Going Solo: Doing Videojournalism in the 21st Century - Softcover

Smith, G. Stuart

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0826219233 ISBN 13: 9780826219237

Verlag: University of Missouri Press, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

The traditional model of video news reporting has always had two separate roles: reporting and videography. For years, however, small-market news outlets have relied on “one-man bands”—individual reporters who shoot and edit their own video—for stories and footage. Lately, as the journalism landscape has evolved, this controversial practice has grown more and more popular. With the use of video constantly expanding, many large-market TV stations, networks, and newspaper Web sites are relying on one person to carry out a job formerly executed by two. News outlets now call these contributors VJs, digital journalists, backpack journalists, or mobile journalists. But no matter what they are called, there’s no denying the growing significance of solo videojournalists to the media landscape.

            Going Solo: Doing Videojournalism in the 21st Century details the controversy, history, and rise of this news genre, but its main objective is to show aspiring videojournalists how to learn the craft. While other textbooks depict the conventional reporter-and-videographer model, Going Solo innovates by teaching readers how to successfully juggle the skills traditionally required of two different people.

            Award-winning journalist G. Stuart Smith begins by describing how and why the media’s use of solo videojournalists is growing, then delves into the controversy over whether one person can cover a story as well as two. He illuminates how, together, the downsizing of the media, downturn in the economy, and growth of video on the Web have led to the rise of the solo videojournalist model. Going Solo profiles TV stations and newspaper Web operations across the country that are using the model and offers helpful advice from VJs in the field. The book presents useful guidelines on how to multitask as a reporter-videographer: conducting interviews, shooting cover video, and writing and editing a good video story. Readers will also learn how to produce non-narrated stories and market themselves in a competitive field.

            Smith, who started his career as a “one-man band,” insightfully covers an area of journalism that, despite its growing market demand, has received little academic attention. Going Solo: Doing Videojournalism in the 21st Century is useful for students learning the basics and those already in the field who need to upgrade their skills. By presenting industry know-how and valuable tips, this unique guidebook can help any enterprising videojournalist create a niche for him- or herself in the increasingly fragmented news media market.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

G. Stuart Smith is Associate Professor in the Department of Journalism, Media Studies, and Public Relations at Hofstra University. He has produced two documentaries, working mostly as a solo videojournalist, and has won over two dozen awards for his work as a videojournalist and documentary filmmaker. He resides in Freeport, New York.

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Going Solo

Doing Videojournalism in the 21st Century By G. Stuart Smith

University of Missouri Press

Copyright © 2011 The Curators of the University of Missouri
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8262-1923-7

Contents

Preface........................xiGlossary.......................171Notes..........................179Index..........................193

Chapter One

A Rose by Any Other Name

When Barack Obama delivered his inaugural speech on January 20, 2009, millions of people watched on traditional TV and cable news channels. Millions more tuned in from work on their computers. But they didn't choose news text services. They went online to see the speech streamed online, setting a record for people tuning into Internet Web sites to watch video.

As President Obama delivered his speech, furloughs, downsizing, and resource sharing were the watchwords for many industries dealing with the deep recession. With technology advancing and more than two-thirds of Americans telling pollsters that traditional journalism sources are out of touch with what they want from news, unlike past recessions, this downturn had long-lasting effects, permanently changing the ways news media companies gather and disseminate information to the public.

"The changes are going to be wrenching in the industry," says longtime magazine photojournalist and video convert Dirck Halstead. The general manager of WMAQ, Chicago's NBC-owned TV station, Larry Wert, warned: "There is a major sea change happening in this industry, and we've got to be proactive."

Many newspapers cut the staff of their Washington bureaus. Even though U.S. troops were still stationed in the war zone, television networks slashed personnel covering Iraq. To help remain competitive in international coverage, ABC News adopted a variation on the solo videojournalism (VJ) model, creating one-person digital journalists working from their own homes in seven foreign cities. The cost of all seven VJ offices was about the same as the fully staffed Paris bureau, which closed. The network added four digital journalists working in the United States in 2009. CBS followed suit, hiring a VJ to cover Afghanistan in 2009.

One-man bands, long a niche in the TV news business, began moving to a mainstream position as more stations cut two-person crews and adopted VJs to cut costs. The solo videojournalist not only reports and writes stories, but also shoots video and edits them.

Newspapers Relying on VJs, Too

VJs are playing a role not only in the traditional video news medium, television, but in formerly print-only organizations as well. As newspapers' circulation and revenue faced steep declines, some downplayed the printed product to concentrate on delivering news on the Web. As a result, video is becoming more of a dominant product across the Internet. Newspaper videojournalists and those with other multimedia skills are playing an increasingly important role in the business once dominated by ink and paper.

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press reported 2008 was the first year that the Internet topped newspapers as a news source. In a survey in which respondents could select more than one choice, most people still got their national and international news from television (70 percent), but the Internet became number two at 40 percent, followed by newspapers at 35 percent. That continues a trend in which the Internet's share of the news audience tripled from 2001 while, at the same time, newspapers lost a quarter of their readers. And while TV news still seems to be king, television news saw a decline in viewers in the Pew survey as well.

A Gallup poll confirms the disappointing numbers for most news media in 2008. Even in the hotly contested election year, the Gallup poll found the audience shrinking for all news media except cable TV news and the Internet. The poll's conclusion: "These data suggest the audience may still be there for most traditional news sources, underscoring the need for media organizations to find new ways to turn eyeballs into revenue. For many, this may require discovering creative ways to capitalize on the growing thirst for Internet news."

Solo Videojournalists to the Rescue

In the face of those numbers, news managers increasingly are adopting solo videojournalists to remain competitive. At the NBC network flagship station, WNBC-TV in New York, managers revamped the news operation to launch a twenty-four-hour cable news channel that would rely on one-man bands. WNBC's use of photographer-reporter combinations for its so-called content center is designed to make news coverage more efficient. "With that," says the station's general manager, Tom O'Brien, "we're going to see some benefits of productivity."

At WMC-TV, which cut fifteen jobs in the economic downturn, news director Tracey Rogers has two one-man bands covering the outlying areas of the Memphis market. "All journalists need to have multiple skills in order to do their jobs," says Rogers.

Gannett stations WUSA-TV in Washington and WTSP in St. Petersburg, Florida, reassigned some of its news and sports reporters to be multimedia journalists, who are expected to write, produce, shoot video, and cover live events for the Web site and broadcasts.

A reporter working as his own photographer is not a new phenomenon. The TV news business used to call them one-man bands. Now, with so many women videographers, it's no longer a politically correct term. And others look down their noses at one-man bands as a small-market phenomenon. Plus, as TV stations and newspapers as well as other news organizations strive to find their niche in an increasingly competitive and downsized news and information market, more modern phrases are emerging to describe the work of those who are increasingly taking on the tasks of both reporting and shooting their own video. If one-man bands doesn't quite fit, what term does? Solo videojournalists? Multimedia journalists? Backpack journalists? Do Platypus, SoJo (solo journalist), MoJo (mobile journalist), APJ (all platform journalist), or digital correspondent aptly describe the functions?

As the video equipment continues to get lighter, cheaper, and easier to use, working as a one-man band, or VJ, is no longer a small-market TV phenomenon. KRON in San Francisco and WKRN in Nashville, both owned by Young Broadcasting, use solo videojournalists, or VJs, to cover stories. KGTV in San Diego calls its VJs digital correspondents; WUSA in Washington calls its reporter-photographers multimedia journalists and sister Gannett station, KUSA in Denver, uses the corporate moniker of backpack journalist (BPJ) for its one-person bands. Others using VJs by one name or another include the BBC, CNN, Associated Press Television (APTN), and some local cable news outfits such as New York 1 News and News 12 in the Bronx—not to mention dozens of small-and medium-market TV stations.

In fact, a 2010 survey by the Radio Television Digital News Association and Hofstra University found that 81 percent of TV newsrooms utilize one-man bands in some way. The survey discovered that nearly 15 percent of the stations in markets one to twenty-five mostly use one-man bands and another 46 percent in those markets use them to varying degrees. Stations in smaller markets use VJs with even more frequency.

"When I became news director, I became pretty frustrated with the number of people in the newsroom versus the number of people who actually leave the building to tell stories. I think all reporters should have some video capabilities,"...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of Missouri Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0826219233
• ISBN 13: 9780826219237
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 199
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar