Newspaper Wins DuPont Broadcast Award

What's remarkable about the 13 recipients of this year's Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards for national broadcast journalism is that, amidst the usual alphabet-soup suspects (ABC, CBS, PBS, BBC, NPR), we find the Las Vegas Sun.

Videojournalism stories on the Websites of print newspapers (such as the Detroit Free Press) have started winning Emmy Awards, which were previously bestowed only upon TV productions. But this is the first time that the prestigious DuPont award has gone to a print newspaper -- in this case, for "Bottoming Out," an online multimedia package about gambling addiction.

(Needless to say, the video was originally showcased on KobreGuide to the Web's Best Videojournalism at the time of publication.)

The cornerstone of the three-part package is a video self-portrait by Tony McDew, who documented his own Las Vegas casino slot machine addiction with the hope of helping others, and in the process ended up quitting gambling himself.

The series is strengthened by a powerful video diary following one man’s descent into gambling addiction with strong interactive engagement. The Las Vegas Sun explored problem gambling three ways — through the experiences of an addict; by examining what happens inside the brain of an addict; and by considering the role of slot machine designs in feeding gambling addictions. The web site also provides support and resources to help gambling addicts.

Part 1: Tony's Story
The pull of a drug, a push to the brink

Part 2: The Physiology
Illness theory gaining ground for gambling addiction

Part 3: The Machines
Could the game be partly to blame for addiction?



LINKS:

* Las Vegas Sun's award-winning multimedia package on gambling addiction.

* Las Vegas Sun story about DuPont Award

* "Bottoming Out" on KobreGuide

* 2011 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award Winners

A Rwanda Story You Don't Usually See on TV

Today's featured video is courtesy of Michael Rosenblum, who is spending the month in the UK teaching reporters at media organizations, such as the BBC, how to create solo videojournalism projects. In other words, how to interview, light, shoot, record audio, and edit video without benefit of a TV crew or postproduction facility.

On Rosenblum's New York Video School blog, he posted a sample by Victoria Holt, a reporter with a small BBC local station.

She was assigned to do a story on local immigrant issues.

For most local TV stations, that means finding a family and profiling them at home, sometimes with a few photos.

But not now.

Not when for $600 you can buy a plane ticket from London to Rwanda and spend a week going home with a Rwandan refugee who has not been home in 10 years.

Here's the piece that Victoria shot, reported, scripted and edited all on her own, using a small digital camera and a laptop to edit.

"You tell me," asks Rosenblum rhetorically. "Is it worth it?"

Guardian Media Academy Offers Video Training

VJ guru Michael Rosenblum, in partnership with The Guardian, is offering video training courses in the U.K. for both amateurs and professionals. It's called the The Guardian Media Academy, and its initial offerings include:

* How to Shoot Great Video (1 Day)

* Video Editing for Beginners (1 Day)

* Two-day Video Training

Do you want to be able to produce high quality videos for your business or your website or do you just want to be able to make great home movies that people will actually want to watch?

In this two-day intensive class we will teach you everything you need to get started: how to shoot, how to tell a compelling story and how to edit using Final Cut software. By the end of the two days you will have produced your own short film and will understand what it takes to make a really good video.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t have your own camera and laptop; you can rent them from us and no experience is required.

* Four-day Professional Video Producers Boot Camp

Designed for people who want to earn money or make a living from creating video content. Whether you’re a journalist who needs to re-skill or someone who wants to produce their own videos to sell to online and broadcast clients then this is the training you need to be successful.

The course covers everything from basic and advanced shooting to advanced storytelling techniques and non-linear editing. Each delegate will produce at least two high quality videos during the course which will be critiqued by professionals who have produced thousands of hours of video content for clients like The BBC, Conde Nast and The New York Times.

Emphasis will be on both technology and aesthetics. "Over the past 20 years," notes Rosenblum, "RosenblumTV has created a simple method that gets people up to broadcast quality in only a few days. And the emphasis isn’t just on the button pushing, but rather on how to produce compelling video stories. No matter how well shot something is, if it’s not a great story, no one will watch it."

Course dates are in October, and 10% early-bird tuition discounts are available through August 30. Register here.

BBC Multimedia: The Long Way Home

Volcano-induced air-travel paralysis has been splendidly captured in a BBC audioslideshow, The Long Way Home, ingeniously produced by Paul Kerley.

The blend of stunning images and soundbites are cleverly set to the beat of REM, Sinatra, Pat Benatar, Dwight Yoakam, and more, underscoring the comic preposterousness of the whole messy situation.

Watch it here.

(Cyberhat tip to Guy Kawasaki's Alltop.)

Weekend Reading Recommendations

Recent thought-provoking reports and essays about videojournalism:

* How to achieve the new look in Video Journalism (Adam Westbrook)

* CineVJ – A New Paradigm In Story Telling (Solo VJ / Cliff Etzel)

* Video of Protests in Kyrgyzstan (New York Times)

* BBC Newsroom Chief on the Evolution of Web Video Reportage -- The Power of "Show and Tell" Reporting from Kyrgyzstan (Huffington Post / Beet TV)

BBC Expanding Online News Video

BBC News is amping up its online video news coverage.

According to Journalism.co.uk:

The BBC will experiment with more livestreaming and short-form video on its website as part of its developments in multimedia news journalism...

More live coverage will be explored with the development of a "rich live page" featuring related content, streams of microblogged updates from correspondents and social media feedback from viewers alongside news videos...

The article quotes the BBC's new multimedia guru pontificating about what does and doesn't work with online video, and how it should and shouldn't be packaged and presented.

And you can see the current state of affairs over here and here.

Right now it pretty much looks like TV news repurposed (i.e. degraded) for the Web, as opposed to created for the Web -- a hybrid of raw footage, soundbites, half-assembled reports, with the occasional anchor or correspondent voiceover. Much of it looks like it's not ready for prime time, but was apparently deemed "good enough" for online use (i.e. scraped off the proverbial cutting-room floor).  Plus the videos themselves are poorly organized -- just a jumbled woodpile of unenticing titles and nondescript thumbnail images begging not to be clicked.

In short, not an improvement on standard newspaper video presentation (which is, for the most part, abysmal). For starters, we think the BBC could augment their basic headline service and B-roll with a healthy dose of full-fledged enterprising videojournalism storytelling. That takes an investment of time, money and talent -- far more than the slapdash efforts currently on display. If they really do decide to  stop dragging a foot in the past, and instead boldly plant one in the future, we believe the journalistic rewards will become readily apparent, with audience loyalty and financial rewards to follow.

First Video Ad in a Print Magazine

In September, Entertainment Weekly will publish the first video ad -- in its print edition.

The British press is abuzz with this technological breakthrough, but the American press is remarkably blase about it.

We found stories about it on the Websites for the U.K.'s Guardian, Daily Mail, Telegraph, London Times, Irish Times, the BBC, even the kids' version of BBC.

Apparently they're all transfixed by the "Harry Potter" quality of moving images on a printed page, though it's not nearly that impressive.

It works like one of those singing greeting cards -- opening the page activates a superslim computer chip. The screen is about the size of your cellphone display (2" x 1.5").

Each chip can hold up to 40 minutes of video.

The first will contain previews of CBS's 'Two and a Half Men' (pictured), 'The Big Bang Theory,' 'Accidentally on Purpose,' plus other shows from the network's fall lineup. And ads for the new Pepsi Max.

The cost of the video ad hasn't been reported, and it remains to be seen whether it will have a positive effect on sales, as Esquire experienced last year when it employed the novelty of using the Amazon Kindle's e-ink on its cover.

Naturally, our question is: How long before print magazines use video for editorial purposes? You can tell some good stories in 40 minutes!

Here's a sneak preview of the CBS/Pepsi ad supplement in Entertainment Weekly's Sept. 18 Fall Preview edition, containing the video-in-print player: