View the original video at StLToday.com

Matt Singer is CEO of Videolicious, a Knight Foundation investment through its venture capital initiative, the Knight Enterprise Fund. This is part four of five in a series exploring ways journalists are using Videolicious to enhance storytelling. Videolicious is available for iOS. READ THE COMPLETE SERIES

“Atlanta Journal-Constitution engages readers with Videolicious reports” by Matt Singer on Knight Blog, 12/22/14

“St. Louis Post-Dispatch uses Videolicious to help increase audience” by Matt Singer on Knight Blog, 12/15/14

“Videolicious expands storytelling at the Los Angeles Times” by Matt Singer on Knight Blog, 12/08/14

“KCCI reporter uses Videolicious to hep promote stories” by Matt Singer on Knight Blog, 12/01/14

“Videolicious helps add depth to local reports at the San Francisco Chronicle” by Matt Singer on Knight Blog, 11/25/14

What do community expertise, Plexiglas, and an iPhone mean for the future of newsroom video? The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has combined these ingredients to create a hyperefficient video-creation engine that’s driving audience growth and increasing sponsorship revenue.

Because video is so important to its audience, the Post-Dispatch has pursued innovative video types and created them in multiple ways. “There’s not just one particular type of video that readers like to look at,” says Post-Dispatch Video Director Gary Hairlson.  Hairlson compares the paper’s offerings to a “video buffet” featuring everything from short journalist videos created in the field to more complex video series built in the newsroom and associated with the paper’s weekly Go! Magazine.

One such series is Go! Editor Gabe Hartwig’s “Go! Sneak Peek,” which promotes the print magazine’s upcoming entertainment stories. It offers an opportunity to give the audience great visual content while drawing visitors to the paper’s website. Add in sponsorship opportunities, and “it’s making money for us,” says Hairlson.

Once the week’s copy is ready, Hartwig writes a script to promote the lead stories, collects online press footage and photographs, and stops by the paper’s studio desk to put it all together on an iPhone running Videolicious. Videolicious’s automatic video editing, says Hartwig, makes “the process of shooting and editing really quick. It’s so much easier than iMovie.”

Hairlson is excited about the video creation skills that colleagues such as Hartwig have developed; he especially praises their efficiency. During in-house production, he says, “the lights are on for maybe 10 minutes” total for each story edit. The more the journalists create videos, the better those videos look—and the faster they’re posted. Hairlson also calls Videolicious’ integration with the paper’s online video platform a “godsend.” Being able to send finished videos directly to the platform “saves a lot of time and a lot of steps.”

Hartwig encourages other journalists, “even reporters like me who have no previous experience with a camera,” to start making videos: “Don’t be afraid to try it out. You can do it a couple of times, you can piece together the shots that work, and if it doesn’t work you can do it again. We’ve learned a lot along the way.”