How do local newspapers compete in an influencer world when we are trying to accomplish the same goal? You bring in the experts.

That’s what Newsday did by elevating the social profile of in-house experts — our reporters — to create social-first vertical video content that resonated with younger and diverse audiences across our platforms.

With a personality-driven strategy, we identified opportunities in our newsroom to expand our visual coverage. That shift helped us increase our Facebook following by 194% and grow our overall video views across platforms by 51%.

Bringing in the experts

We dialled into the fact that video is favoured in social algorithms and stayed competitive with influencers who resonate with that same target audience. But our experts — in politics, food, transportation, and more — brought facts and background knowledge to content that helped present stories in different, yet social-first, ways.

When we identified a personality-driven strategy, we trained reporters in the newsroom on turning their stories into visual experiences.

We set best practices on grabbing a younger audience by:

1. Having reporters record a video of themselves telling the story like they were FaceTiming with a friend. The conversational approach broke down barriers between journalists and individuals, making our reporters more comfortable on camera.
2. We edited all of the videos. Today, being a reporter doesn’t mean you only write a story; you’re also on TV, social, newsletters, podcasts, etc. We minimised workflow for them and kept our social media creative brains flowing.
3. They told us three major points of the story or something that wasn’t featured in the article. This was exciting for reporters because they got to add something that they learned.
4. Using the platform’s collaboration feature was essential for increasing follower growth, reach, and engagement. This helped reporters build communities where people asked them questions and, hence, went to the experts.

We also emphasised going live on Facebook, since our audience was highly engaged with press conferences and verdicts in high-profile cases.

Satisfying readers’ appetites

We experimented with different approaches, leading to a series called Trendy Bites.

Pre-pandemic, our team showcased chefs making popular foods, but that went away when people weren’t allowed in kitchens for a while. If food influencers talk about viral items, why not show the people behind the trending bite? So we went back to our roots, and this series took off.

We highlighted viral foods and drinks on Long Island in a conversational way with our NewsdayTV anchor, Ken Buffa. Ken spoke to employees, went into the kitchens and taste-tested. We made separate vertical videos on these items, and it helped us get noticed by other audiences on other platforms.

Growth surge

While working with 22 journalists at Newsday, our social team curated 163 personality-driven, social-first videos across our platforms in 2025.

These two major implementations of our strategy this year increased our following across platforms, particularly on Facebook, which has been in decline for at least five years.

On Facebook, we had an increase in followers by 194%, link clicks back to stories on Newsday.com by 76% and video views by 272% between our personality-driven videos and emphasis on lives — resulting in 41.2 million views from the platform alone, breaking a record for the most views to that page, ever.

The strategy increased our overall video views across social platforms by 51%, with over 73 million views from our team in 2025. This is by far the most video views we’ve had at Newsday, with a record-breaking month in November at 10.8 million views.

The increase in Facebook was incredible, but these implementations also grew our other platforms significantly. Our Instagram pages grew by 132%, TikTok by 50%, YouTube by 22%, and we had an 8% increase in digital subscription sales coming directly from our social-first videos.

As we continue navigating the video world on social media in 2026, we plan to build on this concept with more conversational, visual opportunities, train more reporters in this process, and build a deeper relationship with our followers to break down the barrier between publisher and reader.

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