Can This Work?

Because photographers are never around that long. Most photographers hit a couple of games each Friday night and then head back to the office. I've never seen a photographer around at the end of a high school football game, unless it was the state semis or finals.

And most photographers I know are no more excited about this than we are.

 

It's been discussed at our paper also. Our goal is to start adding it to our web site by the next fiscal year. Needless to say, no one is thrilled about it.

 

Rumour last night was the union won't stand for this at our paper. The "job titles" say nothing about "videographer" or "video journalist."

This might get ugly.

 

Perfect response funky mountain. For better or for worse, this is where things are headed. It's something journalists will need to embrace. Eventually the model will change and editors will find a way to get photographers and reporters to work together in harmony on these types of videos, but that might be far in the future.

 

I don't think this "is where the business is headed." This is just another fad from the clueless. "Make it look like YouTube." Wow. It sounds as if the idea is to offer people a local news broadcast they can see online. This just in. Many American homes already have local news they watch on TV. Trust me. You will never get the chops you need to become a real videographer, and in the meantime, your reporting and writing skills will erode. Not that your employers think that matters. Then, you will be replaced by people coming out of school who only did videography in college.

 

I think you need to take the strongest/toughest photog and the same from the writers, circle the staff around them and have them battle to see who does video.

FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!

 

Don't get me wrong, I would love the opportunity to learn that new skill and make myself more of a commodity to other papers, but not at the expense of my ability to report and write.

If I have a free afternoon or night (yeah right), I'd be glad to go stick a camera in a coach's face. But I can't imagine how tough it would be to take notes and keep the camera steady.

 

Two comments.

1. You don't want your plates to be any more full, so your suggestion is to push the work off on the photogs? Way to respect your colleagues. I'm sure they won't mind the extra work being forced on them.

2. I, for one, love when I hear people in this business refusing to be progressive, because comprehensive multimedia news presentation is the job I'm being trained for, and while I don't plan to do it in the newspaper business, my classmates sure do, and the day you refuse to do it is the day they take your job.

 

I'm not a big fan of the trend, but I'm even less of a fan of the trend of doing this as cheaply as possible. Higher-ups seem to think they're going to lure more traffic to Web sites by giving someone a camcorder, a tripod and a copy of iMovie. You're simply not going to create quality video doing that. You're going to create video of quality roughly equivalent to high-school televised morning announcements.

Someone earlier mentioned football Friday nights and the fact that photographers are never around at the end of a game on a Friday night. Why not? Because it takes time to go through a couple hundred photos, size them, crop them, tone them and get them to the desk. It sucks that we can't get photos from the end of a game, but that's the tradeoff we have to make.

You want video from after the game? Better be prepared to give that photographer a laptop, and a high-quality one at that, and find a way to guarantee he has wireless access so he can transmit photos. Want the reporter to do it? Better be prepared to extend deadline by however long it takes the reporter to shoot the video. And you'd better also be prepared to pay for the time that it takes to edit that video. Commonly held formula that I've heard is one hour of editing per one minute of video.

Of course, they won't pay for any of this stuff. Instead, we'll be told to just make do. And we'll continue to provide a crappy product to people who, increasingly, know better.

 

Desk

My "solution" to this (if I'm forced to do it) is do it right (or as right as can be with iMovie, shitty cameras, etc.) - which, like you said will take time after the game and at the end of the shift.

I'll record every fucking second of OT until they can no longer afford to pay me to do this shit.

 

It's frustrating doing video because I was hired, in part, because I graduated with a degree in broadcasting.

Fell in love with writing, got good enough, and was moved up to a writing position, so i thought.

Now, because I'm fortunate to be skilled enough to do two jobs, they actually want me doing both at the same time!

In all my experiences, the video has always suffered, because, frankly, when going through the postgame maddness, my first instinct is to find the coach, player, etc., grab the notebook and start writing.

I was actually told to use my quotes off the video, not to worrry about notes.

Good luck when I'm on deadline from a football game in the middle of nowhere.

I know times are-a-changin, but c'mon.

 

Get ready to look for other jobs (especially if you're in the U.S.). Management is looking for any excuse to give unions the boot, and mass insubordination is perfect.