Johnny Harris is one of the most successful video journalists on YouTube.
He makes millions of views with every video he puts out. And his content doesn’t rely on funny pranks or huge give-aways. He does quality fact-based journalism on important issues and current events. The videos range from international conflicts to weird cultural phenomena. But no matter the topic, he is always able to grab your attention with great visual storytelling.
Here is a quick breakdown of how and why his video work so well.
How Johnny Harris became a video journalist on YouTube
Johnny started as a video journalist at Vox News where he created the successful video series “Vox Borders”. He traveled all around the world making videos about interesting or unusual border regions.
In 2020 he left Vox to focus on his own YouTube channel and created regular videos. He stuck to his beloved topic of borders and international relations but also expanded to other fields of culture and history.
Questions like:
Why do Americans eat dessert for breakfast?
Why is the McDonald's Icecream machine always broken?
Why are wild donkeys living in Cyprus?
He grew his channel to over 2,600,000 subscribers and averages over 8,000,000 views per month.
A new kind of journalism
All the success Johnny has today was hugely influenced by his time at Vox News. Because the journalistic workflows that Vox implied were different from traditional journalism.
They moved their content strategy in a direction that focused on the individual ideas of a creator, rather than an editor assigning topics. This allowed them to focus on the creative process and gave room for experimenting with different topics
Through this work environment, Johnny was able to find his own unique style of video making that you can recognize in any of his videos today and that many aspiring creators are trying to replicate.
The importance of good aesthetics
Having a background in animations, Johnny puts a lot of emphasis on aesthetics.
In conventional journalism, aesthetics don’t play a big part. Everything focuses on getting the facts out quickly. Putting more effort into visual aesthetics takes a lot of time that most news organizations don’t have.
But in the online world, good visual aesthetics are what set you apart from the rest. It’s what makes people recognize your work and eventually lets them come back. It’s the reason why Johnny is able to stay relevant with his long-form videos, even in a fast-paced digital world.
How to keep the audience's attention — Johnny’s formula for visual storytelling
The online audience today presumably has a short attention span. But Johnny can still pull off 15 to 30-minute-long videos that get millions of views.
How is he able to do that?
Instead of trying to predict what people want to watch, he based his content strategy on the fact that his audience is curious and wants to learn stuff. And he triggers that curiosity with visual anchors right at the beginning of his videos.
Visual anchors are visual pieces of evidence that show what you want to tell without much explanation. They speak for themself. You just have to show them.
By front-loading his videos with big visual anchors in the first 30–60 seconds, he delivers a promise to the audience and gives an idea of what the video will cover. He then has to deliver on that promise with facts, context, and good storytelling. Throughout the video, he alternates different visual anchors with information and context multiple times, which keeps the audience engaged and curious even over a longer period of time.
Writing with the visuals in mind first
In Johnny's videos, the visuals are telling the story.
The script is only there to support the visual evidence we can already see. That’s why he writes his videos with a visual idea in mind first, rather than starting with a plain script.
He grabs our attention with visual anchors, makes a promise on what we are going to find out in this video, and then delivers on that promise with facts and context.
This breakdown is based on an 86-minute talk Johnny gave at the International Freedom of the Press Conference in Israel in 2019.
You can watch the whole talk here
If you want to connect with me, you can find me on Twitter or sign up for my free Newsletter.
I write about the benefits of being creative every day and becoming a lifelong learner and truly creative thinker through daily writing.
