Tips from a CNP reporter on using video to bring stories to life

As a community reporter at Southwark News, video is a huge part of my role and is one of the key mediums through which we connect with our local audience. However, my experience filming, editing and sharing video content began much earlier, giving me the tools and love for the world of communication at a young age.

In just a few months at Southwark News, I have not only written numerous community-focused stories, but also translated my own articles into short-form social media videos, with some reaching over a million views. Video journalism allows us to truly humanise the news, showing the people behind the headlines and reaching a far wider audience. It’s become a vital part of my journalism toolkit.

My experience with video started long before I entered a newsroom, but has taken on a brand-new context since starting my NCTJ training and my role at Southwark News. I began creating video content when I was a teenager predominantly via my personal YouTube Channel. Creating content for numerous brands, I matched the content I would create to my daily life and activities at the time. As a student, this centered around study and lifestyle vlogs, which I self-taught myself to film and edit. As I moved through university, my content evolved with me, eventually shifting to TikTok where I now enjoy posting day-in-the-life vlogs. I never expected that something I saw as a hobby would lead me into a career, but the skills I gained from creating content are invaluable when it comes to editing short-form news videos. Having an eye for video production is such an employable skill in the journalism sphere, especially as the transmission of news moves increasingly online.

When I joined Southwark News as a Community Reporter in March, I was lucky to join a fantastic team that already had a strong digital presence on social media. I learnt so much from the team in my first couple weeks, including attending a  ‘video workshop’ educating the wider team on how to craft news videos for social media. Taking this insight and knowledge, my first video (linked here), reached a combined 2.2 million views (1.6 million on Instagram and 600k on TikTok).

We know the media landscape is changing fast. According to Ofcom, over half (52%) of people now consume news through social media, with usage highest among younger audiences. These statistics are telling and can’t be ignored. For early career journalists like myself, I think videojournalism is an increasingly vital part of the job.

‘Storyboarding’ is a tool I have found to be crucial when it comes to planning and editing videos. This is where you loosely block out the general structure of the video on paper and I find it helpful to keep this fluid, using it as a guideline rather than following it rigidly. Ideas and inspiration may arise when editing, or new angles you didn’t think of before filming. When filming the pie and mash video, I   bumped into ‘Honest John’, a local man attempting a pie challenge, purely by accident. The pre-production storyboard didn’t have him in at all, which highlights the importance of being adaptable. As a general rule, news videos should follow the same structure as an article. Discovering your ‘top line’ remains as crucial in video as it does in print, and since you lose the viewers attention so much faster, this needs to hook them immediately.

Video can also be used to ‘spice up’ press releases. For example, this video focused on a pub that opens at 6am in Borough Market. The original source was a press release, but a colleague saw its potential for a video, to both personalise and visualise the story so I went down to film. The video ended up gaining nearly 200k views in total.

Similarly, I try to remember that there’s a key difference between creating influencer-style content and producing videos with a journalistic purpose. This can be hard to distinguish, especially if you consume the latter content on a daily basis. A news video exists to tell a story and should conform to the same standards and accuracy as written content. I try to keep this at the forefront of my mind, both when filming and editing, even if it is for a platform like TikTok.

Southwark News is a local independently owned paper based in the heart of London.  That gives us a wide scope of material we can cover and film, but we are also competing for attention against national organisations that are London based themselves. Video can be used to shine a local lens on national stories. For example, when we heard Katie Price, a well-recognised celebrity, would be starring in a Southwark film, I went straight down to the set to record content. The video I filmed framed the national story and drew viewers in with a catchy top line. Using video helps us cut through the noise and differentiate us as a paper. Every news organisation is different and I believe this is vital to keep in mind your own organisation when filming and editing content for a newspaper’s social media.

Video content can also reach your audience directly and showcasing recognisable places and people in the local area serves to fuel engagement, especially in the comment section. In a local context, this means that you can shed light on communities who don’t have a platform themselves. I covered an exclusive story on South Dock Marina, a community of boat-dwellers in London’s oldest working dock. I went down to meet the community in person, filming interviews with several residents. The final video gave viewers a sense of the people and place behind the piece, offering a more personal entry point into the written article. It received around 10,000 views across platforms (4,000 on Instagram and 3,000 on TikTok). You can watch the video here.

I am still learning so much when it comes to creating video content, and I discover new ways of doing things every day. I learned early on that what works on one platform might not work on another, and that storytelling always has to come first. Looking back, I never would have expected that something I once saw as a hobby in school would lead me into a journalism career. I’m excited to see what videos I will create next at Southwark News, and how video will continue to play an increasingly important role in the way we consume and share news.

Here are my handles if you would like to keep updated on the videos I make at Southwark News: @eviefjourno on Instagram or @southwarknews on TikTok.