Text to TikTok in minutes: the AI tool helping Las Vegas Review-Journal produce short-form videos
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Short-form vertical video is everywhere we look on social media platforms but, despite its brevity, takes time and skills to produce.
How can time- and resource-strapped local newsrooms keep up with reaching their communities through these formats, which include logistics that range from different aspect ratios to varying video lengths?
Genna, built by the team behind Stringr, a suite of AI-powered tools founded by a former broadcast news producer, seeks to expedite this process for publishers looking to expand their video presence in their VidGen tool.
Three reasons to use VidGen
- Simple: Put your published text article URL into the VidGen tool, choose a template and AI-powered voiceover, and you’re all set.
- Secure: You don’t have to integrate the tool into your CMS or internal tools, nor put any sensitive data that you haven’t published into the tool.
- Quick: From start to finish, simple vertical videos can take as little as a few minutes to produce.
Las Vegas Review-Journal, the largest daily newspaper in Nevada, has served the Las Vegas metropolitan area since 1909. Now with a newsroom of about 85 journalists, eight of whom produce and publish video, the Review-Journal is focused on growing its audience of locals and visitors through digital initiatives, including repackaging their journalism at scale across social platforms.
Even the most well-resourced newsrooms can struggle to keep up with each social platform’s video format requirements. Other mid- to large-sized newsrooms who want to convert several written stories to video daily may benefit from VidGen.
Problem: Keeping up on video-first social platforms
At first, the team of eight video staffers tried to build videos for social media manually — selecting photos and video clips, editing scripts and adjusting aspect ratios for each platform.
“A lot of breaking news happens in Las Vegas,” says Jim Prather, vice president of digital strategy. The newsroom has two newscasts, and breaking news and livestreaming offerings. “Those videos did have some success, but they were consumed … we needed more content. It’s a volume play.”
Caitlin Lilly, the director of social media, agrees. She was tasked with building the newsroom’s presence and growing audiences across Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. She said if newsrooms are only able to post a few times a week — as they did with the manual production process — it doesn’t stand out in the algorithm. “There’s so much to consume, and you need to feed it [platforms] as much as you can.”
For breaking news and developing stories, Prather adds that the time needed to manually produce a video could make the update less timely. ”When we have new info on a story, we need to get that posted out. That’s important.”
Solution: Scaling up video production with VidGen
In searching for alternative ways to reduce the manual production time for videos, Lilly tested Stringr with her team. After seeing how the VidGen tool cut down on the technical processes, she noted how her team was able to produce more videos than if they were creating them manually, and within consistent graphics templates that built on the Review-Journal’s brand presence.
To use this tool, a user logs into the Genna site and pastes a published text story URL into the VidGen app. VidGen produces a vertical video based on the story, pulling from the story’s copy, any multimedia, and adds background music and an AI voiceover. From there, the human user is in full control over the final product; they can edit the text, visuals, video length, the AI-voiced pronunciations, and publish that video in different aspect ratios for any number of social video platforms.
In November 2025, a VidGen-produced video that pulled from the breaking story of a suspect in a road-rage shooting broke through the 1 million view mark on TikTok.
“Views are important, but engagement is a great way to see where we should focus our time,” says Lilly.
By using VidGen to quickly produce videos across beats, Lilly and her team are able to respond accordingly with content based on their audience’s comments, likes and shares. Lilly notes that breaking news updates, food and entertainment as the top beats for highest video engagement.
“Our video team does not have full-time social media video editors, so it [VidGen] helps you, it’s another staff member. You do all the work and Stringr puts it together and builds it, the speed in which you can turn things is really fast,” she says.
Lilly adds that the team enables AI labels that clearly tell the audience that the video was produced with an AI tool, and they haven’t received any audience concern. “If you’re scared of AI, you get left behind. If you accept AI and work with it, it helps you.”
Genna charges by the video ($3), as well as optional access to Getty video and photo licensing (+$1 per video), with a general minimum of $1,000 per month (at least 250 videos monthly). Large newsrooms who produce dozens or hundreds of videos can inquire about revenue sharing. Nonprofit discounts are not offered.
Impact: Growing audiences, increasing brand awareness and revenue opportunities
“We’re taking risks and trying to go down some paths that the traditional newspapers may not have gone after,” Prather says.
In addition to producing the daily newscasts, social videos and livestreaming, the social media team used VidGen in the launch of Neon, a new Review-Journal product focused on Vegas going-out guides, food and entertainment content that has also opened new marketing and revenue opportunities.
“Our social media channels grew from 0 to 27,000 followers in less than six months of launch,” Prather says. “For us, every video is making people aware of the brand and has an immediate impact.”
In addition to hitting the million-view mark on TikTok, Lilly notes that both Review-Journal and Neon videos created through VidGen foster regular engagement on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.
Security and privacy
With any AI-powered tool, there is a concern about how the data put into the tool is used. Genna’s suite of tools, including VidGen, converts published articles into video, so it doesn’t have access to anything that’s not already public.
“It’s AI on your own product,” Prather says. “It’s not going to have hallucinations, not going to go outside the bounds of our URLs, and in less than two minutes, that video can be posted.”
In their two years working with Genna, built by the team behind Stringr, Prather says one of the improvements the Review-Journal team has advocated for is the pronunciation of certain local names and words in the AI voiceovers.
Lilly notes that editors need to watch and listen to VidGen-produced videos to avoid mispronunciations.
“If you weren’t having a human check voiceovers, you’d get in trouble with AI voices because they’re not perfect. We have to put in local pronunciations and check the default background music,” Lilly says. “But if you just looked at one of our videos, it’s crazy how seamless it is and how much it looks like any other vertical video.”
Verdict: Publisher-friendly vendor aimed to help newsrooms grow social audiences
When Lilly’s team first started using VidGen, they had feedback right away.
“When we uploaded real estate photos, [VidGen] initially had no photo credit. But anything we reached out to them about, they’ve been quick to integrate it,” noted Lilly, referring to how Genna’s team created a photo credit field shortly after her request. “We helped shape their product with them.”
The majority of Genna’s current clients are news publishers, leading to client-informed features such as new AI voiceovers in 21 languages, including Greek, which was added at the request of a publisher.
In the conversation about AI in journalism, Stringr/Genna CEO and co-founder Lindsay Stewart reflects, “when I wanted to be a journalist, I didn’t dream of multi-formatting content or translating it into 21 languages. I was excited about talking to people and facts. We want journalists to be more specialized than just multi-formatting stories. The use of these tools can help find new revenue opportunities, and when we find new revenue opportunities, we can hire more journalists.”
Alternative to Genna
Nota is a suite of AI-powered tools that help automate social and newsletter production, SEO optimization, and their VID tool similarly converts text articles into short-form video.
This may be an option for smaller newsrooms who produce fewer stories per month since there’s no minimum requirement. Nota’s grant program offers a rate of $99 per month for all of their optimization and production tools, exclusively for newsrooms with fewer than seven full-time staff and annual revenue under $250,000.
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