Daniel Lewis remembers the moment clearly.
It was April 2020, during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, when President Donald Trump floated the idea during a news briefing that people might be able to inject bleach as a possible cure.
“I was so taken aback by what he said and worried that covering his remarks could possibly encourage people to do that,” Lewis said. “I quickly realized this claim was going to be talked about all over the world and wanted to see what medical experts in the room did when he said this.”
Lewis, now a senior producer on CNN’s Digital Video team, pulled up the cutaway camera from the briefing and said he was struck by Dr. Deborah Birx's reaction.
“You could tell she was visibly upset and shaken by what Trump said,” Lewis recalled. “I chose to publish that moment, and her reaction went viral. We were the first media outlet to notice that, and I think it was important to show audiences because there was so much deflection in the White House about Trump's controversial remarks. Showing this moment gave our audience a glimpse of the truth.”
Those are the kinds of moments that Lewis and his colleagues on the video team highlight every day for CNN’s digital audience.
Lewis, an Atlanta native, graduated from college at nearby Kennesaw State University and joined CNN in 2010. He has been instrumental in building the network’s presence on YouTube and TikTok.
We caught up with Lewis for a chat recently, and the following is an edited version of our conversation.
How did you get started in video?
I got started in college. When I settled on journalism as a major, I was drawn to video editing and production. I saw newspapers dying around the country and wanted to make sure I knew how to do more than just write and report.
What is a typical day like?
Sometimes we'll re-edit a TV segment and publish it as a vertical video for our mobile audience. Other times, we'll write, track, edit and publish a vertical video about a story that CNN's television networks aren't covering. Some of our field reporters now have phones equipped with special equipment to shoot vertical videos in the field that can be fed back to us quickly for editing. Nic Robertson has done an amazing job with some of these field videos recently in Israel.
Tell me about the rise of vertical video.
Everyone recognizes that one of the most popular video formats on social media platforms is 9x16 vertical video. Every day, the video and social teams are creating more videos that are designed to be consumed on your phone. That requires a lot of video editing to convert horizontal 16x9 footage that was filmed for television.
But anyone who consumes vertical videos on any social platform knows this format is more than just an aspect ratio. People consuming video on their phones generally have much shorter attention spans. The intro for vertical videos needs to be strong or viewers will swipe away. So we are re-editing and re-structuring CNN’s content so it can reach the massive audiences on social platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. We recently rolled out a vertical video player on CNN.com. It's still in Beta, but we are hoping to attract younger viewers with this content.
