Audio and, particulary, video remain hot on the media blogosphere (just as it’s hot in the media world) and there’s a continual flow of interesting posts for those of us trying to get our heads around the beasts that are reshaping the idea of what newspapering is.
Some of the posts are more-than-welcome how-tos, like Brad Linder’s Definitive guide to using Skype to record interviews. Brad, my go-to guy on all things audio, has embedded a 22-minute video from the Conversation Network with details on configuring Skype for the best results.
Also on the how-to list is iMovie versus Final Cut Express, by Rob Griffiths at MacWorld, a handy bit of reporting for anyone getting into video editing (through interest or at the editor’s “request”) and looking for an overview of the two Mac-based editors.
There’s more learning available from Mindy McAdams (you are reading her every day, right?), who has a lengthy piece, Video packages and longer video, that’s worth reading. In it, Mindy applies an analytical eye to a number of video stories as she considers what works and what doesn’t in long-form video storytelling. She’s combined the video-watching with reading the book Documentary Storytelling, which it looks like I may have to buy I just ordered. (Link goes to Amazon.com.)
As interesting are a couple of different posts that tackle the issue of the value of video to newspaper. Patrick Beeson, in User video lacks value for media, worries that newspapers may not be willing to put the time and energy necessary into realizing the full value of video, settling for attempts to emulate viral successses instead of harnessing video to the newspaper’s own purposes. (That’s a paraphrase, but I think I captured the spirit of the post.)
For those who follow these things, the issue of value is something Howard Owens writes about regularly. In Video taxonomy new term: Video Illustration, he writes:
The point of quick-production, reporter-shot video should be to illustrate in a way that words alone cannot. Raw is good. Heavy editing is a waste of time. Context is a distraction. The point is not to capture the whole story. It is to illustrate a story.
(His new term “video illustration” is similar to what I labelled “storyshowing,” as opposed to storytelling, in a post some time back.)
You should read his post. He believes passionately in the concept, he says, and he acknowledges that it’s not something that’s being done well yet in most cases. But:
I’ve seen enough glimpses of how well this can work to believe that as quality and understanding (reporters developing the appropriate sense of when and how to use this type of video), it will prove a very useful tool both journalisticly and strategically.
I’m convinced that storyshowing, or video illustration, is one of the great tools journalists now have for storytelling and capturing reader attention. Used well, appropriately and sparingly, I can see the value.
As I’ve written before, I have a lot of respect and time for Howard and his ideas about journalism and what newspapering is becoming. But where I part company with him, so far, is in the raw-is-good, context-is-a-distraction argument. Raw video can be good, if the story is compelling, the news is breaking, the visual impact is stunning. But creating lightly edited, context-free video for most of what newspapers cover is like covering a council meeting and publishing your notes, or dumping every single photo from a parade into a slideshow (I’ve seen something similar to that done with a gymnastics meet).
Part of Howard’s argument is financial: given the limited income from newspaper websites, the need to feed the print beast and the limited number of journalists to fill both, video that can be quickly gathered, edited and posted makes more sense than the huge amounts of time and energy that good video storytelling takes.
In fact, he sounds downright dismissive to longer-form video storytelling:
Story video may have its time and place, but unlike some, I don’t believe that is the sum and whole of what online video can or should be.
I haven’t read anyone who believes that story video is the “sum and whole” of what online video should be, but note the use of the word “may.”
Howard, to my mind, is selling short the long-term value of storytelling and overselling the value of the shoot-on-the-run-and-get-it-on-the-web stuff. It smacks a little of the type of this-quarter-results-only thinking that has played a role in the current difficult world of newspapering.
I may be wrong (but I obviously don’t think so at the moment). The rebuttal may be in another post from Howard, York finding success with quick-production video, where he points to a newspaper in a town without a local TV station which seems to have filled both roles admirably and with quick-turnaround video.
TAGS: JOURNALISM, STORYTELLING, VIDEO, TOOLS
