New VC Logo, Same Mission.

THE NEWSROOM COLLECTIVE

The Newsroom Collective is a community of local US newsrooms using video to expand their audiences, increase their revenue, and enhance their journalistic impact. Powered by Knight Foundation.

About the Newsroom Collective

Launching October, 2024

Made possible by Knight Foundation, in alignment with Press Forward, VC’s Newsroom Collective supports local newsrooms across the United States with training, tools, and talent to expand their audience engagement, diversify their revenue streams, and enhance their journalistic impact through video.


Join the Newsroom Collective to:

  • Expand your audience and reach.
  • Develop new revenue streams.
  • Empower your editorial teams with advanced journalism tools. Bring your reportage to younger generations.
  • Reach communities who don’t regularly consume print stories.
  • Set up your newsroom for success in a rapidly changing, visual-first media landscape.


Newsroom Collective membership provides:

  • Strategic Guidance: VC’s partners and coaches share practical strategies in virtual sessions that holistically hit the NC’s three pillars of video growth: editorial development, audience development, and business development. Sessions occur monthly or bimonthly depending on feedback and needs, with additional resources offered for those unable to attend live.

  • Community + Connections: Member newsrooms are brought together across the United States to virtually exchange knowledge and progress, access VC's robust network of local video talent, and foster collaboration at VC’s in-person local hubs.

  • Production Support: Newsrooms’ staff and contractors — working in video, photo, and print — are supported with monthly professional development sessions to hone their craft and produce compelling, emotionally gripping stories that resonate with the audiences they serve.

  • Additional Support: Newsroom Collective members are also eligible to apply to join the Newsroom Collective’s Video Incubator.

To become a Newsroom Collective member, please complete:
The Newsroom Collective's

Video Incubator

Applications for the 2024 Newsroom Collective Incubator are currently closed.

Within the Newsroom Collective, a limited number of newsroom members are encouraged to join NC’s Video Incubator, a five- to nine-month program that offers in-depth support to accelerate your newsroom’s video strategy.

Through a mix of bi-monthly (twice monthly) group calls, tailored sessions, and resource sharing, your team is advised on video across editorial, audience, and business development. Whether your goal is to begin using video or enhance how you use it, the Incubator fosters collaboration and alignment across departments for maximum synergy and impact. Additional offerings include editorial skills development to advance your journalists’ usage of video, as well as access to strategic partnerships and regional networking opportunities to build capacity.

VC Atlanta: a post-screening moment
VCer Alex Clark streaming from Brooklyn
VC New York: gathering beginnings
VC Pittsburgh: a gathering in progress

Why Video?

Video is the most powerful tool we have to engage and inform; it delivers authentic, intimate, and emotionally captivating stories that go beyond photography and the written word.

Today’s audience habits prove it: adults spend over 17 hours per week watching video online; in social feeds, videos are 50% more likely to be shared than any other medium. Almost half of all U.S. consumers watch online videos every day, and young people primarily get their news through video. It is undeniably the present and inevitably the future.

As your newsroom explores new avenues to widen your reach and advance local journalism in the digital age, video is an unmatched tool to increase your audience, strengthen your marketing capabilities, and more deeply reach the communities you serve.

But bringing video into your newsroom requires a unique approach: it can be costly, technically nuanced, and intimidating to start — or expand. We understand that and are here to help you confidently streamline the process and find solutions through a community ecosystem of support.

The Newsroom Collective is a strategic advisor, a talent finder, and newsroom-to-newsroom support system. Along with your fellow newsrooms from across the US, join the community. Join the movement.

“The Video Consortium is best in class when it comes to understanding how to produce compelling video journalism and documentary film in partnership with local newsrooms, and we are thrilled to support an expansion of their work."

— Duc Luu, Director of Sustainability Initiatives/Journalism, Knight Foundation

Join us!

Express Interest

The Newsroom Collective and NC's Video Incubator launch October, 2024.

For any questions, please email the team at newsrooms@videoconsortium.org.

Summer 2024 Announcement: A Win for Video Journalism

Dear VC members, friends, and collaborators,

We’ve got some monumental news. Today, we are thrilled to announce a set of major steps forward for VC, for the field of video journalism, and for you — all made possible thanks to a generous investment from Knight Foundation.

With Knight’s support, made in alignment with Press Forward (a national funding initiative established to revitalize local news), VC will expand our capacity to deepen impact and strengthen video as a core component of local journalism over the next three years:

  • As we continue to support, connect, and train video journalists and documentary filmmakers, we will now work directly with local newsrooms and publishing platforms across the United States, helping them use video to increase impact and engagement in the communities they serve.
  • Additionally, the Video Consortium will host an in-person annual celebration of video journalism and documentary film. With a solutions-focused approach, our video community — those working at all levels of the industry — will convene to contemplate the present, and look to and imagine the future, of journalism. The inaugural gathering is set to take place in early 2025.

Across the U.S., we are at a pivotal moment: 20 percent of Americans live in news deserts, with little access to reliable local reporting; in just the past 15 years, a quarter of U.S. newspapers have gone out of business; as connections within communities weaken, the vital social ties that knit us all together are showing threads. We know that news is vital, and in our visual-centric world, video is an integral tool for democratically and effectively reaching audiences.

Ironically, while visual-first stories are more necessary than ever, many of those who’ve been hit hardest in waves of recent layoffs are the very people who bring such stories to life. Video is a mainstay, and this grant will help ensure it is powerfully utilized so newsrooms can sustainably forge into the future to effectively reach the next generation and those who, increasingly, may not otherwise get their news through the written word.

As the industry’s leader at the intersection of video journalism and documentary film, VC is perfectly positioned to help make this happen.

We are immensely grateful to Knight Foundation for its partnership, belief in our vision, and integral support of our work. In addition, we want to thank our other funders for their support of our locally rooted, globally driven mission: the Skoll Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Above all, this momentous step forward would not be possible without the hundreds of talented and passionate community organizers who, for the past nine years, have and continue to dedicate their time and talent to bringing our growing community into the future. VC is the people who are telling today’s most important stories and convening in the name of a more cohesive media ecosystem.

The Video Consortium is, now and forever, a connector: a place for creatives to find their people, for individuals and entities to garner knowledge to move society forward, a nexus to hire and get hired, a marketplace for ideas and inspiration. We cannot wait to do more of all of this, with you!

Onwards,

Sky Dylan-Robbins
Founder and Executive Director

May, 2024

Above photos: VC member Caitlin O'Rourke in action, Alex Clark live-streaming behind the scenes, moments from VC members presenting work at local hub gatherings, by Bellyfire Productions; a video journalist filming by Jovaughn Stephens.