David Westin, former President ABC News
In 1989, at the height of the AIDS crisis, I went off to Uganda with a video camera in search of the ‘Index Case’ – the source of the worldwide AIDS pandemic.
I found it on the Sese Islands in Uganda.
When I came back, Ted Koppel and Tom Bettag at Nightline gave me a whole hour. It was some pretty good reporting.
It had also cost ABC News next to nothing.
Last night, ABC News President David Westin announced that he was stepping down.
It’s no secret that ABC News has been under enormous financial pressure.
In February, ABC News cut it’s staff by 400 people, a reduction of 25%.
It’s tragic, because ABC News has the potential, even now, to place itself on the very cutting edge of digital and broadcast journalism for the 21st Century… if…
If they have the courage to take the actions that could put them there. But that kind of change is not easy to make.
But it could be done… and for not much money at all.
Forbes magazine reportered Diane Sawyer’s salary (not to pick on her, but it’s an easy number to find) at $12 million per year in 2005.
OK. That’s something to work with.
Let’s say that we took $12 million, which clearly is not so much for ABC News, and we hired 100 of the world’s best videojournalists – people like Emmy Award winner Travis Fox, formerly of The Washington Post, or Adam Ellick at The New York Times, AP’s Raul Gallego.. there are lots of them… all making well under $100,000 a year, I would guess. Let’s say we put them on salary for $100,000 a year. How many could we hire? 120. One hundred and twenty of the world’s best digital journalists (and these folks are extraordinarily good).
Imagine the firepower, the pure journalistic firepower that ABC News would have to field 120 of the world’s best digital journalists. The would not only be able to feed every show on ABC News, they would own the web. Own it.
The potential is here, now. And it would not cost all that much.
What it requires is the courage not just to put your toe in the digital video online world, but to embrace it and own it.
ABC News has a moment now when they could do that… if….
When Leica cameras first unleashed an earlier generation of photojournalists to travel the world on their own with small cameras, Henry Luce saw the potential and created Life Magazine.
It went on to become the dominant force in journalism for nearly 50 years.
Luce didn’t just put a few photos into Time Magazine. He embraced the new technology wholeheartedly. He had courage.
And he was right.
He nurtured a generation of the world’s greatest photojournalists from W Eugene Smith to Margaret Bourke White.
Well, now there’s a whole new generation of Margaret Bourke Whites.
They need a home. A publisher. Someone who understands the vast potential that they represent.
Does ABC News have the courage to own the future?
