Eight questions about video journalism and newspapers

Good questions and I attempt to answer them here for my friend, Steve Garfield who has been commissioned to write a book about video journalism and asked me to contribute to a chapter about newspapers using Web video.

Steve’s questions to me are in bold and my answers follow.

1. Why are newspapers training their reporters and photographers to become video producers?
They have observed the sea change with the medium that YouTube ushered in and are catching up to the fact that web video is now a mainstream activity and an affordable form of online journalism. Quite simply that is where the audience is.

2. What’s been the response from reporters and photographers after they’ve been trained to produce video?
Newspaper journalists are great students to train how to VJ because you don’t have to teach them journalism, the reporting or the ethics.

What is harder is to get across is that Web video styles that work online are not the same TV news style reports they grew up with, but rather a wider range of video forms that must be served up in context with the story. Once you understand that you are not bound by the limitations and conceits of TV news, then you are open to experimenting with what does work.

Raw video can work, live streaming video can work, user-submitted video can work, well produced original documentaries can work. It’s a very rich and creative medium and I have seen newspaper reporters fall in love with producing video reports because they can report more information.

3. What tools do you use for creating video? What would you suggest someone getting started use? [ I'd like to hear about makes and models, software, hardware, mics, lights ]

I like the tiered approach. Issue every staffer a camera or camera phone that can record video in a pinch. The Flip is popular with many, the Nokia N95s are great and the new Samsung phone that will record in Hi-Def could be a game changer. I have used a Lumix LX-2 for years but those pocket cams are only for video in a pinch. I also carry a Zoom H-4 for capturing better sound.

For people who do this regularly you need a camera and a high-definition microphone. A small video camera that allows you to attach professional lav or shotgun microphone to it is the most important criteria.

I love small cameras. As a solo VJ I use Sony A1U and have upgraded the mic to a Rode NTG-1 and added the Sony Wireless Lav kit. It all fits in carry-on luggage with my laptop and that means I can, and do, report from just about anywhere in the world. I have filed film reports from the middle of Egypt’s White Desert and from 7,000 feet in the Canadian Rockies.

4. Where do you recommend people host videos and why?
I like Vimeo and cross post clips to YouTube. The Vimeo is for quality and YouTube is for search. I like the new Embedr.com player that allows you to put a playlist of your work anywhere on the Web.

5. What is the secret to online video?
Ask those YouTube billionaires! Seriously. Producing video is not new to me (Robb was trained to produce video before working at newspapers). What has changed is the price of admission. It costs almost nothing to create or distribute great, timely content.

The live streaming video is a reporting tool every news outlet should embrace because the Web is great at the “What?” part of journalism. The ‘What’ means “what is happening now.” That’s why Twitter is so addictive - the now factor. Imagine linking live streaming video to Twitter . . . Could be a killer news app.

6. What makes a successful video?
The key is relevancy and pacing. You have to cut a film differently for a Web audience. The stuff I see newspaper photogs and VJs winning awards for for films that have been cut in the template of a PBS or CNN segment.

No. Web video must be cut faster and you must get to the point right away. Newspapers providing content for broadcast can happen but they can only get there if they have a solid foundation of short-form experience to build on.

7. What advice would you give to a business getting started in online video.
Just do it. Today. Make mistakes, post, improve, post. Seriously I got better at short film filmmaking by giving myself a daily deadline and no excuses for not posting something each day for a week. It worked. The daily discipline got me over my fear and made the process of reporting with a video camera second nature.

8. Anything else?
For journalists the key to online success means knowing and serving your community. Web video lets you provide a great service to a community. Start by being smart enough to decentralize your newsroom and get your reporters out from their desks and out in the field where the stories are. Next embrace the contributions that other eyes and ears in your community can offer.

If you have to blow up your newsroom, it helps to have a plan for how to rebuild it around these ideas.

http://www.robbmontgomery.com/2009/03/8-questions-about-newspaper-video-reporters/

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