Watchup, the video news aggregator, announced that it has received additional funding today. $2.75 million to be exact, from Tribune Media and McClatchy.
Founder Adriano Faranno said in a statement that:
We are so excited about this round because we have brought together a select group of media innovators who are willing to contribute their industry knowledge and their content to help us reinvent the video news experience.
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Watchup is trying to change the way people watch mobile news. A lot of their videos come from public sources but they keep adding partnerships with leading news organizations to their roster: WaPo, PBS NewsHour, Univision, among others. Joseph Lichterman at Niemen Lab rightly places this investment in context with other big media companies investing in new video technology:
This round marks the latest in a series of investments legacy news organizations are making in news startups. In September, Vice Media received $500 million in funding, including $250 million from A&E Networks, which is owned by Hearst and Disney. Last month, The New York Times Co. and German publishing behemoth Axel Springer said they were investing $3.7 million into Blendle, a Dutch news reading platform where readers pay by the article.