Business Insider Takes Home Three 2024 Digiday Video and TV Awards
Business Insider is a leading producer of original videos, with 16 billion minutes watched and more than 10 billion views across all platforms in 2023. The video team, led by Erica Berenstein, recently won a National Magazine Award, and on April 16, won three 2024 Digiday Video and TV Awards, for each category in which Business Insider was nominated.
Video Producer Of The Year: Graham Flanagan, Chief Video Correspondent
Chief Video Correspondent, Graham Flanagan, won the award for Video Producer of the Year. For five years, Graham Flanagan has built the massively successful YouTube series “Boot Camp.” The show's unprecedented level of access to military and law enforcement training programs has pushed Flanagan to the forefront of journalists and visual storytellers covering the military.
Business Insider’s Chief Video Correspondent Graham Flanagan was named “Video Producer Of The Year” by the 2024 Digiday Video and TV Awards
Chief video correspondent Graham Flanagan during filming of “Welcome To The J: Inside Army Jungle School” in Hawaii in 2023.
In 2023, Flanagan took on the show’s most ambitious project yet — the feature-length documentary, “Welcome to the J: Inside Army Jungle School.”
Promotional image for “Welcome To The J: Inside Army Jungle School.”
Flanagan spent 12 days embedded with Army soldiers training in the Hawaiian Jungle in preparation for a potential war with China. The shoot was grueling as Flanagan closely followed 80 soldiers — a group that would result with only 56 graduating. “Welcome to the J” not only covered the ins and outs of the training, but illuminated the geo-political stakes as China becomes the US military’s number one pacing threat.
“Welcome to the J,” premiered June 1 on YouTube, immediately capturing a wide audience. The documentary has more than 90 million minutes watched and 6.7 million views, becoming the biggest standalone video of the year for Business Insider. The documentary was also selected as a feature for the 25th Annual Sidewalk Film Festival.
More than just a look behind the curtain of training operations, Flanagan's intimate, immersive storytelling humanizes those conducting and experiencing the training, while also revealing potentially antiquated and problematic aspects of military and law enforcement culture.
Five years, and nearly 100 episodes later, Flanagan continues to build out the “Boot Camp" series with a team of three journalists covering training operations for each major military branch.
Best Original Programming: “Risky Business”
Business Insider’s “Risky Business” is a show about the people, families, and children doing the world’s most dangerous jobs. In developing this show, Business Insider aimed to bring awareness on these important, untold stories.
One of the show’s senior producers, Olivia Nemec, was also nominated in the Best Video Producer Of The Year category.
Senior video producer Olivia Nemec, who works on “Risky Business”
Each episode is anchored by charismatic characters who force viewers to relate to the millions of people on earth who don’t know if they will make it through the day alive, because of the dangerous work they do just to survive. The series examines much more than just the arduous, risky worksites the workers must endure, it focuses on their families and their home lives.
With 62 million views and 280 million minutes watched in 2023, “Risky Business” connects with a global audience engaged by the show’s audacious and immersive storytelling.
Highlights included a harrowing documentary about families in Pakistan that work dangerous jobs at brick kilns to pay off snowballing debts to kiln owners, as well as a spellbinding look at how miners in Sri Lanka risk their lives to find sapphires in deep, underground pits.
An image from the “Risky Business” documentary “How Millions Are Trapped In Modern-Day Slavery At Brick Kilns In Pakistan”
An image from the “Risky Business” documentary “Inside Sri Lanka’s Deadly Underground Mines Filled With Rare Jewels”
Each episode zooms out to show the wider geopolitical, regulatory, or consumer demand issues that are fueling these dangerous circumstances.
The award honors these Business Insider staff members for their contributions: Havovi Cooper, Barbara Corbellini Duarte, Selima Hussain, Olivia Nemec, Tyler Merkel, Adam Miller, Edris Lutfi, Erica Berenstein.
Best Use Of Generative AI: Business Insider X Papercup
Business Insider’s partnership with the London-based digital translation company Papercup won the Digiday Video & TV Award for Best Use of Generative AI.
Papercup uses AI-based video and translation tools to help Business Insider’s videos reach new audiences around the world. Papercup’s technology translates Business Insider’s English-language videos to create localized dubs in Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian before the stories are published on international platforms.
The partnership utilizes cutting-edge technology that has succeeded in impactfully growing Business Insider’s global audience.