Opinion: If you didn’t watch the election returns on YouTube, you might be a Luddite – Deseret News

Opinion: If you didn’t watch the election returns on YouTube, you might be a Luddite  Deseret News

A version of this article was first published in the Right to the Point newsletter. Sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox every Wednesday morning and to vote in subscriber-only polls. Fans of the center-right media company The Dispatch didn’t tune into Fox News or one of the big three networks for election results last night. They tuned into YouTube. It was there that Steve Hayes and Sarah Isgur offered commentary with an assist from Jonah Goldberg, David French and others. The Dispatch team had plenty of competition. Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi also held forth on YouTube, as did Jim Acosta, formerly of CNN, and a host of other journalists and analysts.

This was, as Rashida Jones, formerly of MSNBC, told The Guardian, “the content creator election” — midterms marked by coverage that was distinctly different from formats of the past. As CBS alumnus Scott McFarlane told The Guardian in advance of the election: “There will be no teleprompters and no scripts. It’s straight to the point, direct, conversational and heavy on original reporting.” Sort of like news delivered via podcast. Even networks jumped on the YouTube bandwagon; C-SPAN, for example, simulcast its election coverage there. Plenty of people still tuned into the networks, of course, but YouTube has emerged as a formidable contender to traditional TV.