If you don’t know Dan Kennedy, you should. He’s a former media critic and current journalism professor in the Boston area.
He runs a great blog called Media Nation. Mostly, he blogs about New England politics and civic affairs, but he also covers local media.
Today, he did a post about a GateHouse Media reporter, Cathryn Keefe O’Hare.
He tagged along with this modern journalist as she covered an MLK-day event. She took notes, shot video and stills with her Casio, and posted story and video to her site.
Is it a great video? No. Does it help get names and faces online? Yes. Does it help provide some context to the story? Of course. In other words, it does its job.
Dan’s concludes:
“The thing that remains true, whether it’s in print journalism or the Internet or video, you have to tell a story,” says O’Hare. “And you have to tell it as true as you can make it. And you have to try to speak for those people who can’t tell their story.”
The modern journalist just gets the job done.
And, most importantly, learns along the way.
I just did something similar. I will say doing these projects makes this job that more interesting.
I love doing them. It doesn’t take a whole lot of time and it helps that we have some Web folks who can do the editing for me, although I will be doing it all soon. Let me know what you guys think. This is my third one in 3 months.
http://www.fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2008/012008/01282008/351511
Dan Kennedy’s job-shadowing experience proves Cathryn O’Hare has firmly embraced multimedia technology as a means of furthering her reach in communicating with readers. I just want to point out that Ms. O’Hare remains a dedicated editor who oversees staff and the many moving parts of a successful community print newspaper. Her selfless work ethic drives this seasoned editor to tell stories in one more way, without compromising her signature insightful writing and editorials. We should take care to celebrate such cultural change without denigrating the proud print journalism tradition that spawned it.
I don’t completely agree. Yes it’s the modern journalist’s role to get the news out in any way, whether it be by print, video, audio or even Flash. But it’s also the journalist’s role to present it in a serious and professional way. If you want to speak for the people who can’t tell the story, then you’re going to have to make something with a minimum of quality, whether audio, video or written, otherwise you risk of not getting the message across properly.
And with all the improvements in technology it’s getting easier to quickly make good videos, audio or even great looking sites. I think the more journalists get to grips with new mediums the better the content will get.
Howard, you say:
“Is it a great video? No. Does it help get names and faces online? Yes. Does it help provide some context to the story? Of course. In other words, it does its job”.
Is there a real market demand for this type of “name and numbers” production-line video?
must say – I didn’t watch the video clip so no criticism of anyone implied. I’m just interested in the broader principle regarding the advisability of using a video when a photo and a couple of sentences would do the job faster and cheaper.
First order of business, learn to produce video, from the technical aspects, to the “making it part of your work flow” aspect, and learning to keep it top of mind.
Next is learning when to use which appropriate tool for what.
This is a lot of fun to do, if you have the time. We do a lot of this type of multimedia at the Lawrence Journal-World. Since I’ve become better at editing, I’ve become more enthusiastic about creating video for my stories, like the one accompanying this story:
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2008/jan/21/out_ranch_cowgirls/