Not exactly….
A few years ago, when we were starting the first of our local operations with Verizon, one of our new hires showed up for the first day of work in a pencil tight gold dress and high heels. She wanted to be a “TV reporter”. Clearly, she didn’t understand how we worked.
In those days, the idea that a TV reporter would carry their own camera; shoot and edit their own material was looked at as either downright weird or clearly second rate. Anyone who wanted to be a TV reporter in those days was far more concerned with looking good than with stupid things like shooting and editing… or reporting for that matter.
Thankfully, those days are over.
There are those who clearly don’t like it – mostly people who came into the business with the idea that the ‘technicians’ would do the heavy lifting (and 95% of the work), but they are increasingly in a minority. This ws not the case when we started the VJ Revolution in 1988 in Sweden and in 1990 at NY1 in New York. But it is clearly the case now.
A recent article in The New York Times brought this home to me last week.
Says The Times:
“We have more people gathering content than we did a year ago, because more people are trained on more platforms,†Ms. Beall said. Such arrangements have been a source of grumbling for TV journalists for years, but for those who have never experienced the old way — a reporter, a videographer and sometimes a producer and a sound technician — the new way is more acceptable, and sometimes even preferable.”
Cory Bergman drives this point home in his well-read blog Lost Remote
“While many in the industry have despised “one man bands†for reducing quality, the multi-platform focus yields more coverage on TV websites and social media channels.”
Yes, well obviously. After being called everything from a pig to a dog by ‘professional’ TV news sites for promoting this (and doing the hands on work from KRON4 in San Francisco to WKRN in Nashville – very early adapters of what has now become the industry standard), I don’t mind saying “I told you so”. Not very professional, but too bad.
But, more importantly, what does this mean for anyone who wants to work in the TV news business in the future.
Multiskilling training is going on at the network news level as well, at all three major networks. They may not be doing the best job in the world in their own internal training (it’s kind of a mixed bag), but they also see the future.
Do you want a career in TV news – local or network or even international reporting? If you do, then the very first skill you have to get is the ability to shoot and cut quickly and efficiently and create a great piece by yourself. In the next few weeks we’re going to start shooting instructional videos on the basics of TV journalism on www.nyvs.com. (I taught for 8 years at The Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University and another 8 at NYU’s Journalism School, so I figure I am fairly qualified to do this).
There was a time, not so long ago, I would have said that TV news was dead. But now, as more and more stations and networks start to adapt the very cost-effective mechanisms of videojournalism, they are becoming profitable once more. And if that’s the case, I am here to help you get into that profession as well.
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