The playbook behind one of the fastest-growing social-first newsrooms
News Movement editor in chief Rebecca Hutson outlined the company's platform-native storytelling strategy.
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.
Building a Multi-Brand Media Company
While The News Movement remains the flagship newsroom, the broader company has evolved into a portfolio of brands under a parent entity called Caliber.
Today the organization includes:
The News Movement – the flagship social-first newsroom
The Recount – a U.S. politics brand focused on analysis and commentary
Capsule – a lifestyle newsletter and social brand aimed at “zillennials”
Caliber Collective – a creative agency producing social content for brands
The expansion reflects the company’s ambition to become more than just a social news outlet.
Capsule, for example, focuses on culture and lifestyle topics such as fashion, relationships, and personal essays. Hutson describes it as “the News Movement’s bigger, cooler older sister,” with a weekly newsletter and accompanying social presence.
Meanwhile, The Recount — which the company acquired shortly after Hutson joined — specializes in political commentary and analysis, including recurring video formats on YouTube.
Together, the brands form a diversified media portfolio that can serve different audiences and revenue streams.
The “Triple-Threat” Social Journalist
Inside The News Movement newsroom, the structure looks very different from a traditional media company.
Rather than separating reporters, producers, and video editors, most journalists perform all three roles.
“Our journalists are kind of ‘triple threats,’” Hutson explained. “These are journalists who can produce and can also shoot and edit themselves.”
The newsroom has roughly 20 editorial staff split between London and New York. A typical journalist may pitch a story, gather sources, shoot video, edit the footage, and publish it directly to social platforms.
For more complex projects — such as longer documentaries — a specialized production team helps with editing and post-production.
This structure dramatically speeds up the publishing cycle. Instead of a story passing through multiple departments, a single journalist can take it from idea to publication.
It also ensures the team understands the nuances of social-platform storytelling.
“They’re very familiar with what makes a good Instagram or TikTok video — the pacing, the production values, all of that,” Hutson said.
Why Each Social Platform Requires a Different Strategy
One of the biggest lessons the company learned over the past four years is that each platform behaves differently.
Early on, the newsroom took a “spray and pray” approach: produce a video and distribute it everywhere.
Today, the strategy is far more tailored.
“We know our audiences behave in very different ways on those platforms,” Hutson said.
For example:
TikTok performs best with raw news footage and immediate updates.
Instagram favors presenter-led storytelling and carousel explainers.
YouTube Shorts tends to accept a wider variety of formats.
That means the same story might appear in multiple formats depending on the platform.
A breaking political moment, for example, might be published as raw footage on TikTok while being turned into a swipeable Instagram explainer summarizing key facts.
The newsroom publishes roughly five or six pieces of content per day on Instagram alone, allowing the team to quickly experiment with different formats.
Because the team monitors performance data closely, they can pivot quickly when algorithms change.
“If Instagram suddenly prefers Reels to carousels, we have the agility to respond,” Hutson said.