How to Create, Distribute, Finance Video Stories

Nieman Reports editor Melissa Ludtke conducted an engrossing interview with MediaStorm founder Brian Storm, one of our favorite videojournalism gurus. It's a must read:

Ludtke: Can you describe where your optimism comes from at a time when we hear so much about the enormous challenges facing journalism and this despair being expressed by so many journalists?

Storm: The journalism industry is not in despair, it’s simply going through a redefinition. I feel like we’re living in such an epic moment, a transformational moment. Think about the big stories happening right now: climate change, new president, and an economy that is totally falling apart, and as journalists, these are big stories. It’s a great journalistic moment to be in this business. The big opportunity is that the tools are so powerful that anyone can create high production value content and distribute it globally. I don’t need to own a printing press or a television station, but I can be on television through new distribution devices like Apple TV or TiVo. It’s an absolutely revolutionary moment, and I feel incredibly empowered as a journalist. As a storyteller, I feel empowered to do the best work of my career right now, even though I don’t have the big mainstream media infrastructure sitting underneath me that I used to have. Now I can do the kind of stories that I’ve always wanted to do without any limitations.

Storm expresses his disdain for the "one-man band" videojournalism trend, noting that it's a byproduct of economic pressures, not a formula for excellence:

I don’t know one person operating at a high level who is an independent one-man band who is telling the kind of stories that you could tell in a collaborative environment. There’s just no way. In every project we do, several people collaborate to make that story happen: the designer, the producer, the executive producer, and the journalist who covered the story in the first place.

Much more here.