News Sites Are Going Vertical — Literally

News Sites Are Going Vertical — Literally

If you've noticed more video popping up on your favorite news websites and apps lately — especially vertical ones — you're not imagining it. Newsrooms are leaning into the smartphone-native format made popular by TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts.

Why the shift? Simple: people don’t like turning their phones. As Evy Kwong from Wired puts it, vertical videos just make for a smoother experience. In a recent piece where Wired reporters followed a Waymo robotaxi, they embedded vertical videos directly into the story — quick clips shot on phones, blending social media energy into serious journalism.

Short vertical videos are already hugely popular — the Reuters Institute found that 66% of people worldwide watch them weekly. But most of that viewing still happens off-site, on social platforms. Now publishers want to bring that same experience to their own websites.

To do that, they’re redesigning homepages to feature vertical video carousels, embedding TikTok-style videos into articles, and training journalists to shoot both vertical and horizontal formats. Reporters are also stepping in front of the camera more often to deliver stories — what The Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel recently dubbed “prestige TikToks.”

“We’re trying to future-proof our brand,” says Liv Moloney, head of video at The Economist. “People should be able to engage with our journalism however they want.”