I do watch video online, just not newspaper video
Don’t assume that my post from yesterday means that I rarely watch video on the Web.
I watch a lot of video online, with sites like Hulu.com and YouTube.com geting the vast majority of my time. I also enjoy niche sites like SouthParkStudios.com.
Outside of CNN.com, I almost never watch journalism-related video on the Web. I suspect I’m not alone either.
Video is just one tool in our reporting bag these days. Newspapers should be wary of putting too much time and resources into video. Instead, newspapers should concentrate on making sure their Web sites are strong Web products in general — not just print products shoved online with some multimedia mixed in.
And maybe one reason I don’t watch a lot of newspaper video is that most of it’s not very good. I’d rather read good written content than watch poor video content.
May 4th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
It’s amazing how little newspapers understand about video. It’s not hard either. I took some of my students and spent a little time re-creating a Rocketboom-esque experience with the news.
If you strip out the antics, the words are straight news copy. But the antics have generated a fair amount of talk. When we did this for the local newspaper, from what I’ve been told, we outdid their video traffic.
And we did this on a budget of nothing (you can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lcr8xcSw7_w).
Then it’s just a matter of breaking it up into various, digestible ways.
May 5th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
So what are some good examples of newspaper video? What should the reporter w/ a camera strive for?
May 5th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
@Alex
The OJR did a great series on what makes good news video. They laid out some very specific guidelines, culled from research. It’s what you think: exclusive interviews are good, breaking news and evergreen stories that have some flair and flavor to them.
The breaking news is really the only thing a reporter should focus on. The other two require some knowledge of shooting, scripting and editing. If you have someone coming in for an interview, that’s a great time to grab an intern from the local college.
We did some work for the Cincinnati Enquirer, the evergreen stuff. Here’s what it looked like: http://www.cinweekly.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=VIDEO