The Video Explosion
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
This might be the beefiest article I’ve read on video in the newspaper world.
A few notables:
Many photographers are especially eager to master the new field. Video offers them the prospect of deliverance from print-centric thinking, and perhaps a more prominent role to play in newsrooms.
The fact is no one is more vital to the survival of the newspaper than these new visual journalists. They are not entering a field such as television news with an established hierarchy that has been there for years.
“People are listening to music through really high quality headphones now,” she says, “and they’re used to good sound.” Even if the visuals are poor, she says, good audio can often save the day.
Video requires roughly 10 times more work on an assignment as [still photography] and then 100 times more work as you’re editing it. Imagine filling a 16-page special section with a hundred pictures–out of a routine city hall meeting assignment. That’s shooting video. You have to shoot every detail in the room, every angle, every expression–just to get a few seconds of video to put on top of the few seconds of audio that you’ve edited down from two hours of tape.
It’s a time-consuming job, one that keeps Contreras at his computer from 8:30 a.m. until 10 some nights. In addition, he and several colleagues update the Web site each morning, on a rotating basis, from 4:30 to 7. “I go home, take a nap, then come back,” he says.
Good to see my co-worker from the summer, Evelio Contreras, getting mention in the article as he is a print reporter turned multimedia producer down in Roanoke.
Hopefully editors will get the idea from this article that producing storytelling video takes time. Good storytelling no matter the medium takes time. Melissa Worden blogged about the time commitment yesterday.
Tags: journalism, video
‘The Wire’ creator David Simon on the state of journalism
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under state of newspapers
Doing a little “tab cleaning” today in Firefox and wanted to share this quote from David Simon:
The newsroom where I used to work (the Baltimore Sun) had 460 people. Now it has 300. And there are people out there who just don’t care. They’ll make more money putting out a mediocre paper than they would putting out a better paper. They know this. It’s their equation. They’re quite content with mediocrity.
And within that culture we have people that are saying, ‘oh no, we’re going to do more with less,’ which is one of the great lies of the 21st century. What it means is we’re going to less with less. And that’s the nature of what journalism is becoming.
Tags: journalism, photojournalism
Video Workload survey results.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under video
I’ve been meaning to link to this survey for awhile now. Andy did a great job with it and it should prove useful in educating those around you on how time demanding video production can be.
A few key findings:
You should allow 4 hours to produce 1 minute of video
There are no clearly defined roles in newsrooms for video (This tells me photojournalists should be establishing themselves as the visual storytellers before someone else moves in on the opportunity)
Photographers would be expected to shoot stills as well as video for a story in 66% of the newsrooms who responded…..If we take the headline that the same person will be shooting and editing video these figures are pretty scary. You’re going to be very busy.
Tags: journalism, photojournalism, video
Journalism Wants Pitcher to Be the Catcher Too
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under journalism
This post over at PJNet is worth a read for those of us about to enter the job field. The 18 comments the article has generated thus far are also worth your time.
Think of any position on the field; who would want the pitcher to be the catcher too? But that’s what we want from our best reporter writers. We want them not only to play any position but also to play the equivalent of two or three sports — and video, audio and writing for the page are indeed different sports.
The post sparked a response from Rob Curley on his blog.
When you combine strong traditional journalism skills with a great mindset, you’ve got a journalist who’s going to be fine regardless of what new things or technologies come our way.
My biggest problem with a lot of young journalists is that so many of them have the crappiest attitudes on the planet. So many of them are so close-minded that it’s shocking, especially if these folks represent the future of our industry.
My biggest question to J-Schools now is why are your students so dang close-minded? Where was that instilled, and what are you going to do to help them graduate with a degree and a mindset that will keep them employed as long as they want to be members of the Fourth Estate?
In the end that’s what it all comes down to. A great mindset.
Tags: journalism, photojournalism
SND Goodies.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under design
There’s bundles of information and inspiration to hand in these handouts from the SND(Society for News Design) conference that took place earlier this year. It’s geared towards designers, but can easily be applied to us as photojournalists.
I found these PDFs especially useful.
Storytelling in print and multimedia
Jenn Crandall (washingtonpost.com’s onBeing) project and Kelli Sullivan (Los Angeles Times projects including the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Altered Oceans”) show how words and images can be combined to create compelling narratives.
Download PDF(3.6MB) of Kelli Sullivan’s talk.
A few things worth highlighting in the handout:
Communication - Be a conduit for the various disciplines
Become a part of the discussion early and often
Partner with people who determine space in the paper to ensure you get what you need for your project.
Editing - Look at every item and weigh it against one another.
Edit for redundancy and push to move the story forward.
“What makes this project unique?” Build on that theme.
Collaboration - Need I say more?
Planning - Get out of your chair and make it happen.
Be proactive.
Look ahead to the budgets and ask about items you might want to work on. (How often do you get photo assignments that have us there when nothing is going on? Much like Renee C. Beyer said at the Flying Short Course reschedule your assignments for when something is going on.)
Scott Minister who’s just up the road in Columbus, OH had a great handout on sports design. His advice might as well been written for photographers too.
Download PDF (6.7 MB) of Scott Minister’s talk.
A few things worth noting that also reinforce what I’ve taken away from my picture story class this quarter:
Let the content drive your decisions. (You have a vertical to fit this hole? Shouldn’t happen when the content is driving the design.)
Strong ideas are the most valuable commodity that we have.
Ideas come from things that you’re passionate about and they also come from words, so be well-read. (Everyday I read the NY Times looking for ideas that could lead to strong visuals.)
Make planning a priority. Always have a reservoir of ideas. (Need to keep my ideas in one place.)
Be prepared. (Every year you know the paper will have something dealing with Valentine’s Day, etc so plan ahead and do something special.)
A healthy, working relationship between the photo and art departments is imperative to the success of the paper. (Communication and Collaboration once again.)
One last handout I found helpful was on creating an effective portfolio. OU professor, Terence Oliver, had a hand in this one. (Had to get my OU plug in somewhere.)
Creating an effective portfolio
Though we’re in the presentation business, many of us struggle to present our own work. Tips for both students and working professionals from author Sara Eisenman (“Building Design Portfolios”) and Terence Oliver (Professor, Ohio University).
Download PDF
Hopefully you find the handouts as useful as I have.
Tags: design, inspiration, journalism, photojournalism
Editor and Publisher 2007 Photos of the Year
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under contests
Editor and Publisher have announced the winners in their 2007 Photos of the Year contest. Read the article here. See the gallery of winners here.
There’s some great images and others that leave me puzzled, but that’s the nature of contests.
An overhead umbrella shot winning best feature image in the 25k to 99k circulation category? It’s a fine daily weather feature, but in a contest?
Sure it’s easy on the eyes and there’s nothing lacking in the composition department. But this is a photojournalism contest not an art contest.
Where’s the content? Where’s the journalism?
Contests are often seen as setting the bar in this industry and I’m not sure the judges are sending the right message with this one. Nothing against the photographer, but this one falls short for me on what E&P lists as their definition of a feature photo: Features: A storytelling photo used in any section of the newspaper, often with strong human interest.
Perhaps I’m being over critical thanks to my picture story class this quarter and have demanded more of myself, my classmates and the industry as storytellers.
For me this image doesn’t help increase our voice as storytellers if anything it puts us back in the category of a being a service department.
Rant off.
Tags: contests, journalism, photojournalism
Flying Short Course
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under conferences
A few thoughts from the Flying Short Course in DC this weekend:
Some of the most organized and smoothly ran portfolio reviews I’ve been a part of. I even had a very helpful critique on some of my video work.
We’re still telling people the benefits of doing audio? I assumed everyone was already doing it. I guess not.
I found it interesting that Andrew DeVigal showcased audio slideshows that were almost all reporter\voiceover driven rather than character driven, which he listed as one of the key components to putting together a strong audio story.
Josh Meltzer, my co-worker from the summer, gave a great talk on multimedia. He had a nice handout on working with audio that can be found online here.
Someone asked Carolyn Cole what kind of CF card she uses? Won’t fault the man though since I probably would of asked a question like that 3 years ago.
I feel pretty good about where we as students stand based on our storytelling skills using various tools compared to the industry. Rick Rickman highlighted the fact that students will be moving into a lot of leadership roles based on what we know. Both scary and exciting to think about.
A clean sensor is a great thing. Thanks Canon.
You can read more about the event on MultimediaShooter and NPPA.
Tags: journalism, nppa, photojournalism
Missouri Photo Workshop.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under photojournalism, workshops
MPW wrapped up last week and along with a new gallery of community photojournalism to pursue there’s a new batch of Rangefinders. The Rangefinder is the daily newsletter of the workshop and always contains an article or a few quotes that makes it worth the download.
Check ‘each day out:
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Update: Kevin pointed out that the links on the MPW site pointed to the Rangefinders from last year. MPW has since updated the links, which now point to the issues from the latest workshop. Enjoy.
Tags: journalism, photojournalism, workshops
The Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
The lineup for the 2007 Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar has been announced. Among a great panel of speakers is my former boss and all-around great guy Dan Beatty.
I’ll see you there?
Tags: journalism, photojournalism
To pay or not to pay? To stage or not to stage?
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
Hello Athens.
Jenn and I just got back from a nice little road trip from Utah to Ohio, which also means I’m back in the blogging saddle. I’ll post more from the trip when I get settled in.
In the meantime I found this post and discussion interesting and wanted to pass it on.
Just a bit of what you’ll find on Michael’s post about Manufactured Landscapes:
Right after, there’s a scene where Burtynsky’s assistant pays a man carrying firewood. You get the feeling that the payment was given because each man was halted from what they’d been doing, and asked to do it again, for the benefit of a photograph.
There’s something about the photograph above that feels lessened, after learning it was staged. You might say more is manufactured than just the landscape in Burtynsky’s work. Documentary images needn’t always be candid, but I always thought payment was a no no.
Back to unpacking.
Tags: ethics, journalism, photojournalism
