Can This Work?

Indeed.

 

Come on. This is so ridiculous. We hire reporters. We hire photographers. When the Internet became a part of our business, we hired Web specialists or trained people on staff and moved them into that spot.
Hire a videographer if it's so important. It's a separate job with a different skill set.
Any daily should have no problem doing this.

 

Should is the key word. It might cut into profits, or lack thereof, if they do, though.

 

I pretty much agree with that. We got presented this idea a couple months ago and had people come in and train us how to do the video/audio stuff. At first, I really hated the idea, taking the "I'm a writer, not a videographer/photographer" thing to heart. But after I swallowed my pride a little, I ended up shooting a video about a month ago and felt kinda proud about doing it. It took the entire day to shoot /edit/produce it, but it was worthwhile.

Doing video doesn't bother me near as much as having to take one of those little point-and-shoot cameras to something just because our photogs "can't make it." But, like JD Canon said, maybe doing all that will make me a more valuable employee/attractive job applicant.

 

Regarding the whole "make me a valuable employee/attractice job applicant" thinking:

I am a sports reporter/writer. I wen to school to be a PRINT JOURNALIST. I was hired as such. I want to remain as such. Why?

Because my goal it to work for the Metropolitan Daily one day in a city of roughly a million people. Do you think ANY MLB beat writer or ANY NFL beat writer is down on the sideline shooting pictures or in the lockerroom shooting video footage? No, and it will never happen.

So, if I want to be an MLB, NHL, NFL, NBA beat writer how am I supposed to be as good AT WRITING as a guy who DOES NOT have to shoot video/photos?

At the event, shooting video and photos takes away from me ability to pay attention to the details.

After the event, uploading photos, colour correcting them, cropping them, writing the cutline etc takes at least a half hour to do it right. Those are 30 minutes I could have spent CRAFTING a story.

Conversely, watching the game without a camera lens in my face takes away from shooting the best photo or video.

You can keep thinking this convergence will make you a "make me a valuable employee/attractice job applicant" and it will - for jobs at papers that cut corners and don't care about the quality of any portion of their product.

 

Come back after you have shot, edited and uploaded a video and see if you feel the same way. I'll wait.

 

Hate to burst your bubble, but I was asked by an editor at my Metropolitan Daily's prominent website less than a year ago to take along a video camera to an unusual sports event that I was covering that featured very, very mainstream sports personalities.

It was not a bad idea, but I told the editor, politely, that I thought it would compromise my ability to cover the actual event for the newspaper -- in other words, change the way I wrote the story -- and she said, politely, that she understood.

But I think the days of metro newspaper reporters-turned-videographers are already here.

 

Kudos to both you and your boss for understanding the problem. I like the way you handled and what you said, I may borrow that!

 

I am amazed how out of touch you are with our industry. FYI - print is dying at an amazing rate and our future lies in online and multimedia. Having such a narrow-minded view as the one above isn't going to get you anywhere in this biz...actually, it's the exact opposite of what those metro papers you speak of are looking for, so don't expect to ever get to one. If you want to just "write," I suggest looking into the PR field.

 

I think you are wrong, Mitch. Sure everyone needs to do his/her part to feed the web, but writers should be providing timely web stories and blogs and such -- not taking photos and doing videos willy nilly.

Do the ESPN.coms and Yahoos and Aols hire big-time writers and put a video camera in their hands? No.

Helping out, learning different skills is great. But video is very time consuming and its a stupd paper that just shoves a video camera in anyone's hand.

 

Exactly.

If they want to make the most of the net, why hasn't my paper given me a laptop to take to every game so I can update in real time? Why haven't they said "upload capsules to the net upon your return from the game?" Why haven't they teased to the net in the paper and to the paper on the net?

Giving me a video camera I've never used nor have interest in using only makes BOTH the video and the story suffer - whether that story is on the net or not.

Regarding "do the Aols, Yahoos and ESPN.coms give their writers cameras?" Nope. And neither does MLB.com, NBA.com, major dailes and on and on. But do you know what they do, Mitch? They update often. Write through after write through. Blogs. Real time updates, etc.

 

Friend of mine works for a paper that's really into the posting video thing. She's a photographer and the stuff she's posted has been feature-y stuff....like parties at the library.
I think it's fine to have photographers who are in to that kind of stuff shooting little features, or putting up press conferences on the site. I dunno about giving reporters a video camera.