There is an assumption by newsprint journalists - and a conviction among gloating broadcasting journalists - that multi-skilling will never work. Newspaper reporters may be good at getting stories but they will never pass muster in front of a video camera. They may be good writers but they will never learn the art of speaking through a microphone.
Now comes some evidence from the US that suggests otherwise. As mainstream media evolve into multi-platform news outlets their staff are picking up new skills, argues Kurt Andersen in New York magazine. He writes: "Whereas the YouTube paradigm is amateurs doing interesting things with cameras, the newspapers' web videos are professional journalists operating like amateurs in the best old-fashioned sense."
He provides an example, an entertaining video blog about the Oscars, entitled The Carpetbagger and "starring" New York Times reporter David Carr. It is rather well done though I imagine few British papers, at present, would be able to match its production values (nor grant a reporter as much time as it must have taken Carr to do it).
Andersen is so enthusiastic he claims: "At their best, the newspapers' online videos are, minute for minute, superior to TV news." Well, that isn't the case with British newspaper websites just now. But we're a little behind the States, so there's no reason to believe it won't happen here. And, let's face it, Stateside TV news is vastly inferior in quality to its British equivalent, so it's much easier for American newspapers to compete.
"I can easily imagine newspapers' web-video portals becoming the TV-journalism destinations of choice for smart people," writes Andersen. Right now, "the medium is too new and unsettled to have anything like a best-practices rule book. Everyone is making it up as they go along." That's true of British newspaper vodcasts too. Andersen also concedes that "few of the on-the-fly inventions are awesome" but points to one attention-grabbing example, also produced by the New York Times. It's an obituary of the Washington Post columnist Art Buchwald which runs for more than 13 minutes. Again, it bears comparison with any TV production.
If British papers want to see how it can be done, their web gurus ought to gather these video packages and get their staffs to study them.
