While the exact beginning point of journalism is subject to debate, one thing remains clear; there's a continuous evolution of methodology and processes.

For over two centuries, the for-profit business model that sustained local journalism in the United States has been challenged by technological and economic forces. For years, local news outlets have struggled to survive because of advertising-based models, but the COVID-19 pandemic and recession have created an "extinction-level" threat. 

The Reuters Institute has reported an upsurge in the number of people that actively avoid the news. News avoidance is a growing problem that threatens not just the media industry but democracy at large. While news avoidance still existed in earlier years, the COVID-19 pandemic has fuelled this trend and worsened an already bad situation.

In early 2020 when news of the pandemic first hit, most of the world sought answers and information on the pandemic from news sources. Initially, there was an increase in news consumption, but this changed as the pandemic progressed. Some people, feeling stressed and helpless about the situation, began to avoid the news because of the anxiety it caused them. 

In this article, we will be discussing news avoidance, its effects, and how to get back the news avoidant consumers.

We live in a time when technology rules everything around us, and, for the most part, it has helped all of us live better lives. It has done everything from keeping us connected to making us healthier, but one of the most significant changes technology has brought is how we consume our news. Now, more than ever, people are getting their news from video sources, which is fantastic because it allows more information to be shared in condensed chunks.

Determining which news stories are misinformation versus which are fair and accurate is a challenging task. Fact checking -- which used to be the sole responsibility of news outlets, is beginning to fall on the shoulders of the audience.  In today’s flood of misinformation, ensuring the veracity of news content and sources is more critical than ever.

There’s no doubt that the world at large has changed drastically since March 2020. With COVID-19 sweeping the globe, change has become the constant in our lives. Work became remote, people became quarantined, businesses suffered, and news media consumption took several interesting turns.

The Media Research Center (MRC) is a Conservative media watchdog group on a mission to neutralize media bias. Formed in 1987, the organization monitors dozens of hours of news every single day across 10-12 channels. In this blog, we will take a brief look at how SnapStream helped the MRC reimagine its archiving and workflows, make the transition to digital, and finally say goodbye to the VCR.

Good journalism is a superpower. 

With current events constantly evolving, journalism has taken a different road over the last several years. However, there's one crucial aspect that has stayed the same: storytelling. Journalism will inform, evoke emotion, and provide entertainment all in one effort. Because of its complex nature, it's a difficult art to master. We recently sat down with John Battelle, the CEO and Co-Founder of The Recount Media, to discuss how journalism has evolved and where it's headed.

Each customer uses our news media video workspace in their own way, but it's always easy to see when trending moments command universal attention (you know, like billionaires heading to space).

As usual, July 2021 was packed with big news stories and our customers were all over them. Content producers were relentless in their quest to curate powerful video moments.

For the month of July, SnapStream users conducted 31,687 searches about people and events around the globe. Let's check out some of the biggest search topics.