small, hyperlocal, for-profit independent outlet, LA Taco's main revenue streams are paying members and donors, whom they recruit largely through social media, including direct appeals in their videos. Nearly every vertical video includes some version of a call to action or direct ask, whether to click the “link in bio” or support the journalism directly. The outlet also generates revenue through native advertising, paid partnerships, and sponsorship. The California Community Foundation, for instance, sponsored its Daily Memo news format. They also feature some sponsors editorially. Occasionally, LA Taco runs paid ad videos on its profile too, like a recent one for the LA County DCBA.
They also partner with other news organizations like Mother Jones, and give shoutouts to their sponsors.
Case Study: LAist, Non-Profit
Another LA-based local outlet that incorporated vertical video into their reporting is LAist, a non-profit, community-funded radio station in Southern California. With their hyperlocal reporting on culture, food, traffic in and around LA, and politics, they've built a loyal audience across public radio, a website, and, more recently, social video.
On Instagram, its larger platform with 145K followers, LAist posted 682 reels between July 2025 and July 2026. Views ranged from roughly 1,200 to 585K, with a median of 6,700 views per reel and a median engagement rate of 2.13%. On TikTok, where LAist has a smaller following of 44K, the outlet has posted 300 videos since it began posting at the end of September 2025, with a lower median of about 1,000 views per video but a notably stronger median engagement rate of 7.47%.
As a nonprofit, audience-funded outlet, LAist's monetization strategy for vertical video looks different from LA Taco's. Instead of building toward paid membership through social media first reporting, LAist layers a wide range of revenue on top of its editorial content: one-time and sustaining donations, a business membership program, an annual gala, corporate sponsorships, website ads, and even vehicle donations. Vertical video becomes one more channel for surfacing these asks rather than a dedicated funnel of its own.
The most common call to action on their vertical video is a straightforward donation appeal, often appearing as on-screen text or caption copy like “Be part of keeping local news strong: LAist.com/Donate”, and recurring seasonal pushes like a spring pledge drive or a dedicated Love Month giving series. LAist has also experimented with more interactive call to actions: in one video, the outlet asked viewers to comment "donate" in exchange for a membership link, a tactic that, unfortunately, drew no comments at all.
Sponsorship and paid content show up frequently and in varied forms: straightforward sponsored ads, "from our sponsor" reads for local businesses like a Dignity Health cardiovascular care spot, branded and sponsored event promotion, and paid ticketed-event promotion for LAist's own programming, such as an author talk with Samin Nosrat presented in partnership with a ticketing platform. Freelance writers also occasionally use video to market their own LAist articles, extending the outlet's reach into individual bylines.
Case Study: The Role of Local Creators
Especially on a hyperlocal level, the line between creators and newsrooms can get blurry. According to this year’s Reuters Digital News Report, 27% of respondents globally get some news from news-focused individual creators or influencers. These figures are additive, given that most people who get news from creators use them alongside traditional media, and only 3% rely solely on creators for their news.
For creators, covering local news can be seen as a passion project or service to their community, but producing content consistently still requires some kind of investment of time and resources, given that even a 60-second video can take hours of research, scripting, and editing.
For Carldez Goodley, better known as @hoodanchoreye it is already a full-time job. He has been creating content covering local news around Atlanta since 2024 and has 364K followers on Instagram. According to our data analysis, he posted 840 unique videos on Instagram between July 2025 and July 2026, all landing in the 80K–300K view range, which is a significantly higher baseline than most local news accounts, with several posts breaking into the millions. He also maintained a median engagement rate of 6.5% over that period.
So what can media outlets learn from that reach? Look at Goodley's business model, which monetizes vertical video through in-video advertising and merchandising. He's essentially taking the same approach as television, but with a social-media storytelling style: short, raw, in-the-moment content. Some of his sponsors are law firms, healthcare providers, and a fast food chain.
He frames content around local breaking news and an on-site perspective, and several of his videos include street interviews with subjects. According to Goodley, even though he started making videos as “a joke” because he happened to be in the right place at the right time, the community trusts him now because he "lets them talk." His formula is a branded microphone, a tie, and the continuity of reporting every day, and it's built him a loyal community and a working revenue strategy.
Other local creators, such as @hood_news_75, who reports on Cincinnati, Ohio, take a different approach. With more than 373,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok, Lamenuel Scales’ videos average 15K–100K views and achieve a median engagement rate of 5%. Scales's work began as comedy for social media, and he now covers house fires, landlord disputes, car accidents, and everything in between for Cincinnatians. He still delivers the news with a tint of absurd comedy, which became his brand, but he's also built a content structure that gives the audience something to expect daily, with a tone and personality they identify with: a similar script, language, jokes, headlines, and graphics, all opening with "What is going on? It is your boy Hood News 75." Like many others, Scales monetizes his content through partnerships with local brands, merchandising, and Cash App, where loyal users can donate money by clicking on his link in bio.
What Can Media Outlets Learn From News Creators?
According to the Reuters Digital Report, audiences believe creators are more entertaining, easier to understand, and more relatable than traditional news outlets. However, people think creators are less trustworthy and less impartial than media outlets. Perhaps that is what newsrooms bring to the table: experienced and trained journalists, ethical standards, the credibility of an established outlet, and fact-checked information.
Some media outlets are already exploring the creator approach. In early 2026, The Wall Street Journal launched The Talent Lab, described as “an initiative designed to upskill and champion the voices of The Wall Street Journal journalists.” In other words, a team that focuses on strengthening reporters' personal brands.
But not every staff writer is a born host, so the Daily Mail and the Washington Post launched their own initiatives to work with creators instead. In late 2025, the Daily Mail hired more than 20 creators to produce between 10 and 20 long- and short-form pieces per day and to attract partnership opportunities. The Washington Post launched its own creator-focused platform and network, WP Creator, which operates as a separate unit outside traditional news and focuses on building personalities and storytelling.
On the flip side, initiatives such as the News Creator Corps took the other approach: training creators with journalism skills so they can publish responsibly and safeguard democracy. The group offers fellowships and programs for people already building communities on digital platforms, helping them develop content sourcing, fact-checking, and production skills.
Reach, Branding, and The Revenue Question
In contrast to successful solo creators, vertical video might not pay for itself for most outlets. However, what vertical video can reliably deliver is reach and branding. It can build and strengthen awareness for a news organization, what it does, and put it in front of people who wouldn’t otherwise encounter it.
LAist is a useful case here specifically because its model of audience support delivery may be less correlated to social media engagement than for-profit examples. That tracks with how public media has long thought about donations: People give because they value that the organization exists, not necessarily because a specific video converted them at a specific moment.
Newsrooms shouldn’t be afraid of TikTok, Instagram, or vertical video in general, rather they should regard them as tools. They don’t have to replace anything, but they are more ways to build visibility.
Content Counts, and It Pays Off
All of these examples clearly show: You can't talk about the business benefits of vertical video without addressing content strategy and storytelling. There is no platform with audience feedback as direct as it is on social media. You find out within hours, sometimes minutes, whether something landed. Growing views and engagement on vertical video means listening to that feedback constantly. Strong hooks, sharp topic choices, platform-appropriate editing, hosting, and language all drive views up. More views tend to bring more engagement, and more engagement raises the odds of something going viral. A bigger surface area builds stronger branding for your newsroom, and a familiar face or voice can turn a one-off viewer into someone who recognizes the outlet and comes back for more. People who see your work regularly and like what they see are more likely to eventually subscribe, donate, or become a member – and add to your funnel.
The business case runs in parallel with the editorial one. If you're working from an impact model, stronger content means broader reach for the journalism itself. If your revenue depends on sponsors, ads, or promotional partnerships, covering what people actually care about means more reach, which means more ad impressions, which means more money. Either way, the same principle holds: if the headline and the storytelling don't hook someone in the first three seconds, they might not stop scrolling and never make it into the funnel at all. Wise content decisions, engaging format development, and clear business outcomes aren't separate goals but move together.
While many local news outlets are active on social media and regularly publish vertical videos, few consistently achieve meaningful reach. The reasons vary, but two common challenges are topic selection and storytelling. Even important stories can underperform if they aren't framed in a way that immediately captures attention and keeps viewers watching.
Done well, vertical video can expand reach, deepen community engagement, strengthen reader loyalty, and open up new revenue streams for local newsrooms, on top of the more fundamental journalistic value of showing up where audiences already are and keeping them informed.
Reach, Revenue, Trust
Strip away the platform jargon, and the return for a hyperlocal newsroom comes down to three things.
First, a reach that owned platforms can’t match on their own. LA Taco and LAist are both hitting audiences on Instagram and TikTok many times larger than their newsletter or website traffic, and a growing share of that audience, especially under 30, isn’t coming to the website first, or at all. Second, a direct line to support: outlets and creators alike can build their donation and membership funnels through social video, turning views into a recruiting channel for the thing that actually pays their bills. Third, local outlets have credibility that creators often can’t fully replicate. Showing up on vertical video with the same fact-checking standards as everywhere else is a competitive advantage.
Local newsrooms will benefit from being present where their audience already is. They can build a recognizable brand through a consistent logo and visual identity, a face or voice people learn to expect, and a personality that comes through video after video. Showing up consistently enough, and personally enough, is what turns reach into a relationship. The goal is not virality for its own sake, but the kind of regular, trusted contact with a community that used to happen on printed pages and evening news broadcasts, and now happens on a phone screen instead.
For a hyper-local newsroom, vertical video can simply become a second front door into the audience relationship that everything else – subscriptions, donations, community trust – is built on/relies on.
None of this comes with a guarantee. Vertical video might not pay for itself in most newsrooms, at least not directly. However, the reach and branding they can gain through vertical video are worth pursuing, even without a clear line from view count to revenue dollar.
Vertical video and the creator economy are here to stay, at least for a while. So the real question for newsrooms isn't whether to be on these platforms, but how to fold vertical video into a business strategy that actually drives revenue, rather than producing it without a clear goal or tone behind it. If that goal is clear, and the content genuinely fulfills a community's need, it will do its work.
