Newspaper Video Goes Boldly Into The 1990s in 2012

Now, don’t get me wrong.

I like the Nieman Journalism Lab.

I respect them.

So this is not about them.

This is about a piece Bryan Murley just sent me in my email.

It is entitled:

It’s all about how newspapers are ‘finally’ getting the hang of video… in the year 2012. (2012!)

This is like saying commercial airlines are finally getting the hang of jet engines in 2012.

(“We tried one the other day”, said Richard Branson, CEO of Virgin Atlantic. “It was an interesting experiment. We put one on one of our trans-atlantic prop planes to see how it worked out.  Three dependable prop engines and one jet.  It was great. We even ran it for 20 minutes! Wow! There’s a lot of potential here”)

I am just shocked to read this article.

First, that this is even considered worthy of print or in some way ‘ground breaking’.

The headline shoud read: Pathetic Newspapers Still At Death’s Door.

But I suppose Nieman has lots of newspaper people on its board so it wants to avoid offending them.
So let me.

We introduced the idea of newspaper video when I was at The New York Times in 1994.  That is 18 years ago.  I was giving out video cameras to Time Magazine reporters (thank you Joe Quinlan) in 1992. That would be 20 years ago.  Twenty years, and this is all you have achieved? A few disparate videos from a few of your reporters.  Pathetic! Beyond pathetic! Shocking.

I want you to think for a minute what cell phones were like 20 years ago and what they are like today; what computers were like 20 years ago and what they are like today.  If Nokia moved at the speed of newspapers, we’d still be marveling at those brick phones we were still using  (but now, we’re trying a game called snake!).

And the fact that you think this is some kind of an ‘achievement’????

Let me go to the article itself:

“All in all, the Times produced more than 20 hours of unique video out of the conventions. There were one-on-one interviews, nightly shows, live standup shots, pre-produced segments, and so on. Like the Journal, the Times participated in YouTube’s elections hub, which Roberts says drove a lot traffic. Roberts said he’s not allowed to disclose any numbers about video traffic, “but I would tell you if I was disappointed, and I was ecstatic.”

Let me put this in perspective for you.

20 hours of video over 7 days of convention coverage (Democrats and Republicans). That comes out to just under 3 hours of video a day.

As the conventions ran about 12 hours per day, that means that The New York Times produced about 15 minutes per hour.

Now, let’s put that in perspective in the online video world.

During the same convention period, average people uploaded 483,840 HOURS of video to YouTube.

Did you get that NY Times?  Did you get that Wall Street Journal?

Your video convention coverage represented 0.0000004% of all the online video that was produced during the convetion.

Well, not such an achievement now, is it?

Sorry.

“We’re not network news, we’re not cable news,” New York Times assistant managing editor Jim Roberts told me. “We want to exploit certainly our knowledge, but also the medium. Web video gives you more freedom than cable or broadcast. I’d like to push us more in a social direction.”

Well, they may not be the networks, but they still think like the networks.

They still view each and every video as ‘precious’.

This is like setting up a twitter feed for The NY Times and reporting that during the covention you sent 20 tweets! and you had 40 followers!

In the world of online and social media, the numbers are different.

Or they should be.