Guys with big cameras scared of little camera?
Shop Talk had a good story (July 25) from Sam McManis of the Sacramento Bee newspaper about how News10 reporter Dan Adams became a VJ — a video journalist who reports, shoots, edits and transmits the story package all by himself. (If you need a free login, try BugMeNot.)
Mention the acronym VJ and watch TV news reporters and photographers squirm as if it were some fatal disease.That’s because many fear that it might be just that — the eventual agent of their career demise.
Technology is so advanced these days that some in TV news believe there soon will no longer be a need for the traditional news team of reporter and photographer. Large, shoulder-mounted cameras can be replaced by hand-held devices that shoot digital images that are just as vivid (or close enough). And laptop audio- and video-editing programs make it possible for anyone with tech knowledge to put together a report and transmit it to the station.
And the nut graf is …
“You may have a local TV station with five cameras and live trucks go out on a story on any one day,” says Michael Rosenblum, a New York-based former CBS news producer who has trained reporters at the BBC and San Francisco’s KRON in the art of being a VJ.“That doesn’t make sense. It’s like having 70 (newspaper) reporters, but only five pencils to go out and report a story. If you equip people to shoot their own stories, you’ve got everyone out in the field reporting.”
The article goes on to describe exactly how Adams shoots, and then writes and edits (in his car). It’s a great instructional story for our journalism students to read!
Related post here: New HD video camera
Technorati tags: video | broadcast | reporting | journalism | journalists
Am I the only person who cringes at the term “VJ,” old enough to recall the original group of MTV VJs, including podcast guru Adam Curry?
July 27, 2006 at 1:21 am