The New York Times brings Video To Wall Street Coverage

OK, it's a talking head, but listen to what he says

In 1994, I sold a 51% interest in Video New International to The New York Times.

When I made the deal, I promised then publisher/owner Punch Sulzberger (Arthur's father) that I would be able to create a video analog of the newspaper.

It took a lot longer than I thought, but I am delighted to see that the paper (or parts of it at any rate) are moving into video online.

Above, an interview with Mac William Bishop, a videographer and reporter for The Dealbook section of the paper who explains how he is using video for storytelling.

The irony here, of course, is that in explaining how he is using video for storytelling, he is not using video for storytelling at all, but rather for talking heads.

Well, you can't have everything.

Bishop does an interesting video interview with Robert H. Benmosche, the CEO of AIG, but unfortunately, the video is not embeddable.

Here's the link- and it's worth a look.

http://bcove.me/t2ya9eku

Again, it's a talking head.

Nicely shot, but not much in the way of video 'storytelling'.

It would seem, for the most part, the The Times is only paying lip service to the idea of video storytelling, but lip service is better than no service.

This is, however, a big improvement over Joel Stein's video portrait of chef Grant Achatz in Time Magazine.

Stein is a brilliant writer, but when this piece was first posted, he added a really terribly shot video piece that he did himself about Achatz.

I emailed him and told him that the video had to be as good as the writing.

he agreed

Here's what he wrote back to me:

Joel Stein December 28, 2010 at 1:19pm Report

You're right. It's just that there's a bit of a tradeoff between reporting and shooting a story. It really gets in the way, and I really don't care about it, so I do it quickly. I probably shouldn't do it at all. Or put a tiny bit more care into it. But I hate when they send a producer/shooter because then I'm making a video and doing a little bit of reporting for the story when I can. It gets very artificial.