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This week, I dug through the catalogs of two of our recent video journalist guests — Fernando Hurtado and Joon Lee — to audit their highest- and lowest-performing videos.
Both left traditional media companies and have launched independent, sustainable businesses. Here, I documented my learnings for how they’re winning on YouTube.
— Natalia Pérez-González, Assistant Editor
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How niche service journalism wins on YouTube
"Creators are moving towards journalism, and journalists will move towards creators. YouTube doesn't need journalism to boost ad revenue. It needs journalism to anchor its reputational power in the same way newspapers once anchored civic life."
A third of all journalists now identify as creator journalists.
This group includes recent Spotlight guests Fernando Hurtado and Joon Lee — two video journalists who’ve recently left major media companies to build their own ventures.
Fernando, who left NBC Telemundo voluntarily to launch In the Hyphen, started a YouTube channel covering U.S. Latino culture. Joon was laid off from his dream job at ESPN and relaunched his dormant high school tech review channel to cover sports.
Both are making it work, but their tactics diverge. I wanted to learn how other creators and journalists might approach video production and the YouTube market by analyzing their most and least-viewed videos.
Spoiler alert — targeted service journalism works really well on YouTube.
Which of Fernando and Joon’s videos performs best? Why?
Fernando’s top-performing videos:
The idea for Fernando's most-viewed video — "Why So Many Americans Speak Chicano English" at 672,172 views and 2,883 comments — came because he'd heard the accent his whole life but didn't know if it had a name.
He followed the idea down a rabbit hole, telling us more research and interviews went into that video than any other he’s produced since.
In this case, there was a direct correlation between personal curiosity and performance.
It’s a unique angle catered to a large audience — anyone who's heard the accent (most Americans) and anyone in the Latino community who's experienced it without labeling it.
Fernando’s top three videos follow the same pattern: tapping into mainstream cultural curiosities among Latino communities while layering his unique POV.
"How Doña Maria dominated the mole market"
173,000 views, 52 comments.
This video takes a product that Latino households have seen on shelves for decades and explains its history and meaning.
“Meet the Afromexicans of Los Angeles”
142,000 views, 1,405 comments.
This taps into another underserved intersection of identities that mainstream media rarely covers, validating an experience for viewers who've never seen themselves reflected. His identity-intersection videos generate the highest comment engagement — viewers respond with their own histories, family stories, and gratitude for being seen.
Fernando’s business-explainer videos drive views but shallower engagement in the comments. His identity-focused videos build community — people who likely convert from one-time viewers into loyal subscribers.
Joon’s top-performing videos:
Joon’s most-viewed video, “How Knockoff Jerseys Became Better Than Real Ones,” at 606,000 views, follows a similar logic to Fernando’s, but for a different audience.
Sports fans had long noticed that their $150 official jerseys were falling apart in the wash, while knockoffs held up fine.
So Joon turned the question into an investigative piece: he brought an old jersey and a new Fanatics-produced jersey to vintage sports apparel experts in New York, had them break down the quality differences on camera, then traced the business reasons behind Fanatics' monopoly and cost-cutting.
He becomes a proxy for the frustrated fan, doing the legwork viewers can't do themselves — taking jerseys to experts, tracing corporate decisions, validating that the thing you noticed is real.
The video outperformed his channel average by 20x. Overall, two of Joon’s top three videos follow the same format — a specific type of immersive service journalism.
One of these is from his tech YouTuber days 13 years ago — service journalism is a reliable format, now as then. Both creators have found success by validating something their audience already suspected but couldn't prove, or didn’t have the language to explain.
Fernando’s least-performant videos:
Both creators’ most performant videos mix genuine curiosity, a clear and specific audience implied by the title, and the promise of a service delivered.
Their least-performant videos cast too broad a net without offering a clear service.
Take Fernando's least-viewed video, "I spent the day with a ‘personal shopper’". Unlike the rest of his videos, there is:
Little curiosity gap: The headline doesn't tell us what makes this experience unique — what uncommon idea, story, or experience he's inviting us into.
No cultural specificity: And for a niche Latino audience, the packaging doesn't signal cultural specificity. Anyone could make a video about spending a day with a personal shopper.
Lacking unique POV: From the headline and thumbnail, we can't tell what makes Fernando's version different from a dozen other "day in the life" videos.
Joon’s least-performant videos:
Joon’s least-viewed video after relaunching his YouTube channel with a sports focus, “Why athletes are becoming influencers,” has 4,000 views and 1,214 comments.
The video has compelling analysis and top-tier editing. The comment-to-view ratio (30%) seems extraordinarily high … until you scroll through and notice the vast majority are spam, a few one-liner variations from faceless bots.
Why didn't it perform? My theory is that the rise of athletes as influencers has been widely covered by mainstream media. The content was uniquely Joon's, but the packaging blended into a crowded conversation. Viewers already know it's happening and roughly why — there's less of a curiosity gap to fill.
The trick is finding the overlap between journalistic instincts and viewer demand — then doing the reporting that lets viewers feel less alone in their observations and amplifies their understanding.
Six targets for every video
Recent Spotlight guest Kallaway, a video creator whose content on engineering virality has millions of views, identifies six factors that ensure videos (short and long-form) will travel widely:
Timing
A large, applicable audience
A unique point of view
A world-class hook
A compelling story structure
Of course, a bit of luck
Fernando and Joon's hits exhibit nearly every bullet. Simple in practice, tough to execute consistently.
For service journalism, nailing the sweet spot is key: start with a pressing question or idea, target a relevant audience (niche enough to be impactful, broad enough for the video to travel), and then layer in your unique point of view.
U.S. Soccer is hiring a Vertical Social Content Producer (Atlanta)
This is a one-year contract role to make vertical video content about the U.S. Men’s Soccer Team … in a year where the World Cup is happening in the United States. Major opportunity if you’re adept at short-form and have a working knowledge of soccer.
No compensation listed.
Sony is hiring a Senior Specialist, Influencer & Social Media (hybrid, NYC).
This role is perfect for someone who loves working with creators, generating buzzy social concepts, and helping brands show up in culture.
Listed compensation: $95k–$110k.
Patreon is hiring a contract Creators Education Producer (remote) to support their growing Creators Education Program.
This person would produce how-to articles, video scripts, interactive tutorials, short courses, and other resources.
Listed compensation: $55/hr, 35 max hours/week.
Do you want to advertise an open role in Creator Spotlight? Reply to this email.
