Tuesday 8 November 2022
The News Movement is an English-language news outlet with a strong focus on social media. Founded by former executives from Dow Jones and the BBC, it employs 30 people based in London and New York, and has experienced fast growth across platforms since its launch at the beginning of 2021.
At the time of writing, it has 63,000 followers on TikTok, 19,000 subscribers on YouTube, 6,500 followers on Twitter and 5,100 on Instagram. Most of these people are very young: more than half of their TikTok views and half of their YouTube views come from people under 24. According to a recent piece published by Adweek, the News Movement plans on using branded content, collaborations with companies to produce their social content and digital tipping and micropayments as revenue streams.
In October 2022 and after a few months in Beta mode, the News Movement officially launched in the United States. I spoke to Head of Audience Valentina Park about what this launch means, what's like working on social media, and what makes the News Movement stand out.
Q. You recently launched the News Movement in the US. Why?
A. For us, it was a curtains-up moment on all of the work that we've been doing. We've been technically live in what we call Beta for the last nine to 10 months, testing and learning what works. So this was a chance for us to show the world what we've been up to and bring attention to it. We did an advertising campaign in New York, and we did creator campaigns, where we had creators in the UK and in the US speak to the News Movement.
We redesigned the site, we put out new creative assets. We also announced a partnership with [music company] UnitedMasters: when you think about audio and visual, they always tend to go hand in hand, so we’re trying to bring that back with that partnership so that we can put a soundtrack to the news. And then we had an event in New York, where our journalists and our editor-in-chief got to tell the group about how the News Movement builds stories and what kind of stories we cover.
Q. What makes you stand out from the mainstream news media?
A. I don't think it's old media versus new media. I think the things that make us different are the way in which we focus our attention on trying to understand how people are consuming information today, where they're doing it, and what that means. And that means that we're on social platforms, which is why we're social-first, and we try to take a look at the behaviours and the habits, and at the way in which things are consumed. That's what really sets us apart.
In terms of what we cover, we make sure that listening is first and foremost. So, rather than saying here's a news agenda that we're going to share with you, it's thinking, what do these audiences actually care about? What do they want to be? What are they already actively talking about? What do we know that they will be interested in engaging with? So inviting them in.