Newspaper Video That Works

Brian Donahue - He isn't Brian Williams - thank God!

All this week I have been participating in Dave Cohn's Carnival of Journalism discussion on The Role of Video in the Newspaper Newsroom.

(Carnival of Journalism is not, as I noted earlier, funded by Knight. Dave does this on his own).

In any event, you can read all the entires at the above link.

It's a bit funny for me to be reading this kind of discussion at this late date (2011), because one would have thought by now that newspapers would be much further along with video - but they aren't.  Which is strange because they are publishing online and on iPhones and iPads, all of which handle video very well.  The people who don't handle video very well are, of course, the newspapers.

This is because they still 'think' in terms of  'paper'.  And paper does not carry video very well.

One of my favorite clients was The Newark Star Ledger - a real old school newspaper.

A few years ago, Jeff Jarvis took me over there to meet the editor, who was thinking about taking the paper into video - as most newspaper editors probably do.

When we got to the newsroom, I was taken downstairs to 'tour' their 'studio'.

What they had done was build, in their basement, a really bad immitation of something akin to the set that ABC World News Tonight or CBS News uses to do their news - or any local TV news station for that matter. They all look about the same - desk, wood, monitor.  It was terrible.  

Then they introduced me to their 'anchors', two very attractive young women who were just out of college and who had majored in television.  (Anyone who majors in television I would fire immediately, but that's just me).

In any event, I told them to trash the whole thing.

I told them that they already had the world's best 'set' upstairs, in their newsroom - it was a real newsroom (unlike TV stations), where real journalists were covering real stories all day long.  Just use that!

And they did.

They we needed a host.  We trashed the two girls and found a real reporter - Brian Donahue - see above.

Then, it turned out, the newsroom was filled with real journalists who knew how to find and report a real story. So we gave them video cameras and taught them to use them to create video reporting - as opposed to immitate CNN type stories.

The result:  The Star Ledger has won a mind boggling 7 local emmys for TV - even if they aren't really on TV!

They have 5 full time VJs and 25 part time VJs.

If you want to see more of their work, here are few links

Skateboard kid
http://videos.nj.com/star-ledger/2011/06/nine-year-old_skateboarding_ph.html

Chair dance
http://videos.nj.com/star-ledger/2011/05/singer_and_entertainer_nicole.html

News produced for an online news cycle (immediate)
http://videos.nj.com/star-ledger/2011/06/teachers_firefighters_police_o.html
Ledger Live- opinion pieces
http://videos.nj.com/star-ledger/2011/06/whats_that_smell_investigating.html
http://videos.nj.com/star-ledger/2011/06/protesters_dub_their_march_sec.html
News Feature
http://videos.nj.com/star-ledger/2011/02/saint_peters_prep_swim_team_co_1.html
Feature
http://videos.nj.com/star-ledger/2011/05/north_warren_lacrosse_team_man.html
http://videos.nj.com/star-ledger/2011/04/brookdale_lacrosse_player_retu.html
http://videos.nj.com/star-ledger/2011/03/young_matthew_whitaker_demonst.html
http://videos.nj.com/star-ledger/2011/04/in_new_jersey_a_shrine_for_bob_1.html
Long form
http://videos.nj.com/star-ledger/2010/11/the_wreck_of_the_lady_mary.html

If you want to know how to make your newsroom work like this, call me.