What can journalism learn from recipe videos?

This article is from our community spotlight section, written by and for our journalism community.

We want to hear about your challenges, breakthroughs and experiences. Want to contribute? Get in touch and help shape the discussion around the future of journalism.

I watch way too many recipe videos on Instagram. And I've noticed a shift that newsrooms can learn from.

In 2018, the traditional "hands and pan" format was king. No one spoke to camera. There wasn’t even any voiceover. In other words, there was “no personality attached”. As a Guardian article from that year stated: "On screen personalities can be divisive, but with these you're not buying into a person, you're purely there to look at the food."

There used to be something here that couldn't be migrated - please contact us at info@journalism.co.uk if you'd like to see this updated!

The advantages for scale were obvious. You could enjoy the content regardless of what language you spoke. Views were counted in the billions.

Now those same videos will at the very least have a cameo from the chef at the end, invariably tucking into the food, often sloppily. Whether conscious or not, there’s a collective effort to show that these food videos have been made by an identifiable creator. Which makes sense, as audiences are increasingly wondering if what they’re seeing might be AI-generated.

There used to be something here that couldn't be migrated - please contact us at info@journalism.co.uk if you'd like to see this updated!

Social news videos from the same era had a similar grammar. At a similar point in the digital video arc, I was head of digital in a UK broadcast newsroom. We were early to grasp that our videos needed to meet social media audiences where they were at - and at that point, the majority of consumption was with the sound off, and while viewers were mobile.

We also wanted to show viewers that our digital content had been made for them from the very first frame, which meant heavily re-editing the television reports. Correspondents talking were often cut out because we thought our viewers would be watching on the bus with the sound off. Many of those on screen reporters were irritated, justifiably. Big branded text was in.

There used to be something here that couldn't be migrated - please contact us at info@journalism.co.uk if you'd like to see this updated!

It was a short-sighted over-correction. We couldn’t anticipate how the pendulum would swing back to the point where individuals would be trusted so much more than brands. Or that the industry would retrench so much that experienced individuals being sent out on stories would be a competitive advantage, rather than a norm. Or that less than a decade later, machines would be on the verge of being able to create the text-on-screen content that we were making with so much love.

But the consequences of that approach are still being felt now in major newsrooms. Especially when coupled with an understandable, long-running reluctance to appear to make the correspondent the story. The reporter ‘piece to camera’ would often appear right at the end of a 2’30 television package - used to pull together the part of the story that couldn’t be conveyed by the interviewees or the images. It was, if not an afterthought, certainly a final thought.

But digital platforms are now personality-driven mediums. It’s very normal within these spaces to see a person at the top of the video - especially as more people are watching with the sound on. (And even if newsrooms are creating content for their owned-and-operated platforms first and foremost, what happens on places like TikTok will still shape viewing habits and expectations.)

And this is where newsrooms can really learn from food video again - where the creator is not just a vehicle, but an integral part of the story. For example, each night, late in the evening, I interrupt my doomscrolling to see a new video from the cook of the Perpetual Stew.

This is exactly what it sounds like - each day the cook adds new ingredients and provides a scheduled update on the state of ‘Stew-theus’. (He does regularly strain out the contents and transfers it between devices). I regularly dive into the comments for the audience participation (‘day 15 of asking for Guinness in the stew’), and the community (the ‘Stew crew’ often rush to be the first to comment.)

The regular format, built around a compelling personality, is what keeps me hooked. And community is incredibly motivational because it’s impossible to automate.

We need to be willing to build formats around people, and publish them on a regular cadence, knowing that if we do, the community will follow. Because the news, by its very nature, is constantly changing, we’re often unwilling to commit to a format.

Years of algorithm changes have also left our digital content in a never-ending experiment mode. But for decades we built programming with a regular schedule and a predictable personality for broadcast - so we can clearly manage it within online video as well.

There are more incremental changes that we can make too. We need to be more willing to lead videos with our journalists on the ground when they have unique insights into the story. We need to stop showing unnamed hosts in digital videos, as broadcasters still tend to do at times. And we need to co-publish more, beyond the top talent, and credit more for all involved, so that there’s more transparency about who is making our digital content and how. That will build trust and remind audiences that our videos are still being made by humans.

If the em dash is becoming a signal that something might have been written by AI. We need to be finding our reverse em dashes - and showing that our content has been made by individual, trusted people, at every opportunity. We need to make the "hands and pan" news content a thing of the past.

Thank you for reading this community spotlight piece. These articles help shape the discussion around the future of journalism. Want to write one for us? We'd love to hear from you