Findings Several themes emerged from the textual analysis and interviews with technology reporters. Two of the most universal themes were that the pivot to video itself did not work and that Facebook influenced publisher decision-making. While there were publications that were able to succeed through pivoting to video such as various Conde Nast properties (e.g. Bon Appétit and Wired) and Vox, the trend was universally acknowledged as short-sighted and unsuccessful. Several texts referred to Facebook as an actor that set up several incentives encouraging video production, ranging from algorithm tweaks which benefited video on the platform to direct subsidization of video content. Several journalists chastised Facebook‟s conduct, writing that the platform acted in a myriad of dishonest or non-transparent ways. One author also called for Facebook to be treated more akin to that of a publisher than simply as a platform. Authors noted that despite the failure of the trend, video had and has a place in the modern media ecosystem. Publishers were urged to approach video production as but one part of a holistic, varied strategy that spans media. Publishers Made Important Decisions Directly Because of Facebook There is one theme prevalent in every analyzed article directly pertaining to the industry‟s pivot to video: publishers made decisions based on the decisions of Facebook or under the immense influence of Facebook as a platform. Madrigal and Meyer (2018) argued that Facebook “set up new and fast-changing incentives for video that altered the online ad market as a whole” in addition to allegedly and “egregiously” overstating the watch time on videos on its platform. Madrigal and Meyer referenced online-centered publications like Upworthy, Mashable, Fusion, Vocativ, and MTV News as publications that fired a combination of print journalists, editors and other non-video journalists as part of efforts to create more video content. Owen (2018) wrote that the pivot to video was “driven largely by a belief that if Facebook was seeing users, in massive numbers, shift to video from text, the trend must be real for news video too,” despite doubts cast by research from outside organizations and from within the publishers themselves. Digiday senior reporter Max Willens chronicled the fate of Mic, a media organization which exploded in popularity after benefitting from waves of traffic from Facebook. Mic drew nearly 18 million unique users in November 2016. This sharply fell to 5.5 million unique users in October 2018. Mic investor Jeremy Liew blamed the decline on Facebook, tweeting “If you live by the sword you die by the sword” (Willens 2018). In a follow-up interview, Willens said Mic figured out what kind of video content performed well on Facebook. “All of a sudden, they probably didn't realize this until it was too late, but they basically quickly got addicted to Facebook as a source of referral traffic,” Willens said. “They found themselves almost riding this big, unpredictable animal basically, and they wanted to avoid getting thrown off. They wound up sort of moving in whatever direction best suited the Facebook beast.” Facebook‟s promotion of video content worked both because of its large audience and because of the platform‟s dominance with regards to digital advertising revenue. Thompson (2017) wrote that Facebook and Google “cinch the bloated web into the straitjacket of vertical content known as results pages and feeds” and they collect “unparalleled information about the interests and aspirations of their users and profit from their roles as digital gatekeepers”. Thompson also reveals that Google and Facebook were projected to account for 61 percent of the total U.S. digital advertising market in 2017. Moore (2017) wrote that Facebook and Google collected 99 percent of all digital advertising revenue growth in the United States as of 2017. This combined with the fact that traditional banner advertising “is cheap and doesn‟t bring in enough money to support the cost of many newsrooms” (Moore 2017) meant that video advertising revenue was an effective lure for publishers. In a follow-up interview, Thompson explicitly framed the cause of the pivot as a confluence of different factors. “For a variety of reasons – the rise of Google, the rise of Facebook, the rise of programmatic advertising, the decline of print advertising – it was very clear that advertising was struggling in terms of a web page model.” Thompson said these factors led to the prospect of video advertising revenue becoming lucrative for media executives, which propelled the pivot to video. It is also worth noting that this stage of the dynamic between Facebook and publishers began with Facebook‟s perception of video consumption as eclipsing text on the platform. Owen (2018) cited Facebook‟s VP for Europe Nicola Mendelsohn who, at a panel in June 2016, said “we‟re seeing a year-on-year decline on text… if I was having a bet I would say: video, video, video.” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reiterated this logic to BuzzFeed News in 2016, and argued “I wouldn‟t be surprised if you fast-forward five years and most of the content that people see on FB and are sharing on a day-to-day basis is video.” Facebook clearly saw video as a trend that was not going away, and aimed to capitalize on it. It was Facebook‟s decisions to prioritize video content, as well as live-streaming content via Facebook Live, on its immense platform that would start as an unofficial start of the media industry‟s pivot to video. Facebook began tweaking its algorithm in 2015 to promote video content (Moore, 2017) and began directly paying certain publishers and personalities to promote Facebook Live videos in March 2016 (Brown, 2018). The Pivot to Video Did Not Work Every article that addressed the pivot to video acknowledged the trend as a failure. Moore (2017) argued that the outlets that pivoted to video served as a cautionary tale. Hundreds lost their jobs “while shiny-object-chasing publishers are no closer to creating cohesive video strategies to replace the traffic those writers were producing”. Moore wrote that publishers lost a majority of their native audiences “in only a year of churning out undifferentiated, bland chunks of largely aggregated „snackable‟ video. That‟s no one‟s idea of success.” Moore cited a Digiday article showing that publishers that pivoted to video during summer 2017 saw a 60 percent drop in traffic in August from the same period one year prior. Facebook Live videos produced by paid partners of the platform dropped by 51 percent on average in the nine months following the end of direct subsidies from Facebook as compared to prior 12-month period, according to Brown (2018). Brown elaborated that it was difficult for publishers to make Facebook Live into a sustainable source of revenue, concluding that Facebook Live wasn‟t the problem but “Facebook‟s inability or unwillingness to figure out how to pay publishers” was. The failure of the industry‟s pivot to video strategy resulted in many articles that were pessimistic or downright apocalyptic in tone. In “How to Survive the Media Apocalypse,” Thompson (2017) lamented that 2017 was “a uniquely miserable year in the media business” due to waves of layoffs and revenue shortfalls at publications from Vanity Fair to The New York Times. He noted that so many media companies had altered their budgets around video production that the pivot became an industry joke, “less like a business strategy and more like end-of-life estate planning.” Kelleher‟s (2017) VentureBeat article, “Let‟s Call „Pivot to Video‟ What It Really Is: Desperation” struck a pessimistic tone, comparing the industry‟s pivot to video to a “running (if cruel) joke”. This article and several others explicitly tied the industry‟s pivot to video with layoffs through examples of layoffs from Fox Sports to Vice to Mic. Kelleher noted that publications either made the changes while “promising more hires in video,” or, as in the case of Mic, outright stating the layoffs were made as part of efforts to help the publisher become “the leader in visual journalism.” Levy (2018) opened his article by sarcastically asking publishers the following question: “Dissatisfied with your audience engagement and revenue? Just fire a chunk of your existing digital staff and „pivot to video.‟” Curtis (2017) provided a personal perspective on the industry‟s pivot to video, citing the effects of layoffs at three publications on him: It‟s grueling to write about this stuff. I have pals at all three places including Grantland alums who were the founding mothers and fathers of the rebooted MTV News. It‟s one thing to think of a video replacing a writer in theory. It‟s another when the writer is Brian Phillips. Curtis also compared the dialogue surrounding the industry‟s pivot to video to gallows humor, yet lamented that “behind all gallows humor stands a gallows” and that as one of his contemporaries pointed out, “‘pivoting to video‟ is just another way to say „layoff‟”. Curtis also expressed fear that the media‟s pivot to video will be a pivot away from good reporting, commentary, and text-based journalism itself. In an October 2020 follow-up interview, Derek Thompson said the pivot to video may be viewed in the future as “a period of really astonishing short-sightedness on the part of a lot of media executives who were just out to chase the hottest thing and forgot how to build sustainable businesses.” Thompson compared the strategy of news media during and prior to the pivot as analogous to “eating free lunch on other people‟s budgets” and argued that the industry relied on platforms like Facebook or other shortcuts in order to attract audiences.