Dave Jorgenson Jumped From Short-Form Video at The Washington Post to Long-Form Video on YouTube. Which Task is Harder?

Will a YouTube viewer spend more than half an hour trying to figure out if Ukraine’s attacks on Russian data centers have decimated an army of propaganda bots? Dave Jorgenson believes the answer is a resounding “Yes.” During a recent 32-minute-plus episode of his show, “What’s Your Source,” a joyful Jorgenson led followers through a quick examination of whether the bots had actually stopped their activity; a 20-minute interview with an expert on the topic from Georgetown, and a clever comedy sketch showing how many times Americans had ignored warnings of such activity. “On the surface, it looks effortless,” Jorgenson says in a recent interview. “But, obviously, the duck is treading underwater while trying to look calm on top.” Jorgenson seems to enjoy leaping from one difficult task to another. Last year, he left his job making quick-hit vignettes for The Washington Post, where veteran readers are likely more accustomed to reading text-based articles. Now, he’s started a new venture that seeks digital followers eager to watch longform video that offers many laughs but also has a serious goal: vetting the news and showing viewers how to check the facts around any assertion making its way online. Don’t count the guy out. At the Post, Jorgenson launched a TikTok channel which garnered 1.9 million followers, before he left the outlet in July of last year. Now he’s at the helm of a company that mixes humor and news — a recipe that can sometimes be volatile — and already has 454,000 subscribers on YouTube. “What’s Your Source,” available from Jorgenson’s company, Local News International, offers a lot more than a series of quick jokes. The program, says Jorgenson, is “kind of like ‘Last Week Tonight,’ but more journalism-forward.” LNI has set up a hotline where viewers can call in to ask questions about assertions and comments they see surfacing in their media feeds, and see if “What’s Your Source” will investigate. Indeed, each episode of “What’s Your Source” opens with Jorgenson taking a call and setting about to explore the topic at hand. Unlike John Oliver’s program, the host says, the new “Source” tends to focus more on topics that are in the recent news cycle, as opposed to the presentations Oliver offers that have often been in the works for months. “Source” is in a nascent stage, but it stands as one of the many new formats that independent creators and established news outlets are testing as a rising generation of headline aficionados gravitate to a looser, less formal means of news delivery. A majority of U.S. adults, 58%, indicated social media is an important way for them to keep up with the news, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey from the Pew-Knight Initiative. Of that group, 13% said the platform was the most important way they get news. When the organization last posed the question in 2022, 43% of Americans said social media was an important way they got news, with 5% indicating it was the most important way. So Jorgenson isn’t playing things just for laughs — no matter his intentions. His staff blends experience from both news and comedy. Two of his co-founders, Lauren Saks and Micah Gelman, worked with him developing the video business at The Washington Post. Two former writers from the recently cancelled “Late Show with Stephen Colbert” have joined to help develop “What’s Your Source.” Like the company’s employees, Jorgenson also contains multitudes: He once worked as an intern on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report.” Other news-focused comedy shows have tapped journalists, including Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” and Samantha Bee’s “Full Frontal.” When Jon Stewart led his show “The Problem” for Apple, he tapped Brinda Adhikair, a veteran of CBS News and ABC News, as one of his executive producers. “We are not journalists, and we rely on the very hard work of many, many journalists and our researchers. And so, our responsibility is kind of like, let us stay true to the information, let us stay true to journalism, let us inform,” says Felipe Torres Medina, who is the showrunner at “What’s Your Source.” “But I do think our North Star, as to how we approach this job, is, like, let’s make it as funny as possible.” One thing staffers make clear: This isn’t a late-night show. Jorgenson, producers and writers have more time to do research, hone their comedic responses and, perhaps most importantly, don’t have to pay attention to TV ratings. Local News International offers memberships and sells ads (Harry’s, the direct-to-consumer shaving-products company, is a sponsor). Indeed, says Carley Moseley, a writer for “What’s Your Source,” Colbert and Oliver “will both come out and be very clear that they are not journalists, and that they are comedians. And I think Dave is a journalist, considers himself a journalist.” LNI spent some time trying to zero in on Jorgenson’s Post followers and make them understand the new ways they could continue to follow him. Now that the company has one show in production, there’s a sense a bigger audience, not just people familiar with Jorgenson’s antics, is out there. The company hopes “to bring in other news creators,” Jorgenson says. “Some we know. Some we haven’t met yet.” Some might be tied to specific parts of the country, he adds, and some might be more at home in other parts of the world. “We feel we can grow what’s unique here at LNI, maybe in a way that other reliable legacy newsrooms are not.”