Videojournalism Tutorials by D.C. Pros

Once again we're sharing some video tutorials about videojournalism from the International Journalists' Network. They're from top pros in Washington, D.C.

The first two are from Pierre Kattar, who produced Emmy-winning videojournalism for the Washington Post, and now flies solo.

Telling True Stories with Video, Part 1



Telling True Stories with Video, Part 2



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These next two are from Bill Gentile, a pioneering videojournalist who teaches at American University in Washington, D.C., where he founded and directs the school's Backpack Journalism Project.

Bill Gentile on Backpack Journalism, Part 1



Bill Gentile on Backpack Journalism, Part 2



Bill Gentile also runs acclaimed videojournalism workshops. The next one is March 10-13. More info here.

Videojournalism Opportunity in Detroit

One of our favorite newspapers is hiring a staff photographer. Nowadays, because their work will appear not just in print, but also on the Web and mobile platforms, that also means videographer.

In fact, a glance at their help-wanted ad is testimonial to how many disparate skills visual journalists must master these days:

The Emmy Award-winning Photography & Video department at the Detroit Free Press seeks a Staff Photographer to shoot and produce video, multimedia and photographic content....

JOB REQUIREMENTS:

* Strong news judgment and writing skills with emphasis on script writing and news production
* Ability to juggle multiple stories, multiple platforms and multiple media
* Superior video editing skills in Final Cut Pro - a fluency in Avid is OK
* Computer and audio/video equipment proficiency
* Creative approach to social media and alternative video production methods
* Ability to work well with others
* Strong ethics in news gathering and editing

We’re seeking candidates from all visual news organization backgrounds – whether that would be TV, a newspaper or a Web site.

To see samples of the illustrious staff's high-quality work, visit the Detroit Free Press channel on KobreGuide. The lucky candidate who lands this cherished slot will be in excellent company. For more info, and to apply, go here.

Bill Gentile's Backpack Journalism Workshop

Emmy Award-winning producer Bill Gentile (right) was probably among the first to call himself a "backpack journalist" -- i.e. a one-man-band mobile videojournalist.

His next hands-on workshop is June 24-27 in San Francisco, which he describes as "an intensive immersion in the craft of visual storytelling."

Gentile brings more than 30 years of field experience to teach the full range of skills essential to making powerful, character-driven stories for television and the Internet: story conception, shooting, scriptwriting, narrating, editing, marketing.

In this unique and supportive environment you will learn:

• To use portable video equipment to effectively capture images and sound.
• To recognize and cultivate dramatic story arcs.
• To conduct proper, in-depth interviews.
• To write powerful treatments and scripts.
• To narrate your story.
• To edit with Final Cut Pro for maximum effect.
• To distribute your story to local, national or global audiences.

Cost: $1,495.

For more information about Bill Gentile and his laudable workshops, go here.

Update: NPPA Advanced Storytelling Workshop

Some good news about the National Press Photographers Association Advanced Storytelling Workshop, coming up in April in Texas. They've just added Kathy Kieliszewski (pictured) of the Detroit Free Press as an instructor. She's the newspaper's four-time National Emmy Award winning multimedia producer. Though she and her team have worked closely with a local TV station, her roots are in newspaper video production, and her staff has grown organically from the paper's still photography department.

That makes Kieliszewski an especially welcome addition to the teaching staff, which consists mostly of accomplished TV news journalists. While broadcast expertise is needed in newsrooms these days, it's also important to distinguish between event-driven news coverage and videojournalism feature storytelling -- which is what the NPPA workshop strives to do.

Kieliszewski's work at Freep.com has been recognized at the NPPA Best of Photojournalism competition, the 2009 Webby Awards and as a finalist in the Pictures of the Year International's annual competition's documentary project of the year, as well as numerous photography and picture editing awards. That provides a good balance to the equally valuable input participants will receive from TV newscasters.

The workshop is slated for April 11-16 at Texas State University.

Here's some more info:

This exciting week-long program is designed for experienced TV and newspaper photojournalist, reporters, and video journalist (VJs) - anyone who tells stories with moving pictures, sound and words. We pick up where the Oklahoma NewsVideo Workshops leaves off. We have broadened our scope to include journalists working for newspapers and one-man-bands. Several of our faculty were working solo and winning Photographer of the Year awards long before anyone used the term VJ.

Everyone is a participant. Working solo or in teams, you will develop story ideas, research, report, shoot, edit and produce complete packages under real world deadlines. Critiques and one-on-one sessions abound.

You will participate in regular assignment meetings where story ideas are evaluated and refined. Great emphasis is placed on developing a clear focus BEFORE the shooting process begins. Shooting, writing and editing is conducted under real world deadlines.

Finished stories are critiqued with an emphasis on constructive suggestions for improvement.

Participants must bring their own equipment -- including camera, tripod, microphones, lights, battery charger, laptop, and DVDs to burn assignments for critiques.

LINKS:

* Schedule (pdf)

* Registration info

MediaStorm's 'Crisis Guide' Wins Emmy

Congrats to MediaStorm for winning a 2009 Business & Financial Reporting Emmy Award for Crisis Guide: The Global Economy, co-produced with the Council on Foreign Relations -- another well deserved feather in the cap of videojournalism pioneer Brian Storm and his team.

As its name suggests, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences traditionally celebrates TV productions, but online multimedia projects such as this have been sneaking onto the turf once monopolized by the networks. This has led to the creation of such Emmy categories as New Approaches to Business & Financial Reporting, which was the case here.

Meanwhile, be sure to see MediaStorm's similarly themed Times of Crisis, co-produced with Reuters, and showcased on KobreGuide to the Web's Best Videojournalism.

Detroit Free Press Wins 4th Emmy

Big congrats to the Detroit Free Press (freep.com) for winning a national Emmy Award last night for its multimedia package documenting Christ Child House, a foster home for boys in Detroit, that was previously showcased on KobreGuide.

(Other nominees in the category that honors new approaches to news and documentary reporting included MediaStorm's "Intended Consequences," also spotlighted on KobreGuide.)

Special kudos to project leader Kathy Kieliszewski and her team of videographers, photographers, and reporters. In addition to "one man band" videojournalism projects, the Detroit Free Press devotes staff and resources to large-scale productions, involving many contributors over long periods of time. As their multiple Emmys indicate, it's an investment that pays off.

The Free Press has now won four national Emmys, more than any other newspaper, all of which have appeared on KobreGuide's Emmy channel.

* Christ Child House: Where Children Find Hope

* Forty Years of R-E-S-P-E-C-T

* Pit Bulls: Companions or Killers?

* Michigan Marines Band of Brothers

See more top-quality videojournalism on KobreGuide's Detroit Free Press channel.

In Memoriam: TV News Giant Don Hewitt

Without Don Hewitt, there would be no KobreGuide.

Hewitt, who died today at 86, single-handedly invented not just TV news but also the TV newsmagazine, arguably the progenitor of the highest quality videojournalism stories showcased on KobreGuide.

By the time he started CBS's '60 Minutes' stopwatch ticking in 1968, Hewitt's accomplishments were already monumental:

In 1948, Hewitt directed the first network television newscast (featuring Douglas Edwards).

In 1960, he produced the first televised presidential debate (Kennedy vs. Nixon).

In 1963, he created the first half-hour network newscast ('CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite').

Hewitt's technical innovations abounded: cue cards for newsreaders (forerunner of today's TelePrompTer); "supers" or type in the lower third of the TV screen; and all the now-familiar camera positions and angles still used to cover news events and political conventions today.

But Hewitt's crowning achievement was envisioning and executing a TV version of Life magazine, unabashedly combining in-depth celebrity profiles with hard-hitting news investigations. He went on to produce '60 Minutes' for 36 years, during which time it became the biggest hit in the medium’s history.

A Sunday evening fixture, '60 Minutes' ranked among the top 10 primetime shows for more than two decades, and was TV's top-rated show four times, most recently in 1992-93. At its peak, in the 1979-1980 television season, it was seen in an estimated 28 million homes. It has since maintained a spot in the Top 20, an unparalelled stretch of more than 30 years.

Its popularity was matched only by its excellence. Under Hewitt's stewardship, which ended in 2004, '60 Minutes' won 73 Emmys, 13 DuPont/Columbia University Awards and nine Peabody Awards.

As with the best videojournalism it eventually spawned, its secret formula consisted of marrying the highest quality visuals and journalism. Instead of following the conventional TV wisdom of putting words to pictures, Hewitt pioneered the concept of putting pictures to words.

But the ingredient that most distinguishes '60 Minutes' -- and, likewise, the most outstanding videojournalism today -- can be found in the title of Hewitt's own 2001 autobiography, 'Tell Me a Story.'

The driving force behind Hewitt's new mini-documentary format was its incorporation of old-fashioned showbiz principles, as he'd be the first to brag about. At the heart of every '60 Minutes' segment is a solid story, with a strong protagonist, a dramatic hook, and a compelling narrative arc that keeps audiences informed and, yes, enthralled.

“We could make the news entertaining, without compromising our integrity,” he wrote. "The formula is simple, and it's reduced to four words every kid in the world knows: Tell me a story. It's that easy."

This Sunday, Aug. 23 at 7 p.m. '60 Minutes' correspondents will devote the entire hour to their boss and his lasting contributions to the television news industry. It's a helluva story.

CBS News obit here; New York Times obit here.

First '60 Minutes':



Don Hewitt on Creating '60 Minutes':



Don Hewitt's Obituary:

Congrats to 'News & Documentary' Emmy Nominees

Congratulations to all nominees for the 30th annual Emmy awards in the "News & Documentary" category, which includes a number of online videos that we are proud to have showcased on KobreGuide :

Outstanding Informational Programming -- Long Form

* Growing Up Online (Frontline)

New Approaches to News & Documentary Programming -- Current News Coverage

* Bearing Witness: Five Years of the Iraq War (Reuters/MediaStorm)

* Choosing a President (New York Times)

* The Healing Fields (Washington Post)

New Approaches to News & Documentary Programming -- Documentaries

* The Boys of Christ Child House (Detroit Free Press/ Freep.com)

* Intended Consequences (MediaStorm)

We're always pleased when judges of major awards select video stories that we've chosen to champion and share with viewers long before they were awards contenders.

Naturally it makes us wonder which stories we pick this week might be vying for prestigious awards next year -- and are pleased to be able to present them to you now, so that when they get tapped for glory, you can say you saw them when.

And, yes, we're still tickled by the fact that the Television Academy is bestowing awards on videos that have appeared only online. "New Approaches" indeed!

The awards will be presented Sept. 21 in New York. Meanwhile, see previous nominees and winners on KobreGuide's Emmy awards channel.

Special Videojournalism Issue of 'Digital Journalist'

Dirck Halstead invited me to guest-edit his special April issue of The Digital Journalist, the monthly online magazine for visual journalism, now on a Webstand near you!

TDJ has been on the front lines of reinventing photojournalism since its first issue 11 years ago. This month, the issue is devoted to videojournalism, and we’re blessed to have some of the nation’s top practitioners contribute. They tell and show how they are changing this emerging field, and we strongly encourage you to head right over to DigitalJournalist.org and see what they’ve prepared for you. Here are some highlights:

Spokesman-Review’s Colin Mulvany is a highly decorated visual journalist whose portfolio and commentary serves as the cover story. Colin was among the first and best to make that bold leap from still photography to video. He also personally trained and groomed his paper’s photography staff to produce great videojournalism along with him. He recently received yet another award -- second place in NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism contest for Web news video for Warming the Homeless. Read about his long, steady trek to the top.

Kathy Kieliszewski generously shares her perspective as leader of the Emmy Award-winning video staff of the Detroit Free Press. Their staff keeps wowing us with their labor-intensive projects, each one reflecting a strong level of collective commitment. How can such a small unit spend a year chronicling life inside an orphanage? How did they ever find the time to put together their ambitious multi-faceted Emmy-winning 40th anniversary salute to Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” ? And how many staffs would dare to undertake a 50th anniversary celebration of Motown Records by preparing FIFTY short video stories? Kathy takes us behind the scenes at freep.com to show us how they keep churning out the hits.

New York Times videojournalist Erik Olsen treats us to an inside look at how he personally made the transition from ABC TV news shooter to creating video stories for a newspaper – and why he’s so much happier for it. As a “one-man-band”-style VJ, he finds that having the opportunity to edit his own stories (instead of handing over footage to an editor, as usually happens in TV) helps him better visualize the final result as he’s shooting – making for a better story overall. As part of a crack team of fifteen videojournalists, Erik lends fresh insight into how one of the nation’s top news organizations is wholeheartedly committing itself to pioneering first-rate videojournalism.

With newspapers shrinking and dying, videojournalists worry that there will be no outlet for their work. One solution, for the entrepreneurially-minded, is to strike out on your own and take a shot at freelancing. But who will buy your pieces? How much will they pay? (A budget-slashing paper surely can’t be a potential customer.) What are the protocols and procedures? Do you pitch ideas, or only peddle finished stories? So many questions, so few people in a position to answer them. Luckily we found one – Brent Foster, a former L.A. Times videojournalist who packed it in this year and headed for New Delhi, where he’s setting up shop as a fulltime freelance VJ. We asked for details, he graciously provided them, in his “Email from New Delhi”

Probably the best potential market for freelancers is not cash-starved newspapers, but organizations and associations whose Websites are designed to communicate to their membership. A few have already experimented with videojournalism. Among those who’ve produced the most successful results is the gargantuan 40-million member American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). The good news for videojournalists who’ve been laid off is that AARP.org represents a viable freelance market. AARP multimedia producer Nicole Shea, whose background includes stints at National Geographic and Getty Images, gives us the inside scoop on what AARP is looking for – which should open your eyes to other possibilities for institutional videojournalism markets.

For this special issue, the KobreGuide mavens distilled a list of “Ten Tips to Improve Your Videojournalism.” One of those tips is to tell a story from an alternative perspective. When Reuters’ award-winning photog Lucy Nicholson attended an intensive MediaStorm workshop (her first foray into videojournalism), she impressed us with her fresh look at an old icon, by profiling the underwear-clad Times Square musician who calls himself “The Naked Cowboy” -- from his girlfriend’s point of view. Our Q&A with Lucy illuminates her creative process.

Another tip is to find a singular character on which you can hang your story. It’s such important (and oft-neglected) advice, that we asked KobreGuide contributor Kathy Strauss, an accomplished visual journalist in her own right, to share her favorite character-oriented videos from KobreGuide, and demonstrate why each story was immeasurably improved by having a single human stand in for an abstract issue or theme.

To illustrate what differentiates videojournalism from other media, we created a hypothetical story – “Building a Sandcastle” – that also serves to show how a videojournalist can show us something we couldn’t find anywhere else. In “The Future of Videojournalism,” we offer a peek at some new and emerging trends that we feel will soon be used to improve the medium’s viability and versatility.

We’re confident that you’ll find plenty in this issue to help you improve the quality of your own videojournalism. If you’ve found or created something worthy of KobreGuide.com, please let us know by clicking the “Recommend a Story” tab on our homepage – we’re grateful for all the extra eyeballs that help us locate those proverbial needles in the haystack. And if your newspaper wants to join the KobreGuide Consortium, enabling it to feature the Web’s best videojournalism on its own site – and to have its own video appear on Websites around the world – both at no cost, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

We’re grateful to Dirck Halstead and his professional team at DigitalJournalist.org for this golden opportunity to guest-edit this special issue and share our videojournalism adventures and insights with you. Please enjoy it, and let us hear your feedback.

TV Marvels at Newspaper Video

TV is looking over its shoulder as the quality of newspaper-produced video is starting to gain on it, judging from this TVWeek.com report: "Video Gives Print Media New Game: Newspapers Are Still Learning, But Recent Honors Prove They’re Getting the Hang of It."

It smartly points out the essential differences between videos produced by the respective media.

Some excerpts, which cite examples found on KobreGuide.com:

Talk about respect. That’s what the Detroit Free Press got when it won the News and Documentary Emmy for “40 Years of ‘Respect,’” its video news feature on the history of Aretha Franklin’s iconic song and what it means to the people of Detroit.

The piece beat entries from PBS’ “Frontline” and Web sites for The New York Times and The Washington Post in the category of arts, lifestyle and culture.

The win was emblematic of newspapers’ recent emergence as awards contenders, competing on the same prestigious playing field where traditional broadcast news organizations have been competing for decades. Yet most newspapers have been using video on their Web sites for just the past few years.

“We start with the premise that we’re storytellers, with strong visuals and a compelling story to begin with,” said Nancy Andrews, managing editor for digital media at the Free Press . “We had to learn new skills, but we were also students of the craft.”

Like the Free Press, the Washington Post’s Web site is an awards heavyweight, garnering a multitude of national and local Emmy, Edward R. Murrow and Peabody Award wins and nominations in the past few years. But unlike the Detroit newspaper, whose multimedia team is integrated into the newsroom and varies according to editorial needs, the Post’s video output is generated by an online division separate and distinct from the traditional print newsroom.

“We really wanted to create a narrative voice for our video that was different than that on the broadcast nightly news,” said Tom Kennedy, the managing editor for multimedia at WashingtonPost.com , who previously was the photo director of National Geographic .

The site prides itself on pieces that have more in common with independent filmmaking and documentaries than with traditional, reporter-driven broadcast journalism, pieces like its award-winning coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a look at the causes of childhood obesity, and “Being a Black Man,” a Peabody Award-winning series of videos produced by Ben de la Cruz in 2006.

“We aim for subject-driven narrative, with interactions and dialogue that propel the arc of the narrative and create the throughline of story, and have it told in a natural, fly-on-the-wall way,” Mr. Kennedy said.

NPPA NewsVideo Workshop

The National Press Photographers Association's 2009 NewsVideo Workshop will be held April 5th-10th, at the Oklahoma Center for Continuing Education (OCCE) in Norman, Oklahoma.

Special for members: Register by December 19, 2008 and receive a 5% discount off the Workshop price. Non-members: Your registration fee now includes a complimentary membership to the NPPA.

Visual Journalists: If you shoot video for a TV station, newspaper or other web entity, production company, freelance, church, the military, this is the place for you.

Whether you are a veteran handling video, new to the art, or primarily take stills and want to put some new skills on your resumé, the Workshop offers you a chance to learn video’s cutting edge from the best in the business. It's a week-long, intense immersion into the world of moving pictures and sound.

You will spend 12 – 16 hours each day learning from a faculty of more than 20 nationally- and internationally-recognized, award-winning journalists, including Bob Brandon, Bob Dotson, and Darrell Barton. These three alone have 11 Emmy Nominations, 5 Emmy Wins, 4 Photographer of the Year Awards and 1 Sprague Award among them.

The topics covered at the 2008 NewsVideo Workshop include: Storytelling, Lighting, Composition, Audio Editing, The Reporter's Perspective, Live Shots, Sports, News Management, New Technology.

Register here.

Hard Times: On the Road with Travis Fox

No sooner do we discourse on the improbability of finding a newspaper staffer who single-handedly possesses all the necessary skills for creating superb multimedia stories -- reporting, interviewing, writing, shooting, editing -- than we feature a noteworthy travel video blog, Hard Times, updated daily by the Washington Post's Travis Fox, the one-man-band of videojournalism. 

Sure, plenty of newspaper photographers have picked up a videocam,  fiddled with editing  software, and produced

competent pieces on their own. But Fox is that rara avis who excels in all arenas, and consistently produces sparkling award-winning packages.  He won the first national Emmy ever awarded for 'non-television' (i.e. Web) News & Documentary programming. As you can see from some of his stellar work showcased on KobreGuide, Fox has circled the globe in pursuit of great stories, from Coney Island to Darfur. 

As we speak, Fox is on the road again. He's driving from L.A. to D.C. to create a series of text and video grassroots snapshots of the U.S. economy and how it's impacting the imminent election. While many political journalists are rewriting press handouts and gathering quotes at staged events, Fox is wending his way through small towns and big cities, talking to real Americans of all stripes, for a ground-level appraisal of the state of our nation. 

He's augmenting his video reports with original contemporary still photographs that he juxtaposes with classic images by Depression-era masters, and the parallel stories they tell: 

Blythe is on the California and Arizona border, an oasis in the middle of the desert. In 1936 Dorothea Lange found a family stuck here during their travels from Oklahoma to more fertile lands in California (top photo). Today Blythe is a pit stop on I-10 halfway between Los Angeles and Phoenix. But people still get stuck here. Edward "Bubba" McCouskey has been stranded for eight days. Broke and sleeping on the streets, he's trying to get a lift back to his native Texas after a hitchhiking trip to California (bottom photo).

Plus ça change...

Detroit Free Press Scores 2 Online Emmy Awards

Kudos to the Detroit Free Press (freep.com) for winning two national Emmy Awards for video packages in news and documentary programming.

The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences recognized freep.com for "40 Years of Respect," which commemorated the 40th anniversary of Aretha Franklin's hit song "Respect," and "Pit Bulls: Companions or Killers?" which examined the pros and cons of owning pit bulls.

We're proudly showcasing both stories on KobreGuide this week:

Forty Years of Respect

Pit Bulls: Companions or Killers?

And over the next few days, we'll be posting more outstanding winners of the 29th annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards, so stay tuned!