The race is on to recast the newscast

While the big three networks struggle to adapt to the world of mobile, on-demand delivery, a number of experiments are under way that seek to redefine the form and delivery of Web-based video journalism, and in the process to reinvent the newscast for the 21st century.

Some major print outlets are among the most committed of these video pioneers, as they try to turn their readers into viewers. Travel guides, live sportscasts, Google+ Hangouts—the near-future of the professionally produced newscast looks like a potato-sack race to an uncertain destination, in which the hoped-for prize is higher ad rates and greater audience engagement. The common hurdles for these efforts—whether on a tablet, a smartphone, or the Web—are how to produce video of sufficiently high quality at relatively low costs (compared with network TV), and how to habituate people to watching news in these novel ways. It’s a Cannonball Run to the future of video journalism. The winner gets the audience demographic that needs to Google that reference.