From today’s Vin Crosbie’s post — a nugget related to why the BiggerBetter video strategy is a sputtering strategy:
The overabundance of suppliers of news and information, nonetheless the supply, leads to another corollary, one that might seem to be counter-intuitive: the ‘good enough’ beats perfect. The overabundance of suppliers leads to competition that actually lowers the threshold of acceptable quality. When there were few suppliers, they used higher quality content (i.e., ‘high production values’) as a competitive weapon against each other. But now that there is an overabundance of suppliers, their competition levers towards being the first to produce content that is at least of acceptable quality. Millions of videos are viewed billions of times each month on sites such as YouTube.com (+3 billion per month) not because of high production values, but because the videos are at least ‘good enough’ to watch. The production of higher quality delays distribution and widespread usage. This corollary runs against the grain of traditional Mass Media organizations, which tend to delay release of their content until it is perfect, but the effect of this corollary is an observable phenomenon.
Bold added.
Howard…
As I’ve worked with the Lodi News Sentinel this summer, I’ve discovered another group – in addition to BiggerBetter and MoreFaster.
Not sure if they are the Wait&See or We’llGoSlow group – but the Sentinel is definitely one of them. They’re not resistant – but taking it very slowly, with the occasional video – not mandated by management, but encouraged and done by staff who are motivated to try it. I suspect that a lot of papers fit this definition.
Some of their staff are very resistant and some are willing to try it on and learn. But no one is saying video is the savior. They’re just trying to figure out how much of their woes are the economy, now much the shift to the Internet, and what other factors come into play.
Maybe we should call them SeeingWhatWorks.
[…] Howard Owens brought up the BiggerBetter/FasterMore issue in his blog. I’ve generally agreed with him that more cameras shooting more events makes sense – however, as I’ve worked with the Lodi News Sentinel this summer, I’ve discovered another category. […]
So what, you want more videos like this?
http://www.qctimes.tv/p/?section=video&id=2129566
This video took what could have been a fascinating piece about an important piece of American History and turned it into a waste of two minutes. An extra 15 minutes getting some kind of audio and this could have been a good little video, something for World War II enthusiasts and others to pass around. Instead this newspaper wastes people’s time with crap. Not real professional and if this is what you want to see from other newspapers, you need to go out and learn how to be a reporter and what we’re really in this business to do.