Good Weekend Reading On Videojournalism

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.

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Separate Yourself from the Pack

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.

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Newsy raises $2M for honest-to-God mobile video journalism



By Paul Boutin (Venture Beat)

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.

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Are We Done with DSLR Video?

By Jonathan Shuler

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.

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Demotix adds video content and custom ecommerce system to new site

By Judith Townend (Journalism.co.uk)

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".

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My first video journalism shoot with the Canon550D

By Adam Westbrook

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.

Bookmark This: Good Weekend Reading

A roundup of excerpts from topical articles, reports and essays relating to visual journalism. Click on each title to read the original in its entirety:

Thoughts on Flash
By Steve Jobs

I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues....

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

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Nokia exec: phones to make system cameras obsolete
By Reuters

Fast developing cameraphone technology will shortly make SLR system cameras and even professional cameras obsolete, the sales chief of the world's top cellphone maker Nokia said. "They will in the very near future revolutionise the market for system cameras," Anssi Vanjoki said in a speech in Helsinki.

"There will be no need to carry around those heavy lenses," Vanjoki said, pointing to a professional photographer taking pictures of him.

The proliferation of smartphones with picture quality comparable to most pocket cameras has boosted photography around the world, but they have so far not challenged real system cameras due to phones' smaller size and weaker technology.

Vanjoki said high-definition (HD) quality video recording was also coming to cellphones within the next 12 months.

"It will not take long, less than a year, when phones can record HD quality video and you can transfer it directly to your HD television set," Vanjoki said.

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Dorothea Lange: Drawing Beauty Out Of Desolation (pictured)
By NPR Staff

Many of us have an image of what the Great Depression looked like — even if we weren't there. One reason is because of Dorothea Lange's photographs.

Linda Gordon, who wrote a book on the renowned photographer called Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits, recalls one of Lange's favorite sayings: A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera.

"She really understood that the ability to see does not come from your eye; it comes from your brain," Gordon tells NPR's Steve Inskeep.

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NAB 2010: JVC Snags Hearst Deal
To provide handheld camcorders for backpack journalists
By Glen Dickson (Broadcasting & Cable)

JVC announced that station group Hearst Television will be buying its handheld GY-HM100 ProHD camcorders for its take on the "backpack journalism" journalist concept, which Hearst calls the "Next Generation Newsroom Project."

Hearst piloted the Next Generation project in three stations last year, and has launched it this year at WPBF West Palm Beach and KETV Omaha, Neb. Six more stations are now using the GY-HM100 camcorders, which records natively in the .mov format on SDHC media cards and lists for $3,495.


Commentary:

Hearst Television going SoloVJ
By Cliff Etzel (Solo Videojournalist)

The interesting thing is that although the camera is squarly marketed at Final Cut Pro users due to the instant support of the files from the camera file format ingesting quickly into Final Cut Pro, the stations are using Dell Laptops and using Adobe CS5 as the editing application.

Soap box moment here: That’s dumber than a box of rocks people.

Why use a camera whose native file format is squarely meant for Apple Final Cut Pro users and kludge it to work with what has become known within the community as Adobe Bloatware.

Hearst would be much better off using Edius Pro or Avid Media Composer.

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Reporters Look to Expand Horizons with Backpack Journalism
By Leah Betancourt (Old Media, New Tricks)

Journalists are increasingly looking to expand their skill set or even reinvent themselves during this challenging time for the news industry. Some are doing it on their own terms.

Former newspaper reporters Alexis Grant and Adam Jadhav have a lot in common. They both quit their full-time reporting jobs they loved to travel abroad while blogging and shooting photos and video along the way.

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The Future of VJs
By Deborah Potter (NewsLab.org)

We’ve all read the stories about the sea change in television news. From the ABC network news division to local stations from coast to coast, VJs are taking over, the stories say. The “one man band” reporter who shoots and edits once was found primarily in small markets but is now common in the top 10. Right? Maybe not.

Research by RTDNA and Hofstra University finds the use of VJs has indeed gone up for the past several years but it hasn’t skyrocketed. About a third of local stations now say they mostly use VJs. Three years ago, it was a little over one in five. And the number of stations that don’t use any VJs has gone down sharply, from 29% in 2006 to 18% today.

But researcher Bob Papper says the real surprise came in answer to this question: Did you use VJs more or less in the past year? Only 12% of news directors said they used them more, while 29% said less. Those numbers aren’t at all what you’d expect in current economic conditions, and even less so given that the survey was in the field during the depths of the recession. Yes, almost half of the news directors who responded said they expected to use VJs more in 2010, but that’s what they always say. “Every year, expected use of more goes up way faster than the actual use,” said Papper.

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Ethics for the new investigative newsroom:
A Roundtable Report on best practices for nonprofit journalism (.pdf)

A collaboration of:
• Center for Journalism Ethics, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Knight Chair in Investigative & Enterprise Reporting, University of Illinois
• Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Commentary:

Non-profit journalism ethics
By Deborah Potter (NewsLab.org)

The more I read about how non-profit funding is going to save journalism, the more I wonder about the cost. As grant-supported news operations like Pro Publica and the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Reporting proliferate, they’re not just changing journalism’s business model but also raising questions about conflict of interest.

The ad-supported model has its own issues, of course. Advertisers have been known to pressure newsrooms for favorable coverage and some newsrooms have been all too willing to blend news and sales. But the old business model kept any one “buyer” from having too much influence. Can newsrooms really maintain editorial independence if they have just a handful of powerful funders?

A new report from the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggests the answer is yes, but only if the news organization works at it. The report summarizes the results of a conference held earlier this year and it’s full of useful nuggets from nonprofit journalism experts.

One area of agreement was on the need to decide early on who you will and won’t take money from. Many but not all of the journalism centers represented at the conference drew the line at government funds. How would they rate other potential donors?

More commentary:


Ethics for the Investigators
A new report seeks standards for nonprofit newsrooms
By Alexandra Fenwick (Columbia Journalism Review)

As journalism’s economic base has been irrevocably altered, so have the relationships between journalists, funders, and audiences. While it remains to be seen just how large a share of the media environment nonprofits and their supporters will eventually account for, they are clearly playing an increasing role—one that beleaguered journalists are grateful for. But one of the things that hasn’t changed is a truism noted at a January roundtable discussion with nonprofit newsroom leaders, which was the foundation for today’s report: “All funding bugs journalists.” All the more reason, then, to try to create standards for this new frontier in journalism.

Highlights:

• Nonprofit journalists should turn their investigative instincts on their donors and themselves. By vetting funders and striving to be as transparent as possible about where the money comes from, news organizations can mitigate the sort of accusations of conflicts of interest they would aim to expose in any other arena. As the report says, “It is better to reveal one’s funding sources and be criticized, than not to reveal and have the information surface elsewhere.”

• Following up on the concept that is better to report on yourself than to have others do it for you, Toronto Star deputy investigations editor Robert Cribb predicted that the ethics of nonprofit newsrooms will come under heightened scrutiny from mainstream news organizations as nonprofits grow and compete with legacy media. “These questions are going to be not just a matter of debate at a roundtable at a university, but these are going to be on the front pages of newspapers.”

• On the issue of transparency, it’s not enough to just list funders’ names. Nonprofits should make their funding information prominent and easily accessible, said Charles Lewis, founder of the Center for Public Integrity. As Christa Westerberg, an attorney for the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, says, 501(c)(3) organizations must provide a copy of their application for nonprofit status and IRS Form 990 immediately to anyone who asks in person and within 30 days to any written request. May as well be proactive and put it out there for all to see.

• Nonprofits should maintain walls between journalists and donors the way for-profit papers have established walls between editorial staff and advertisers. “Working staff should, relatively speaking, be free of close interaction with funding sources,” Lewis said.

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Z on TV
By David Zurewik (Baltimore Sun)

It hasn't received much publicity, but there's a documentary HBO is showing though May 12 that is absolutely worth going out of your way to see. And while it takes place in Burma, it connects directly to recent events in such places as College Park (Maryland) and the Baltimore Sun newsroom.

"Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country" is not just a gut-wrenching account of the protests in 2007 that saw thousands of Buddhist monks and more than 100,000 Burmese citizens take to the streets, it is also the most powerful statement I have seen in years as to why journalism still matters and where some of our most heroic reporting is being done today.

The film by Anders Ostergaard captures the soaring hopes of the early days of the uprising as the monks started parading in protest against one of the most repressive military regimes in the world. It also shows the brutal blowback that followed with images of the bodies of dead monks floating in the river in Ragoon. And if not for a band of video journalists -- many of them students willing to risk their lives -- the world would never have known the story....

I hope some of my colleagues who are not feeling so great about the profession these days will check out the film. It's a reminder of the risk, greatness and power of honest reporting. You will not only feel great admiration for the members fo the Democratic Voice of Burma. It will make you proud to be part of this profession.

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)