TV Network News Goes VJ

ABC News President David Westin announced that ABC News would cut 300-400 jobs (that's 20% of the workforce) and the they would move toward the VJ model for newsgathering.

While VJ is hardly news to us (we have been training VJs and building TV news operations around the model since 1988!) the idea that a network would embrace the model is clearly a bellwhether of where the industry is headed.

This morning, The New York Times confirmed the move, not only by ABC, but by all networks, that it's VJ or die. 

Said The Times: "

More journalists will become jacks-of-all-trades, wielding cameras, microphones and lights, as well as lists of interview questions. More production work will be conducted out of New York. “The ones who fear the most from the cuts are the ones that have a single function,” one ABC staff member said.

Mr. Westin said high-priced and purely cosmetic talent would become an increasingly endangered species. “There have been people in television news — very successful people — who do not write,” he said. “We are going to definitely require more of our journalists.”

Well, this is also no surprise to us.

We have long believed that if you can't shoot, edit, write and produce a story on your own, you have no future in the television news business.

Now, it appears, the President of a Network News organization seems to agree.