The Washington Post’s PostTV video initiative will stop presenting information as shows and move to “easily digestible segments,” Washington Post spokesperson Kris Coratti tells Poynter in an email.
“Since the launch of PostTV the team has learned a lot about how users are consuming video, so they are restructuring a bit to reflect that,” she writes. “These changes are a natural evolution, and they have always said they were going to continue to iterate on the product.”
The Post launched shows including “In Play,” featuring Chris Cillizza and Jackie Kucinich, and “On Background,” featuring Nia-Malika Henderson, this past summer. The new segments will feature “the same staff and personalities viewers have come to know,” Coratti said. “They will also start expanding their areas of coverage beyond strictly politics.”
Coratti didn’t have a timetable for the changes but said, “I would imagine this is going to start soon.”
The Post announced its TV initiative in January and launched it in June. In September, The New Republic’s Laura Bennett wrote an assessment of its first months, saying, “The main lesson of PostTV may be that making television is harder than it looks.”
It’s the sort of thing true-blue ink-stained newspaper types hate to acknowledge: Putting on a television show involves a specific skillset—you can’t conjure that TV intangible called personality out of thin air. In other words, you can’t just drag a reporter out of a newsroom and turn him into a “personality.”
Brook Silva-Braga, who hosted a PostTV show called “The Fold,” left in September.
Related: Why the time is right for The Washington Post & others to boost video initiatives
