On his podcast this week, Peter Kafka asked New York Times executive editor Joe Kahn about the recent flood of shortform vertical video appearing on both the Times homepage and its social handles. Kahn described the initiative as “long-arc work,” meant to establish the brand as a source of quality journalism across visual platforms, and to reach new audiences, even if they aren’t quite ready to be monetized. “I believe strongly that as people get more exposed to high-quality reporting and information on their feeds in the form that they want, they’ll want more of that,” he said. “The idea that we can just continue to refine the text form as people’s viewing habits shift, I think is kind of head in the sand.”