YouTube and the new direction of the Spanish press

Abstract

The presence of vídeo in the Spanish press has been acquiring a growing importance in recent years. Younger audiences empathise better with vídeo, which also brings in new income, essential to sustain a business in clear decline. Investments in creating content to be distributed on social networks have grown considerably in all newspapers. On the other hand, the dominant distribution platform, both due to its potential and its flexibility, is still YouTube, since it allows specific channels to be opened. By quantifying the vídeos distributed on YouTube by the newspapers El País, El Mundo, La Vanguardia, El Español, elDiario.es and El HuffPost, and the volume of their views, as well as through personal interviews with their business managers, and an analysis compared with twelve other highly relevant international newspapers (Le Monde, Le Parisien, Figaro Live, Bild, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica, The Guardian, The Guardian News, The Times y Sunday Times, The Washington Post & The New York Times), deduces the strategies of the headlines, the information market trends and the importance that vídeo is acquiring for the survival of journalism companies. We conclude that the development of social networks has become a driver of innovation in the business models of the sector.