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Check out this video!

In college I was a print journalism major with an English literature minor.
So why am I learning about video today at work?

Because that could be the future.
No one knows exactly what journalism will be in 30 years. We're not sure what sorts of jobs, companies and publications will be around in 30 years.
But, we do know people will be providing content to others.
My newspaper, the Irvine World News that is owned by the Orange County Register, is doing what many newspapers are doing - experimenting.
So when the company urges me on in posting breaking news, audio, video and Flash projects online - I say yes!
Some people I know - and yes they are Generation J age (21-30) - are very resistant to doing anything other than writing the old and traditional-style newspaper stories.
I'm way too young to resist learning how to do anything. In college, some professors thought it was good that I learned how to copy edit, design and take and edit photos for newspapers. Others thought I should only have written newspaper stories.
And now at SPJ conventions I find huddles of, ahem, older journalists competing over who's newspaper has the most interactive web site. Then, I find people my age competing over who has the longest, most interesting newspaper stories.
Say what?!?
Come on people! I'm going to ride into the next age of journalism. Who's coming with me?

Note: For a wonderful beginning training site on multimedia – check out this.
Published Thursday, March 08, 2007 2:58 PM by SonyaSmith
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Comments

# re: Check out this video!

Thursday, March 08, 2007 3:27 PM by GenePark
I think most of the resistance doesn't stem from a hesitancy to change. I think a lot of it comes from the growing pains in how to effectively perform these tasks without having a newsroom full of disgruntled and tired writers. <br><br>Many of the reporters and photographers I speak to casually talk about being forced to train in producing video for their respective Web sites. This comes from an unwillingness from the company to invest in personnel dedicated to these tasks, which is understandable. Employment, after all, is a long-term investment, and like you said, newspaper companies are in the experimentation or pilot phase for many of these initiatives.

# re: Check out this video!

Saturday, March 10, 2007 12:11 PM by MichelleMaskaly
I deal with this situation everyday at my paper. Since I've been pretty much reassigned to work on portions of our Web site, mostly the breaking news - I would and sometimes still do, get a lot of resistance from younger journalists. Many of them fear other news organizations will take our material, which does happen, because of the highly competitive market we are in. I think posting information on our Web site and getting it out there fast and accurate,  makes us more competitive - and now with video we print people can beat out the TV stations, too.  I think it's such a positive thing to learn all of these new and exciting things going on with newspapers - blogging, video, audio - because, as you said no one knows what journalism will look like in 30 years.  We younger journalists, who do see the value in learning these new technologies, have to be cheerleaders of sorts for this in our newsrooms, because the more we talk it up, the more people will come on board with it.

# re: Check out this video!

Tuesday, March 20, 2007 12:40 PM by Brooke M. Walsh
At first, I struggled with using video because it forced me to ask myself, “what can I show with video that I can’t express with words?” Admitting that video could add something still images or words could not meant admitting that my writing wasn’t as powerful as I wanted it to be. But, instead of looking at video as a threat to good writing, I’ve started integrating video into the idea of a complete package. Instead of the ideal story having only great design, writing and photographs, it now might have great video.

I also think that 24-7, flashy television news has changed the appetites of media consumers from a desire for print to one for video, as much as I hate admitting that.

In terms of technical usage, we host our videos on brightcove.com, which allows us to embed them into our web pages. On our site the video sits as a photo that can be clicked to be played. Brightcove.com not only allows us to easily embed these videos, but also acts as a host to them so that they do not take up space on our server. All of this is provided free, though there is a subscription based service that they offer.

In the end, I don’t think young journalists can afford to be weary of technology.

Here is the link to one of our web pages that shows the video embedding (it’s the second story on the page; video & story by Jeff Achen): http://www.thisweek-online.com/applevalley.html

Here’s a link to our brightcove.com page: http://www.brightcove.com/channel.jsp?channel=537541505
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