When most news organizations think about digital strategy, they’re usually trying to lure readers back to their websites. The News Movement took the opposite approach.
Founded during the pandemic, the company set out with a simple but radical premise: what if journalism were designed entirely for the platforms where young audiences already spend their time? Instead of publishing articles on a homepage and hoping readers click through from social media, the company built a newsroom that publishes directly to TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts. Stories are produced natively for those platforms — whether as vertical videos, swipeable carousels, or short documentaries — allowing the outlet to meet audiences where they already consume information.
“For young people, for Gen Z specifically and news-adjacent audiences, they are consuming content on TikTok, on Instagram, on YouTube Shorts, and they are not navigating off those platforms to consume news,” said Rebecca Hutson, editor-in-chief of The News Movement. “Our mission was: how do you tell news on those platforms in a way that’s engaging and compelling, but still comes with the rigor and standards of journalism you’d expect from a mainstream news brand?”
Since launching in 2020, the company has expanded into a broader media ecosystem that includes multiple brands, a creative agency, and an experimental creator platform. But its core newsroom still revolves around the original idea: building journalism specifically for social platforms rather than forcing social media to adapt to traditional newsroom formats.
In a recent interview, Hutson explained how the outlet approaches platform-first journalism, why its reporters function as “triple-threat” video journalists who can shoot, edit, and publish their own stories, and how the company tailors coverage differently for each social platform.
Let’s jump into it…
A Startup Born from the Social Media News Gap
The News Movement was co-founded by a group of media and technology veterans who believed the traditional news industry had failed to keep up with the way younger audiences consume information.
The founding team included former BBC news director Kamal Ahmed, CEO Ramin Beheshti, CTO Dion Bailey, and media executive Will Lewis — who later went on to become the publisher of The Washington Post. Together they launched the company in 2020 with the goal of creating a newsroom built around social-native storytelling.
In the early days, the editorial strategy was intentionally simple: explain the biggest news stories of the day in formats that worked inside social feeds.
That often meant stripping stories down to their most fundamental questions. When Russia invaded Ukraine, for example, the outlet didn’t assume viewers had background knowledge of geopolitics.
“The first story that The News Movement did was ‘Where is Ukraine?’” Hutson said. “We started at the very beginning of the story and didn’t assume any prior knowledge.”
The goal was to reach audiences who might never watch a cable news broadcast or read a newspaper homepage. Instead, they encounter news while scrolling through TikTok or Instagram.
Over time, the company has expanded beyond simple explainers into original reporting, short documentaries, and investigations. But the guiding philosophy remains the same: journalism designed for social consumption.
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