TikTok is a go-to news source for young people. Legacy media wants in.
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst has his routine down when reporting from Tel Aviv, or Kyiv, or Beirut: He clears his throat, looks into the camera and records a segment for the news network. Then he reaches for his phone and records another for TikTok.
“By using social media, I’m able to connect with a younger audience that may not traditionally be watching cable news and get them interested in the stories that we’re telling," said Yingst, who is 31. Fox’s TV audience has a median age of 69. Yingst is mainly targeting those viewers’ children and grandchildren with his short selfie-style videos.
He has more than 852,000 TikTok followers, nearly half as many as the cable network’s account. Legacy media companies are facing a tough reality: 39% of adults under 30 say they regularly get their news on TikTok, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. Some of the biggest news outlets are trying to follow this audience onto the platform—and other social-media spots with large young followings—but can struggle to gain traction through their main branded accounts.
TikTok users are drawn to engaging individuals, regardless of who employs them, or even whether they work for a news organization. In October and November, 88 of the top 150 political TikTok accounts in the U.S. were content creators, according to data from CredoIQ, a social-media research firm.
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