One of the most obvious features that makes online news publishing stand out from paper reporting is its ability to present video. According to a new survey by D S Simon, reported by SocialTimes.com, news websites are increasingly taking advantage of this feature; 85 percent of online media websites are now using video to cover the news. The growth has been immense: 33 percent more media outlets are now using online video than a year ago.

The report identified two main reasons for this development. Firstly, news consumers, with shorter and shorter attention spans, often prefer videos to long articles. Secondly, from media websites' point of view, online video adds another dimension to monetization: it is possible to sell pre- and post-roll adds, for example, to go with video content.

As consumers are getting more and more used to online video news coverage, it also puts pressure on YouTube, the web's most notable video resource, to present its content from the news' point of view. As Nieman Journalism Lab reported, CitizenTube, YouTube's news and politics channel, partnered in January with Storyful, a start-up focused on curating the real-time web to improve its content.

The collaboration began as an experiment, which the Nieman article saw as a positive sign: it shows that forward-looking media companies are coming together out of their own initiative to work and experiment on the new ways news is reported.

Speaking about CitizenTube and the partnership in an interview with Beet.TV, Olivia Ma, YouTube's news manager, mentioned Storyful's work on covering protests in Egypt as an example of the results of the collaboration. In addition to having plenty of raw video footage uploaded onto the site by regular users, Ma highlighted the fact that over 300 mainstream news organisations actively upload content on YouTube. The site, therefore, features news material from both amateurs and professional news outlets.

YouTube and Storyful's collaboration seems to reflect the growing trend of curation. It was recently reported that Storify, an online tool designed for social media curation, became available to the public. YouTube has noted also earlier that people are curating its video content.

As for the future, it appears that video is here to stay. Douglas Simon, CEO of D S Simon, described the survey's results as illustrating "the shift from textual or static communications to video communications by media websites." And based on the fact that nearly four-fifths of respondents said that they would watch even more videos in the following year, it seems that the trend's pinnacle has yet to be reached.

Sources: SocialTimes.com, Nieman Journalism Lab, Beet.TV
Image source: Viralblog