Some harsh realities for newspapers claiming to switch to video.

[Lensmith]

I saw this and thought it was interesting...

http://masteringmultimedia.wordpress...up-the-pieces/

Time to pick up the pieces

Man, times are tough. You�d think the Apocalypse has set upon newspapers. In the last year alone, my newspaper, The Spokesman-Review, has been visited by the layoff demons twice. In their wake lies a devastated a newsroom that will soon be but a shell of its former self. A parade of newsroom cakes and goodbye beer bashes will fill out my social calendar in the next few weeks. As a manager, I will find out what my own fate will be on Wednesday.

Last week was by far the hardest seven days I�ve spent in my twenty-three year journalism career. I was confused, disoriented, angry, depressed. Seven of the 21 people laid off last week were coworkers I had trained to shoot and edit video for our upcoming (now delayed) new website. They were young and talented. All understood that video was going to be an important part of our digital future. And now they will all be gone.

Maybe this was all a failed strategy on my part. I wanted nothing less than to change the culture of this newsroom. I found reporters who wanted to learn video and then I got them the gear and the training needed for them to be successful. A recent reorg of the newsroom was set to unleash all this new video storytelling potential. Then bam, in the reading of a layoff list, it was all gone.

Click the link to read the whole post.
http://masteringmultimedia.wordpress...up-the-pieces/

I feel sympathy for them having hopes and then getting the rug pulled out from under them but...it kind of goes to what many of us have been saying about newspapers claiming to make a switch to video story telling, then economic realities set in forcing them to squander what little if any progress they might have made in staying alive for the future.

[Nino]

Originally Posted by Lensmith

Last week was by far the hardest seven days I�ve spent in my twenty-three year journalism career. I was confused, disoriented, angry, depressed. Seven of the 21 people laid off last week were coworkers I had trained to shoot and edit video for our upcoming (now delayed) new website. They were young and talented. All understood that video was going to be an important part of our digital future. And now they will all be gone.

Maybe this was all a failed strategy on my part. I wanted nothing less than to change the culture of this newsroom. I found reporters who wanted to learn video and then I got them the gear and the training needed for them to be successful. A recent reorg of the newsroom was set to unleash all this new video storytelling potential. Then bam, in the reading of a layoff list, it was all gone.[/B]

Here�s an outfit that woke up to the reality that video will not rescue newspapers. Also to the reality that producing good video is expensive and that nobody will look at cheap video. A cheap product, no matter how little it costs to make automatically becomes very expensive if nobody watch it; making it considerably more expensive than an expensively produced video that the public actually cares to watch, makes sense?

The Rosenblum concept of flooding the market with video and everybody should do videos is in reality putting out of business those who were supposed to be rescued by video on the web. Have you looked at the Newark Star Ledgers videos lately? They have hundreds of useless and insignificant videos, who on earth has the time to look at those and why should they. Unless your daughter is in one of those video they serve no useful purpose whatsoever, those are a complete waste of time and money.

To make a video that contains the equivalent amount of information that newspaper readers are accustomed to read would cost a fortune. With written news all it takes is a number of long distance phone calls or e-mails in order to gather all it�s needed for an informative article; trying to give the equivalent amount of information with video will be cost prohibitive for a newspaper. The result of this and the present conversion to video by newspaper is that they have reduced the informational value of their news reporting giving the public one more reason to walk away from those newspapers. Personally I find it insulting to my intelligence that somebody would be trying to feed me that kind of garbage disguised a newsworthy.

Any news organization to remain in business will have to consider that people today has less time to watch the news while the news sources have increased by the thousands. The public is bombarded with news from every corner and mostly with useless information from organizations interested more in showing off how much they spend on several minutes of fancy graphics and animation that eventually will lead the reader into the actual news; with hundreds of insignificant videos topping the list of useless.

In order to return to profitability news organization will have to return to basic. The multi-media capability of the web has created a bonanza of garbage disguised as newsworthy material, the public should not have to sort thru the garbage to find something that they can use. There are many and many ways that newspaper could take full advantage of the web capability in order to better serve the public and retain they current readership, or even gain some new ones if done right, but none of what they�ve done so far has accomplished that, video surely did not and will not accomplish those goals. Like the newspaper in the post above have discovered and took action before its too late. Either do it right or get out of video and back to news.

News is primarily intended to inform and educate, this is the basic purposes of news. News organizations will have to realize that news is not what the public wants to know is something that the public need to know in order to stay informed. In few words get to the point quickly and tell me only what I need not what you think I need to know.

[newsshooter]

In my market one of the local news papers was trying to shoot video too. They had a pretty nice web site going then last week 40 people were laid off. My news director has been drinking the Rosenblum juice and also thinks VJ's are the way to go. One of the freelance reporters is looking for a full time gig as a reporter. He was told he would have to start shooting if he wanted a full time gig. The N.D. told him he can't afford to hire "just reporters" anymore. A few days ago a producer, with one hour of explanation, was sent out to shoot a VO byte. It looked like market 200. We are in the top 20 markets. What is this business coming to? I've been shooting for a number of years and have ran around the country climbing markets with my family trying to better ourselves and our life style. What do you do when the VJ thing is dropped in your lap? I'm not for it. Quality of news will take a dive. Does anyone care about quality anymore? I guess only the rates will tell. I hope everyone will turn off their t.v.'s and not watch the mess that will soon be broadcasted.