Video on the making of the Sunday Washington Post sports section

You know a lot more about that dept. and the staff then you've let on.
I'm not interested in helping you spin the wheel if you have an axe to grind.

 

I have to second that. I think almost all the posts I've seen on this thread just criticize the video itself, not the journalists. I just went back and re-read the whole thread, and there was one post that questions the quality of the sports department, which hardly qualifies as the whole board jumping on them.

And as for the video itself, if we proceed from Fishwrapper's assertion that there is no interest in the inside workings of the sports desk, then why do the piece at all? Obviously they did it because they think there is some interest in that, and my issue with the video was that it failed to actually tell people much of substance about the inside workings of a sports desk. Sure, no one cares about how you copy and paste together an NBA roundup, but they might be interested in how you arrived at the heds that you ended up with, how you decide what stories go on the front, the kinds of challenges you face, etc. They said in the video that there are a lot of behind-the-scenes people whose names don't get in the paper and whose work doesn't get recognized by the readers. Well, who are those people? What do they do? When I'm reading the sports section, what aspects of it are done by people who don't get bylines? That piece, IMHO, doesn't address any of those issues.

 

Again. Was that the intended purpose?

 

Long ago on this thread I mentioned Emilio in the video; who in the sports journalism business hasn't seen him around and doesn't respect his history? It was you who brought up the Man with a Pulitzer in a Closet. So I asked you his name. How that comes to be an axe to grind is beyond me.

I think by now we all should agree that the video was never meant to be seen in that form, the television equivalent of a first rough draft, as if Wilbon let us read his notebook scribblings before he wrote.

Now I am done.

 

Anytime you make something, I think the intent is to get people to watch... to hold a viewer. Regardless of the purpose, why make something boring?

But if you say it was a college project... sure, that makes sense. When somebody said Comcast, I was surprised because it doesn't look professional.

I'll be perfectly open about my problem with it. If newspapers think they can do great TV with little experience or training, this is the kind of thing they'll come up with. I take pride in my craft.

 

So it starts by saying the Sunday section is intended to give the reader something other than results and then spends the rest of the video showing how difficult it was to slap in today's results. Awesome.

 

I think Lugnuts and jaredk have nailed the larger issue at hand.
Newspapers across the country are giving still photographers and reporters video cameras and elementary editing implements and telling them "to get us some video."
What comes back is rudiment and unprofessional. Takes longer to produce and the end product is undesirable and leaves readers and professionals alike grasping at straws trying to figure out its intended purpose.
Shooting video is storytelling. It's a craft. Not unlike the written word. Not unlike the photograph. It's an artform. It requires a professional with an "eye" and training and a love for a medium. Not a moonlighting journalist doing it on the peripheral.
Until that day is recognized, newspapers will be left with a substandard production.


(jaredk, I take back my being blunt. I thought I recognized an exchange I had with someone else about the Post and Emilio.)

 

Seriously. I can imagine the reaction here if newspapers started telling photographers to "bang out a column while you're shooting the game." It shows ignorance and disrespect for the talents of just about everyone involved.