How Semafor is redefining the head of video role

“I feel like I have like a really fun job where I get to talk to Ben [Smith, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Semafor] every day about all the things that are going on in the newsroom, but then taking back a lot of that almost like programming to the commercial side and saying like, ‘What can we do with this? How do we build out a revenue model?’” Banicki said during a live recording of the Digiday Podcast on Sept. 16 at the Digiday Publishing Summit in Key Biscayne, Florida.

As Semafor’s head of video, Banicki reports directly to Smith but “with a dotted line to Rachel Oppenheim, our chief commercial officer,” he said. In addition to developing video programming ideas with Semafor’s newsroom, he collaborates with its commercial staff.

“My first three months, I think, was really getting involved in the commercial side, helping shaping go-to-market decks, thinking about pricing strategy, joining kickoff calls to help close deals that were tied to video,” said Banicki.

Soon his day-to-day duties will likely skew more toward video production. In October, Semafor will launch a new show focused on technology and hosted by its tech editor Reed Albergotti. That will bring Semafor’s portfolio to four shows, with plans to develop a daily news show “very soon,” said Banicki.

Here are a few highlights from the conversation, which have been edited for length and clarity.

On working across editorial and commercial

“With Ben, you catch him where he is. I sit right next to him. I will just swing by his desk, or he’ll swing by mine pretty routinely, and then he has a more formal meeting with all of his leadership team. And then with Rachel, I have a standing, and I’m in all of her leadership meetings.”

On building the bridge between editorial and commercial

“Everything has buy-in from both sides. The sales team isn’t going to dictate what the newsroom should do. It should always be like, ‘Oh, the newsroom wants to do this. How do we package it up commercially?’ At Fortune, where I was previously, that was where I kind of started to move into this type of role informally. And by the time I left, I was the [general manager] of video, and so the editorial production was under me, but really starting to build that bridge to the commercial side.”

On the daily news show format

“I think it will largely be reporter-to-reporter conversations. But we want to have opportunities to bring on, you know, a CEO that maybe news broke that week, and that adds that extra layer of analysis. But going back to getting all of our reporters on camera, I think that’s the best way to get those repetitions. You have that daily product where if there’s an idea and you’re not really sure how to put it into a larger format, you can put it on that show, test and learn, and see if there’s a bigger opportunity there.”

On the social video pitch process

“We have our newsroom standup meeting every morning, where if there’s something that’s big and scoopy that we feel would work on social, we’ll just tap them and say, ‘Hey, can you step into the studio?’ It largely takes like 15, 20 minutes max.”