A conversation with Mike Beaudet

Mike Beaudet, an investigative reporter at WCVB and professor at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism, has spent the last seven years researching video innovation and animation for news stations. Now in the third phase of research, Reinventing Local TV News is sending animation fellows to news stations across the Northeast to gather more insights on the effects of animation.

The Innovation in Focus team sat down with Beaudet to learn more about this research and to better understand how animation impacts audience’s perception and understanding of news. He also offers templates that newsrooms can use to start animating in Adobe Premiere.

Dolan: Can you tell us a little more about your research and how you came to focus on animation?

Beaudet: In the first phase of the research, we partnered with six TV stations across the country, and we essentially had them send all their best content. We worked with our students at Northeastern and tried to remix the stories and see if we could create stories that resonate more with people. We used a lot of different attributes, everything from making the stories longer to adding more file footage, historical footage, additional interviews, and then one of the attributes that we included was animation. 

We connected with our research partner Smithgeiger and took the original versions of the stories, compared them to the remix versions and tested them in the markets where the TV stations were. We found that, on hard-news type stories, the remixed versions of these stories with all these different attributes resonated more with viewers, and they were getting more positive responses from viewers. 

Dolan: What were some challenges you faced integrating animation into the newsrooms?

Beaudet: A big question was, how does it fit into the workflow? There was some resistance from the traditional graphic design departments, like: “What is this person doing in the newsroom? We do animation.” But this was someone who was not going to be working on commercials and promos and all this other animation. They’re really going to be solely focused on the editorial side.

Also, the newsrooms, as you might imagine, wanted more animation, wanted it all the time. But that doesn’t necessarily work with the practicalities of animation because it takes time to produce this content. Over a year in both stations, we figured out that – for the quick stuff – it was easier to just go to your hub, or it was easier to go to whoever was producing graphics. And it was better for the longer-term, investigative stuff, pieces that also might be topics that would be used repeatedly. For example, when we were covering the pandemic, a lot of that content could be repurposed and reused.

Dolan: And how do you decide which stories you want to include an animation with? 

Beaudet: You don’t want to force it. In the first phase of our experiment, we were putting animation in some of those feature/soft news stories. It was almost like bells and whistles. It wasn’t really adding to the content of the piece. And so we tried to think of something different in phase two. 

Both WCVB and WLS have investigative units, and they’re doing a lot of work with data. In those units, they’re always trying to visualize and make those potentially complicated stories simpler. So I think those were a natural fit. We also worked a lot on longer term pieces, not necessarily just investigative, but pieces that took a little more time, and were lacking in visuals. So we tried to see if we could find a story that is a great story but needs some help propping up the visuals.

Dolan: What do you hope the audience gains from these animation videos?

Beaudet: It was hard to measure it just based on one station’s metrics, based on ratings and based on digital metrics that you might get through the web team. But we were able to effectively measure it when we partnered with Smithgeiger. We designed this survey with them, and specifically had some people look at the animated version first and some people would look at the non animated version first, but they would see both versions. We also wanted to test memorability. That’s one of the most interesting findings of all of it. I think that makes the case for why we should use animation. 

We quizzed people on a number of the stories and asked them questions. After they would watch the stories, we were able to prove that people could remember the facts of the story better when they saw the animated version. So to me, that was sort of the slam dunk in saying “this is actually helping people comprehend a news story.” 

But then the other finding that was really interesting was that the younger demographic, 18 to 24, were able to show that they appreciated the animation more than any other age group.

Dolan: Do you have recommendations or advice for newsrooms who want to try out animation, but may not have a staff member to focus on this?

Beaudet: We had one of the animators create templates that people can download and use, that can help people who are using Adobe Premiere get started and see some of the possibilities with animation in their newsrooms.There are also some easier programs that someone can use that doesn’t require an animator that others have recommended, such as Canva’s Magic Animate, Apple’s Motion, Pencil2D and Blender (more complex).

Dolan: What are you thinking about in terms of the future of animating? I know, especially with new technologies, like generative AI tools, there are all these tools coming out. What are you thinking about that?

Beaudet: I do think AI is obviously going to play a huge role in how we produce content. And while I don’t know specifically how it’s going to impact the ability to produce animation, I can only imagine that it’s going to make it easier. But it’s always that fine line, right? We want to empower everyone to tell the best stories possible, but we also don’t want to put people out of jobs. I think animation could potentially be a sweet spot, because for a lot of newsrooms, hiring an animator specifically to work in an editorial position isn’t economically feasible. So I think that it may be a smart use of AI down the road if we can do it, and also respect the work of artists, and do it in a way that makes the ability to create the content easier, while also respecting the space of creators, as well. 

Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

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Cite this article

Dolan, Olivia (2024, Dec. 17). News through animation can improve memorability, engagement. Reynolds Journalism Institute. Retrieved from: https://rjionline.org/news/news-through-animation-can-improve-memorability-engagement/