VJ Movement, an online collaboration of videojournalists who pitch and vote on story ideas to determine which ones will be assigned, is celebrating its first anniversary with a site redesign. In addition to videos on individual themes, they explain, "we've started organizing our content into projects."
In the absence of natural predators, non-native species of plants and animals can become invasive, unbalancing local ecosystems and causing material harm. Every year the European Union alone spends some twenty billion euros on damages and control costs of invasive species. Yet some argue that we should let invasive species be, and that the natural environment can manage without our interference.
This project looks at how countries deal with invasive species and asks if we should be spending huge amounts to eradicate them.
The videos include "Invasion of the Lionfish" (Isaac Brown & Ana Paula Habib), "Mexico's Future Corn" (Greg Brosnan), "Native vs. Non-Native" (Pierre Kattar), "Extreme Eradication of Japanese Knotweed" (Adam Westbrook).
Headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands, VJ Movement features the work of 150 videojournalists from more than 100 countries.
Videojournalist Adam Westbrook devoted a five-part series this week to Blogging for Journalists, in which he strived to "look at why you really can’t ignore blogging if you’re a journalist, guide you through the basics of getting started, and reveal some top tricks for making blogging work for you."
Westbrook has been blogging since 1994!
For me, blogging has transformed from a revision-avoiding-hobby into a career changer. It has got me work, training and speaking gigs, and a bit of money. I’ve seen my readers start small, before growing by more than 10,000 visits a month in just twelve months...
Although it has never made me a penny directly, blogging is a huge part of the work I do, which is why I think almost all journalists need to blog.
Here's how you can get started... or improve the quality and increase the readership of your current blog.
*** And once you're up and running, please don't forget to point us to your blog. Who knows -- we might help promote it and send some traffic your way!
You know that a high-end video production company like MediaStorm -- that collaborates with top media organizations and can't go a month without getting tapped for more awards -- is bound to have some fancy equipment at its disposal.
Producer Rick Gershon (pictured) shares exactly what's in MediaStorm's "current field production kit" in a recent blog entry.
There are a myriad of options out there right now when it comes to tools for multimedia storytelling. The combination of tools you use can be your greatest strength or your greatest weakness. The important thing is to find the right combination of gear that fits your style of shooting and allows you to tell the best story possible. Below is a list of tools that we may use a combination of on any given multimedia shoot. Again the importance is to find what combination works best for you.
Multimedia tools are constantly evolving. There are many options on the market from which you can mix and match to best suit your needs.
Go take a peek at what HDSLRs, HD videocameras, mics and accessories (from tripods and headphones to lights) the big boys use.
Can't quite afford that $4,000 Canon 5D Mark II?
Then Adam Westbrook to the rescue. From across the pond, the UK multimedia enthusiast comes to the rescue of those who are working on a student budget, or bootstrapping it as a fledgling solo practitioner.
In his "Multimedia Journalism Gear Guide (On the Cheap)," he notes that a Canon 7D can be every bit as functional for half the price, or even the new Canon 550D for half the price of that. But even if you don't have $1,000 handy, you can get a lot of mileage out of the pocket-size Kodak Zi8 for only $150.
Westbrook similarly offers more affordable, but still professionaly viable, alternatives to top-of-the-line lenses, mics and other accessories. Go see what might work for you.
Instead of clamoring for one of the last remaining jobs at a conventional media organization -- for long hours and low pay -- should you collaborate with other out-of-work writers, reporters, editors, photojournalists and videojournalists, and form the journalism equivalent of a law firm?
That's the intriguing proposal on the table from Michael Rosenblum, continuing our online conversation regarding the financial future of journalism.
Though we admire Adam Westbrook's e-book, "Next Generation Journalist," we wondered outloud whether it's realistic to expect overloaded reporters -- who are already shouldering multiple tasks once performed by their exiled colleagues -- to re-fashion themselves as entrepreneurs.
Perhaps it's asking too much for someone who's talented at interviewing and crafting prose narratives to now shoot and edit video stories. Add to that a new requirement that they be able to independently promote, advertise, market and sell their services, and we wonder if there are enough hours in the day for these superhuman endeavours. Besides, the traits that make great journalists are not necessarily those that make great businesspeople.
(If you need to catch up on the conversation, start here and here.)
We postulated that the best bet for independent journalists is to form teams, partnerships, and collectives to pursue projects that enable each participant to play to his particular strength. That makes more sense to us than to expect them to absorb skills taught at business schools.
In his latest blog post, "Entrepreneurial Journalism: How To Make It Work," Rosenblum argues that, instead of contrasting J-school grads with MBAs, perhaps we should be comparing them, in personality and temperament, to law school grads. "In many ways it’s a similar career: research, investigations, analysis and presentation." Many journalists and lawyers, he notes, are similarly driven by a sense of social justice. It's just that lawyers have figured out how to make big bucks in the process.
The difference between lawyers and journalists is the way that they have elected to organize their own profession.
Journalists end up working as employees for someone else, and are thus forever victims of the vicissitudes of the marketplace and changing technologies.
Lawyers tend to organize themselves in partnerships in which they pool their skills and their business.
A law firm hires its talents out to many clients. A Journalism Firm (to craft an interesting idea) would do the same. A partnership of journalists would contract with various magazines, newspapers, television stations and websites to offer content, as a law firm offers work. In this way, they would also be insulated from the predictable disaster if one newspaper or one magazine went under.
Rosenblum fleshes out his "Journalism Firm" concept here. Go take a look and see what you think. Is this a sustainable career model? Might it work for you? We're eager to hear your thoughts.
We're delighted that videojournalism pioneer Michael Rosenblum has taken the time to compose a thoughtful response to our question about whether modern-day journalists need to add "entrepreneur" to their growing list of required skills.
"The biggest mistake that journalists for the last 50 years have made," he writes, "was to wrap themselves in this glorification of poverty."
His argument is that lots of businesspeople have amassed extraordinary wealth from their Web pursuits, leaving in the dust the very people who excel at gathering, organizing and disseminating the information the Web is built upon -- journalists!
The Internet happened on our watch. It happened to our business, and it happened under our noses.
The Internet is the single biggest technologically driven transition of an industry since Gutenberg put ink to movable type. And billions have been made in the Internet Revolution – billions, but not by us.
Which is both strange and tragic because we were here first!
We should own Google and Craigslist and Facebook and a thousand other very successful sites.
But we don’t.
We don’t because we missed the entrepreneurial boat.
And why did we miss the entrepreneurial boat that sailed away right under our noses?
Because we have a love and a passion for poverty. We love to see ourselves as poor and struggling.
Personally we don't think it's quite that black and white. True, the image of the journalist as grizzled underdog had been overromanticized in books and movies (ranging from non-fiction "All the President's Men" to the fictitious "State of Play," pictured). But most journalists we know in real life aren't deliberately gravitating toward financial destitution. It's just that their passions tend in the direction of reporting and storytelling -- not spreadsheets and projections. Perhaps j-school grads aren't striving for their first billion with the same zeal as their MBA confreres, but at the same time they're not lusting after low-paying gigs for the sheer bohemian thrill of it.
More to the point, their motivation for pursuing journalism may not be the same as the motivation of a high-charging empire builder -- but, to our thinking, that doesn't necessarily translate to the presumption that journalists think "money is evil."
And, back to our original point, it can't be assumed that people who possess the skill sets required to become accomplished journalists should also be able to excel at entrepreneurial endeavours such as sales, marketing and promotion.
Ultimately, we believe the solution will lie in collaboration -- the formation of partnerships and collectives that consist of pros whose individual strengths and talents can be combined and leveraged for the benefit of the common good. Microcosms of lean, mean newsrooms -- but without the dead weight of middle-management layers... and rooms.
And while that may not make us all filthy rich, it will be a far cry from the "ink-stained wretch" image that understandably makes Rosenblum cringe.
There's a growing expectation that videojournalists need to embrace and master a dizzying array of skill sets.
There used to be a time when newspapers and TV news teams would consist of at least a reporter/interviewer and someone behind the lens of a camera -- and each field unit would have the support and input of editors back at headquarters. Now all those duties -- finding and researching a story, conducting interviews and amassing facts, shooting and editing audio and visuals -- are expected to be accomplished by the same person.
The likelihood of that individual excelling at such a diverse set of journalistic and technical tasks is exceedingly slim.
Now add to that an entirely new expectation.
Given the miserable state of the economy, the downsizing and collapse of media institutions, nobody is hiring journalists. Those starting (or trying to piece together the shambles of) their careers are being advised to not even bother jobhunting. Instead, they're being instructed to redefine themselves as "journalism entrepreneurs" and create their own economic opportunities.
So in addition to being able to interview, report, write, shoot, and edit (text, audio, stills and video), you need to be able to master product development, sales, promotion, advertising, marketing -- and all in a digital context, which implies scaling the heights of social media, conquering search engine optimization, and slaying 'em in the aisles with your tutorials and seminars on the workshop/lecture circuit. Oh, and be sure you can write killer applications for foundation grants.
Any one of these pursuits had traditionally constituted a fulltime career unto itself. Now if you can't bat, catch, throw, run, and exude enough charisma to be a commercial spokesperson -- well, don't look back, because everyone else is gaining on you.
Understandably, journalism schools are in a funk trying to figure out what exactly to teach students to prepare them for the workplace. While it's always a good idea to get a well rounded education that acquaints you with multiple aspects of a profession, students and professors alike naturally wonder whether it's better to focus on mastering one thing well -- and worry whether that one thing will even exist in the future.
Our stance is that technology will always evolve -- and it's vitally important to stay abreast of those changes -- but the fundamentals of excellent journalism and great storytelling will remain as constant in the years ahead as they have for the centuries preceding us.
What we're less sure about is how critical it will be that reporters, writers, editors, photographers and videographers become entrepreneurs. Arguably, many of the "brand name" stars in each field have taken that route -- though it's unlikely they thought of themselves in those terms. Unfortunately, the skills and activities that make you shine in one arena don't necessarily translate to the other. Still, if your traditional jobhunting quest is not going well, it couldn't hurt to consider the advice of those who are successfully pursuing the entrepreneurial path.
In the vanguard is Adam Westbrook, a British videojournalist who last month published an ebook on that topic, Next Generation Journalist. He was recently interviewed by Andy Bull, UK author of Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide, for his Write, Edit, Blog blog. The topic: How to make money from a range of journalism activities and enterprises, by developing what Westbrook calls "a portfolio career."
We'd like to hear your thoughts. Do you think it's practical for most journalists to repackage and giftwrap themselves as entrepreneurs? Does this sound like something that would suit your skills and sensibilities? Does the prospect of being an entrepreneur enhance or diminish your enthusiasm for being a journalist?
Guess what distinguishes each of Westbrook's strategies for landing a gig? The recognition of the fact that there are scarcely any gigs left to pursue -- and that you have to find and make your own opportunities.
And so his methods have little to do with the conventional job-application route to success -- forget about resumes, interviews, climbing the corporate ladder.
As it happens, KobreGuide's editorial director lives and works in Hollywood, where he is surrounded by hordes of starry-eyed wannabes who say that they yearn to be a writer, a director, an actor, a producer. His advice? Stop wanting to be, and start doing. Write, direct, act, produce. Think verbs, not nouns. Don't sit around waiting for someone else's approval or permission. Go out and do your own thing. Next time you meet him, ask him to perform the ditty he wrote about this frustrating phenomenon -- 'Everybody Wants to Be (Nobody Wants to Do)'.
So back to Adam Westbrook, who clearly gets this ethic -- don't wait, create! He embodies it by virtue of his informative blog, and now this eBook, available in North American and (his native) UK editions, for an "early bird" discount price of $9.50 US (thinking entrepreneurialy!)... You'll personally find lots of solid nuggets here to warrant the investment, and point your life and career in a positive direction.
Here's his pitch:
* 10 new & exciting ways of making money in journalism
* 7 bonus chapters covering the practical nuts & bolts
* 12 interviews and in-depth case studies with the journalists and entrepreneurs who are already making it work for them
* Solid advice on what makes a good news business idea
* 30 things you can do right away to make the new career paths happen
* 2 introductory chapters which guide you through how to decide what you really want
* Step-by-step guides to creating your own portfolio business, collaborative & hyperlocal website
and loads of ideas and encouragement!
And here's a sneak preview of the Table of Contents (click to enlarge):
We amassed some good weekend reading for you. Browse the excerpts here, and then click on each title for the full story.
Also, given our finite number of eyeballs, please feel free to forward us links to any good online articles about visual journalism that you've seen and would like to share with your colleagues and fellow enthusiasts.
By David Bergman (Guest blogger for Scott Kelby's Photoshop Insider)
I’d like to share the key to making a living in this crazy business of photography:
You need to separate yourself from the pack.
But how do you do that? I’ve realized that there are a few things I consistently do when preparing for a shoot.
1) If I see a group of photographers standing together, I run the other direction.
At most of the events I cover, there are a lot of other photographers. The wire services and local newspaper shooters always do a great job covering the event. So what can I bring to the table? If I just shoot the same images as everyone else, there’s no reason for me to be there.
The easiest way to separate myself is to literally move away from the other photographers. I try to take chances and go for the high risk shot. It doesn’t always pay off, but when it does, it’s worth it.
For example, I was assigned to shoot the Live Eight mega-concert in Philadelphia a few years ago. This was a huge international event with performances by Kanye West, Stevie Wonder, Keith Urban, Maroon 5, Jay-Z, and more. There were expecting a million fans.
When I arrived, I saw that there were only two photo positions for the 50-plus credentialed photographers and the spots were way back by the sound board. I don’t like shooting from the back because the pictures just aren’t as dynamic as the shots from the photo pit in front of the stage. More importantly, there were more than 50 photographers all shooting exactly the same thing! I don’t care how big the event is, there’s just no reason for me to shoot the same pictures as everyone else.
It wasn’t going to be easy to break away from the group because the publicists and security guards had made it very clear that we weren’t allowed to shoot anywhere else. I knew I wouldn’t get into the pit in front of the stage, but as fans started to stream in, I noticed that they were giving out wristbands for the front, standing-room section.
I left my 600mm lens with a friend in the back and pretended to be a fan. After seamlessly melding into the line, I managed to snag a wristband! Next thing I knew, I was in the front row pressed up against the barricade and right next to the photo pit. The only thing to do at that point was hide my cameras until the last minute and hope I didn’t get kicked out.
I’m not suggesting that it’s always necessary to break the rules, but in this case, most of the fans in that section had cameras anyway. I shot the entire show from that spot and made pictures that were different from the ones shot in the back.
Newsy, a startup formed in 2008 and based in Columbia, Missouri, announced this morning that the company has raised $2 million from undisclosed angel investors. The money, president Jim Spencer wrote in a prepared statement, “will allow us to grow our news operations and deliver a remarkable product.” Separately, Newsy’s free iPad app, released last week, shot to No. 6 on Apple’s list of most popular news apps.
What’s the big deal about Newsy? In short, Newsy is trying to do for the mobile video explosion what Ted Turner did with the cable TV explosion thirty years ago: Deliver a new kind of news enabled by the technology.
“You should go look at our iPhone app, at the quality of video we can deliver over 3G,” Spencer told me during a phone interview. “That wasn’t possible two years ago.” Imagine what two more years will bring.
Newsy does neither original reporting nor automated aggregation. Instead, the company calls its product “analysis.” Newsy prepares two-to-three-minute videos that highlight and explain the different coverage angles on a topic from different media sources. The goal isn’t to look for biased reporting, but rather to provide viewers with a wider range of valuable information on a hot topic. Newsy’s human journalists summarize the expanding newsosphere so you don’t have to do it yourself.
Newsy operates a website version of its news analyzer, which you can currently use for free and without being interrupted by ads. For example, see Newsy’s recent report on Florida governor Charlie Crist’s defection from the Republican Party. Newsy’s reporter narrates a mix of reports from Fox, CNN, Florida newspapers, plus political blogs you’ve probably never heard of. It’s a great clip that opens immediately with Crist giving his reasoning to an audience. An unnamed female anchor then guides viewers through reactions and reports from Fox, CNN, and a couple of blogs you may not have heard of. How will Crist’s move play out? Newsy hits a half dozen pithy takes from people who come across as experts.
Two weeks ago Vincent Laforet gave the VJ world permission to shoot on traditional rigs again. He did it during an interview with Dan Chung of DSLR Shooter at the NAB conference and ever since the VJ/PJ blog world has been a’tizzy about how excited they are to get away from DSLRs and back to ENG kits like before. Cliff Etzel of Solo Video Journalist said, “I’m calling it as I see it. DSLR video is a fad – at least in solo video journalism it is.”
I feel like we forgot how we got here. Does everyone remember three years ago when there was no DSLR video?.
I was shooting on Panasonic HVX200s and Canon HF20s when I needed something really small. Do we all remember that? If you guys want to leave the DLSR Video Journalism sandbox, that’s cool, but I’m staying.
I can’t wait for everyone to leave and go back to shooting on $7-12K rigs that push up overhead on production and insurance, weigh roughly twice as much, have blindingly inferior low light performance, poor wide angle options, and expensive propriety storage mediums; all on chipsets smaller than a nickel. I’m sure it will be a party.
Demotix, the citizen journalism site and photo agency, has launched a new site and user payment system.
The site - which has grown to 3,000 active contributors in 190 countries since launching in autumn 2008 - will now feature a video content, as well as a new ecommerce system.
"Every contributor will have a hidden page on their dashboard where they can see what has been sold, for how much, and when they'll be paid," CEO Turi Munthe explained.
"It will make their lives much simpler, and will make us much more transparent. Having it run automatically also simplifies our life tremendously."
Demotix says it can sell images for professional rates to mainstream media and other buyers, with 50 per cent going to the producer.
With the new site, there are also changes for buyers, Munthe said. For example, the URL structure of Demotix has been altered to make every image searchable outside of a story. This will make searching for images inside Demotix, and on the external web, much easier, he said.
He also hopes content commissioning will be simplified: "We've built a dead simple ecommerce sales platform which will allow anyone to licence Demotix imagery direct from the web. We get a lot of one-off queries for pictures that would be far more simply done automatically." The new process will be easier for buyers, and easier for Demotix, he adds.
Munthe expects the site's use of video to develop as its photo agency has: "Demotix has always been a word of mouth build, and video will be the same.
"We'll be reaching out to new video users in our key geographic areas, and we'll be trying to educate our current users to get into video, but we'll eventually - and shortly - be looking for interesting video partners too."
The first video features an interview with a journalist from Kazakhstan, discussing freedom of speech. It's appropriate, says Munthe, in a blog post, because "Demotix unashamedly stands for free speech and a democratised media".
I was recently commissioned to produce a five-minute video package ahead of this week’s General Election in the UK, on the controversial ban on prisoners being able to vote.
It was a commission for the VJ Movement, and has since been featured on Radio Netherlands Worldwide.
It was also the first test for my new Canon 550D DSLR camera and related paraphernalia.
The story
We spent a fair amount of time thrashing out the story arc for the piece, something VJ Movement take very seriously.
Together we’re trying to produce video journalism which doesn’t conform to the old rules of a TV news piece. This first commission doesn’t quite go the whole way with that, but the opening sequences and the atmospheric introduction of the main character attempt to try a few different things.
We used John as the main character to drive the narrative forward, rather than flipping between talking heads, which works well, and he lent himself well to colourful soundbites and nice sequences.
The story is limited though by its complex and legal nature; there’s a lot of elements to it not just John’s personal story which all need to be included – a challenge to both shoot and write to.
The gear
For the most part the 550D performed well, and produced some excellent images. I have the most basic 18-55mm lens but it’s a good all-rounded for most shots. Importantly it performs very well in low light, which helped in the darker locations I was filming in for this piece.
It also produces a nice colour for the images. Some limitations with recording time though: you can only record for a maximum of 12 minutes at a time, regardless of the size of your SD card (I have absolutely no idea why). You might also spot a couple of out-of-focus shots too, a result of not being able to focus properly on the LCD screen.
The rough edit contained a few handheld shots but we removed them as they were too shaky. Being an SLR it’s not an easy camera to keep steady -- more support for always using a tripod where you can.
The biggest challenge, as with all the DSLRs, is audio. As well as a Rode VideoMic attached to the camera, I recorded all the interviews separately onto a Tascam DR-07 and synched it in Final Cut Pro.
I am very happy with the quality of the audio – but ran into trouble with frame rates. If, for example, I changed the shutter speed down to 25fps to brighten the image, the audio recording was not recorded at the same speed.
All minor problems to iron out with more practice, and I personally don’t find it too much of a hassle to sync the audio in post – if it means the sound is good quality.
The DSLR debate
I’ve enjoyed working the 550D: very happy with what I got for the price and also glad to have the flexibility to take photographs and produce audio slideshows with a single camera.
Meanwhile the debate over whether video journalists should use DSLR cameras continues; the detractors – for example Cliff Etzel – label it a “fad” and accuse users of a “lazy” obsession with shallow depth-of-field.
And of course Cliff is right, it’s the story not how the pictures look. But personally, I think it’s possible to care about both.
Savvy UK journalist Adam Westbrook predicts 10 trends for the profession for 2010.
Excerpts:
1. Lots of new entrepreneurial startups 2. More journalists working with NGOs 3. Journalists moving into the field of training 4. Increased hyperlocal reporting 5. Paywalls in action
See the full list, and watch his expanded commentary, below. Nothing radically new here, but it's a launching pad for smart discussion. Or maybe it's just his Brit accent?
Adam Westbrook reviews the Kodak Zi8 pocket videocamera, and asks if it's "the tool to change videojournalism."
Now I think if used creatively, it’s possible to produce a high quality film with the Zi8. If so, the potential for citizen journalism, hyper-locals and other smaller news enterprises could be profound.
We've previously alerted you to Adam Westbrook's valuable "6 x 6" blog series of tips for videojournalists.
Now he's updated and assembled them into a 32-page e-book, that's available as a free download.
It’s also packed with bonus tips which you won’t find in the series itself, plus a page of resources and links to help you on your way. The six chapters cover the technical skills, like video, audio & storytelling, plus the non-technical skills, like branding & business.
No need to even register or fill out forms. All the London-based journalist and teacher asks, in exchange for the free download, is that you "hit me with feedback, good or bad. What did it miss out? What would you put in?"
Adam Westbrook is a broadcast journalist for Bauer Media in the U.K. He is producing a series of six blog entries, each containing "six tips for the next generation of freelance multimedia journalists."
He says it's inspired by the big response he got from his previous post speculating on the required skill set required for the "journalist of the future."
Last week Adam covered "branding" -- how to package and market yourself as a freelance multimedia journalist.
Don’t be fooled into thinking you can’t do video just because you haven’t got any cash. High quality can be achieved on lower budgets...
02. shoot for the edit
Filming with the final piece firmly in mind will keep your shooting focused and short. So when you start filming, start looking for close ups and sequences. The latter is the hardest: an action which tells your story, told over 2 or more shots...
03. master depth of field
Your aim – especially with closeups – is to have your subject in clear focus, and everything behind them blurred...
04. never wallpaper
With pressures of time or bad planning you can often find yourself “wallpapering” shots just to fill a gap. Make sure every shot in your film is there for a reason...
05. look for the detail and the telling shot
Broadcast Journalists are taught to look for the “telling shot”, and more often than not make it the first image. But you can enhance your storytelling by looking for little details which really bring your story to life...
06. break the rules
The worst thing a multimedia journalist can do when producing video for the web is to replicate television. TV is full of rules and formulas, all designed to hide edits, look good to the eye, and sometimes decieve. Online video journalism provides the chance to escape all that. Sure it must look good, but be prepared to experiment ...
Next week, Adam will address "Storytelling." Stay tuned!
Three qualities once made journalists valuable -- their access, their expertise, and their monopoly on mass communications.
Now that all three of these traits have been broadly disseminated via the Web, what now makes us special -- and worth paying for?
Adam Westbrook takes a stab at answering that, on his personal blog. Currently working as a broadcast journalist for Bauer Media, one of Europe’s largest media companies, he has more than 5 years experience on the front line of broadcast news. He recently accompanied the last British troops serving in Iraq as they prepared for withdrawal, reporting from Baghdad and Basra, where he produced content for radio, online video and audio slideshows.
"I’ve covered some of the biggest stories of the past three years," he writes. "I’ve interviewed government ministers, genocide survivors, ex-cons and premiership footballers."
What’s in Your Bag with John Lehmann
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John Lehmann is award winning photojournalist with the Globe and Mail in
Canada. John shares with Munetake Kayo what he carries while working, and
why he c...
Videographer job at University of Texas System
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Matt Flores, a former colleague at the San Antonio Express-News, called me
today asking if I know anyone interested in a videographer position at the
Unive...
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