9 AM in the edit suite
The New York Times this week reported on an interesting experiment that was tried at Inc Magazine.
They created their April issue from home, without going to the office.
Well, why some stuff makes The Times is often beyond me.
News this is not, at least not to us.
For the past three years we have managed three hyperlocal TV stations for cable. Long Island, DC and Northern New Jersey.
None of them have studios, or offices, or carpeting, or watercoolers or receptionists or anything else.
Everyone (and everyone on staff is a VJ) works from home.
They get up in the morning, take their cameras and laptops and go out and report a story. Then they cut the story on their laptops on Final Cut Pro 7 and upload it to an FTP server. We take in the cut pieces and assemble them and produce the shows. Three half-hours a day, every day.
All of our staff works from home. All of them. And we don’t have Vice Presidents of news or receptionists or interns or anything else. Just a group of reporters creating daily video content.
It works pretty well. That’s why we keep doing it.
And it’s not a crazy idea and experiment that started as a joke. This is how we work all the time.
All the time.
(Why the New York Times does not do a story on us is beyond me… but I will let that pass).
So what’s happening (or I guess happened once as a kind of ‘crazy experiment’) is our day to day reality.
Has been for three years.
Will continue to be.
What makes all this possible is not the iPad or iPhone, but another piece of Apple software – FCP7.
Final Cut Pro 7 married to iChat allows us to skype (as a verb) in our VJs all along the east coast, as they are editing at home.
We can see them face to face, and with the click of a switch (so to speak) they can play their rough cuts on FCP for us, and we can watch them at home. In real time, while we are talking to them.
It’s like standing in an edit suite, but without the editor and without the edit suite, so to speak. But you are standing over their shoulder watching the rough cut go by, so you can make comments in real time.
It’s a fantastic piece of technology – or technologies.
So we have been able to get rid of the edit suites, and the editors, and the carpeting, and the desks and the water coolers and pretty much everything else.
Hey, NY Times. Over here!!!
About the author
mrosenblum - For more than 20 years, Mr. Rosenblum has been on the cutting edge of the digital ‘videojournalist’ revolution. During this time, he has lead a drive for videoliteracy, and the complete rethinking of how television is made and controlled. His work has included: The complete transitioning of The BBC's national network (UK) to a VJ-driven model, starting in 2002. The complete conversion of The Voice of America, the United State’s Government’s broadcasting agency, (and the largest broadcaster in the world), from short wave radio to television broadcasting and webcasting using the ‘VJ” paradigm (1998-present). The construction of NYT Television, a New York Times Company, and the largest producer of non-fiction television in the US. Rosenblum was both the founder and President of NYT TV, (all based on the “VJ” paradigm – 1996-1998). The President and Founder of Video News International, a global VJ-driven newsgathering company, with more than 100 journalists around the world. (1993-1996).
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Of course. Nothing special, right?
This is what technology does when it is properly applied. It disrupts the quo of status and enables radical and unimaginable ideas to be the new way to do business and disrupts legacy ops so quietly that the revolution is hardly noticed.
All it it takes is for every employee across the enterprise to have literacy in some key digital techniques to make this happen.
The newsroom-less newsroom is more efficient. Much easier to do with a startup, BTW.
I have told editors and publishers for years that this is the redesign of their operation that they really need. A newsroom with no reporters. The stories are not in the newsroom – they are out in the streets, out there~!
BTW, Where can we see your shows and reports? IPTV, Cable or Web?
FiOS1, but you have to have FiOS! (And who wouldn’t want that?)
This is the future. Why NY Times and others are fighting it, I don’t know. I just moved up from FCE to FCP7. I am a big boy now; working from home and on the road. Doing my research as a professor in the video age. Thanks for the training.
This isn’t exclusive to Apple – very easy to do the same thing with Skype – you can share your desktop and utilize any NLE to accomplish the same thing
How about sharing where you got that lovely bread board? Now that would be newsworthy!
Unfortunately we do not have FiOS. But there is not doubt that the New York Times is a day late and a dollar short (or 3 years and millions). I guess this just reiterates the fact that their way IS NOT WORKING….hmmm, I wonder if they will catch on? Who knows.
As for the “edit suite” – Looks like the perfect place to have a cup of coffee before getting the say started.
I truly enjoy working in my “edit suite” – yes WORKING! I am in my workout clothes about the head out – no time clock, no receptionist and no supervisor giving me the ‘eye’ for heading out at such an early hour. Thanks for the training. I can’t imagine my life heading in any other direction and I have you, Lisa and the rest of your crew to thank for it! Have a great day!