Giovanna Dell’Orto was doing some of the hardest work a reporter can, talking to people who had just seen a shooting. And then, in the middle of her difficult labor came a voice that offered just a little hope. “Say, don’t I know you?” a woman asked. “I saw you with the Pope.”
Dell’Orto typically works out of Minnesota and has never stood alongside any Pope current or past. Months earlier, however, she was leading a new digital program put on by her employer — the Associated Press. Dell’Orto was the on-screen anchor of a live show from Italy — looking out on St. Peter’s Square, no less — chronicling the recent papal conclave that elected Pope Leo to succeed Pope Francis following the latter’s death.
Dell’Orto, who speaks Italian and works on the media outlet’s team of reporters who cover religion, was “told to host, which surprised me,” she confessed, during a recent interview. “I had never done this before.”
The fact that someone in Minnesota remembers seeing Dell’Orto talking about the election of a new Pope from a streaming video studio in Italy gives AP executives confidence they may have legions of budding news anchors on tap. More of the AP’s journalists could find themselves playing the role of video host as the company ramps up its efforts to bring live news to viewers around the world. In February, the AP produced a live show from inside the U.S. Capitol for President Trump’s State of the Union address, featuring AP reporters Meg Kinnard and Sagar Meghani, and “invited guests,” the first time it had done so. The company has also been holding forth on the red carpet at events like the Grammys.
There’s no bid to outdo CNN or CBS News, says Julie Pace, the AP’s executive editor and senior vice president. “We are not looking to do a big broadcast network style production. That’s territory other people have cornered, and we are not trying to compete,” she says during a recent interview. “Instead, we are trying to fill a void for people who want to have what is almost an immersive live video experience, with a little bit of explanation of what’s going on.”
Many of the media industry’s so-called “wire services” have offered video for years. Bloomberg operates its own cable network, and Reuters has long served up video to its many clients. But there’s something almost incongruous about pairing the Associated Press with the stuff, as the AP is still best known for serving news from around the globe to newspaper clients — even if those parties represent significantly less of the company’s business base than they once did.
Indeed, the bulk of the AP’s customer base in 2026 consists of broadcasters, digital outlets, and non-media customers, like technology companies. U.S. newspapers now represent less than 10% of overall revenue, according to a person familiar with the matter, while non-media customers continue to grow. And while most of the AP’s overall revenue comes from those aforementioned business clients, the company is using its video to cultivate a direct-to-consumer segment that can watch video via YouTube, creating new revenue.
The AP’s accelerating move into video spotlights a continued blurring of lines in the media sector, where easier access to video is making competitors out of players that once tilled different ground. Traditional print outlets like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal anow wield clout in the worlds of video and audio. TV-news heavyweights like NBC News and MS NOW offer newsletters and text dispatches from prominent personnel. Technological developments give the AP and others new entrée into businesses that have them compete for the attention of advertisers and viewers who might in the past have passed them by without a second thought.
“Wire services have always been ignored stepchildren in the news media family, but AP especially has enormous worldwide newsgathering tentacles and a deep international bench that already supplies huge amounts of news content. So finding ways to amortize those costs while generating additional benefits seems like a shrewd approach to pursuing revenue growth,” says Mark Feldstein, chairman of the broadcast journalism program at the University of Maryland. “Yes, newspapers and cable television already supply this, but not for free, so it seems worth a try for AP, even though it’s not traditionally associated with this.”
The news cooperative’s editors see a chance to put AP reporting in front of millions of people who might not normally come across it. One effort covering the 2024 presidential election attracted more than 13 million viewers, says Jack Auresto, a deputy Washington Bureau chief who oversees video production there. “We have an audience here, and we want to continue to provide information to them,” he says. Any staffer’s inexperience with video might just be a selling point, he suggests. “We have real reporters, not television anchors, not commentators. These are real political reporters who are telling us in real time what they are seeing and what they are hearing. We will want to keep the focus on fact-based journalism and keep focus on the live content.”
Indeed, the reporters shouldn’t dominate the programming, Pace says. The AP’s video plans call for “light commentary” –- a paucity of words but (hopefully) a surfeit of meaning.
“We don’t want a constant stream of dialogue, nothing that is partisan or even overtly political, not anything that is sort of minute-by-minute play by play,” she says. “We are really a news organization that exists to explain and to add context, to help people navigate what they are seeing.”
The presence of hard-news personnel in what has often been seen as a softer medium has the potential to generate sparks. Live streams from entertainment events like the Grammys or Golden Globes aren’t typically perches for controversy, but, says Anthony McCartney, AP’s entertainment and lifestyles editor, celebrities will sometimes be asked to weigh in on recent headlines. “If there are breaking news events that happen on the day of the show we are working, we will ask about it,” he says. “The immigration crackdown was a big topic when we were at the Grammys. A lot of talent knows if they stop at AP we are going to ask them about the news of the day.” Such a discussion, he adds, “to me feels right for an AP-brand show.”
Video still brings challenges for staffers more accustomed to writing things down and tapping away at a keyboard. When Dell’Orto prepared to host the AP’s live stream around the papal conclave, she put on a fancy black dress. “This is me trying to look decent in front of a global audience,” she recalls, but video personnel told her the garment offered no place to attach a microphone or other equipment. Dell’Orto wore the dress along with a pair of pants.
“I’m more comfortable with my notebooks and pen and laptop,” says the journalist. “But I’m really well aware that the definition of the job is not the medium that’s in my hands. It’s the mission of bringing facts to people.”
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