But with news Web sites becoming more profitable than ever, many television stations are realizing that “news partnerships” in which they provide video to newspaper sites for cross-promotion are having a detrimental effect on their revenue.

One way or the other, newspapers will need to exponentially ramp up their online video delivery if they hope to keep their sites competitive in the future.

However, it should be a question of committing the resources, not eroding the quality of the photojournalism.

I have been working at the website of a large TV broadcaster and although I have loads of high quality videomaterial to my disposal, I am very happy I can get photos from AP and EPA. The video stills are crisp and snappy, but its not abaout the technical quality. It is about the story. And mostly, there’s no good story in the one frame I picked for a still. Obvious, because the story in video is told in several frames.

Sadly, photographers are SLOW in bringing there materials to the world. I have video minutes after something happened - sometimes even live. And I need a pic to go along with the story. So I choose a video still - only to replace them with a photograph, which comes available sometimes hours after the event happened.

And yes, photo departments are better off trying to set standards and keep control rather than waiting for the future to roll over them.

Where I differ I think, is in the level of optimism I have that what photo departments want really will matter in the end. Maybe that is a reflection of my pessimistic personality, or maybe it is the company I work for as compared to Colin.

But I think market forces and profit motives will drive what happens. Right now it is an experiment, and publishers are happy to have any multimedia being produced.

A quick aside - I was talking with my boss today about the quantity of multimedia we have produced in 2006 (I produce most of the audio slideshows, a couple of photographers have begun exploring video). His response was basically, ‘they’re going to want more next year.’ At some point, the desire for ‘more’ from publishers will butt heads with photo departments and their desire to retain control.

Mindy wrote:
“So if I’m a photojournalist, am I not better off to set my own terms for shooting video? Rather than dragging my feet and resisting, I need to learn more about when video is okay and when I need to stand up and say, “No. For this, I’m taking the still camera.”

That strikes me as amazingly optimistic or naive. There will be exceptions, maybe Spokane is one, but most publications will, at some point, say, ‘get me video and a still from this assignment.’

Richard wrote that
“…the web has shown us that TPFKATA (The People Formerly Known as the Audience, to use Jay Rosen’s term) are much less impressed by the photographic/artistic quality than they are with the power of the story told - even with cell phone cameras and choppy video.”

Maybe he’s right, and quality doesn’t matter. The market will decide that too. I believe or at least want to believe, that compelling journalism, told in a compelling way, does impress - but that could just be my ego talking

But again, it’s the publishers and editors who will decide the priorities.

As fun as these discussions are, the blog I really want to read, and probably the only one that matters is the publishersandbeancounters.blogspot.com site.

I’ll keep producing audio slideshows for as long they’ll let me. Like Colin with video, I find gathering stills and audio challenging and rewarding. I don’t now if I’m more of a journalist, but it’s a different kind of journalism.

My own guess is that slideshows with sound are just a transitional step to video for the industry.

That still images are powerful and beautiful is a hard argument to sell, as these posts show

My worry isn’t about the technology - those who want to will adapt. But rather about the increasing pressures to produce more with less. And that our readers/viewers won’t want or demand the kinds of stories that I want to tell - with a still camera, audio recorder, digital video camera or crayon.

Everybody, take a look at Colin’s work here.

Photo staffs that are just handed video cameras without training will struggle. Being told by word editors to produce a multimedia story and, by the way, capture a meaningful still photograph for the daily paper is really ridiculous, but it is happening. I have tried to do both and it is very tough to make it work. Shooting a video story is so different than shooting a still. With video you are using every sense you have. You are monitoring audio, while framing a shot and all the while, in your brain you are thinking, “how am I going to get from point A to point B” in my sequence. Not to mention, looking for B-roll, cut-a-aways and asking the right questions for your narrative.

To do a three-minute video story right you have to have dozens of b-roll clips to cover the narrative. That means, unlike the still shooter, you have to find, compose and capture all those 5-10 second moments. Editing it all together can take a day, sometimes two if you really want to do a bang up job.

I made it clear with my management at The Spokesman-Review that I didn’t want take on the video challenge if I had to stay a daily still shooter. I feel that I work much harder as a multimedia content producer than I ever did as a still shooter. A lot of times, like tonight, I was the first to arrive in the photo department and the last to leave. I am not complaining. Really. This new challenge has motivated me in so many new ways. I have gone from being a still shooter, a fly on the wall, waiting for a real moment to happen—to becoming a true journalist that interviews my subjects and creates a narrative story out of many moments. I consider myself a producer now; I edit my own video, audio and photos as well as maintain my vblog were most of my multimedia goes. Us early adopters are the ones that need to define this new medium. If not, outside forces with no clue about what it really takes to multimedia right, will lead photojournalists down a path to burnout.

But of course his examples, the subway bombings, Katrina, the tsunami, are not the bread and butter of most daily journalism. Sure great stories don’t require brilliant journalism - the stories can tell themselves. (Though great storytelling raises the bar for even those stories).

But what is the bread and butter of most daily journalism (to turn it further, of most daily photojournalism)? I think the answer to that question would be that the “bread and butter” of most journalism doesn’t require all you seem to be putting into the equation.

So then the question for me becomes, is that the direction that our industry is going, given all these opportunities? Does equipping Washington Post writers with video cameras at the same time that buyouts reduced the photography staff by 25% signal an industry that embraces the value of storytelling and quality.

I think you are making engaging in some apples and oranges comparisons here. The fact that some WaPo writers are being given video cameras doesn’t necessarily correlate to the reduction of the photography staff. You’d also have to consider what other parts of the news operation may have increased (like, say, the online washingtonpost.com staff).

Further, the suggestion that those two moves (supplying writers with vidcams and cutting photo staff) equate with a lack of commitment to story-telling or quality is an inference that I’m not yet willing to make.

You seem to have this idea that writers can’t shoot video and record audio and make quality work, or that their storytelling will inevitably be less complete, less robust. I don’t accept that assertion.

Yes, some people, maybe even most, can learn to shoot stills and video. But can anyone do it well at the same time?

Yes. Richard Koci-Hernandez is already doing it at mercurynewsphoto.com. I suppose some of it depends on your definition of “well.”

But the bottom-line pressures from publishers and stockholders that will drive us to “Al Franken-style” satellite-dish-wearing video/still/audio-ographers should not be confused with what is really best for our viewers and readers or even the long-term bottom line.

I don’t believe I ever mentioned any bottom-line pressures. In fact, I think the pressures are entirely apart from budgetary pressures. Your viewers and readers expect more than your (well-composed, brilliantly lit) still photograph. They demand more than the written 20 inches of details about a city council meeting. Your viewers and readers are fed up with being told what’s “best” for them and are leaving the print edition for the wider pastures of the Internet, where there’s video, audio, Flash, and weblog authors with attitudes, and not a bunch of pompous “professionals” practicing yesterday’s cutting edge technology.

BTW, your Al Franken-stein journalist? He’s already working for Yahoo - Kevin Sites. Welcome to the brave new world.

I want to finally add that there seems to be this tone of false dichotomy within most discussions about new technology and journalism. Like you are either entirely pessimistic luddite or an entirely too optimistic pollyanna.

I’m neither. I am incredibly optimistic about opportunities. But I’m somewhat pessimistic about the ability of current media companies to deliver on those opportunities. As Leonard Witt said a few weeks ago when I interviewed him:

If the journalism institutions, including the journalism schools, don’t make the shift, something new will replace them. And if they follow the mode of disruptive technologies of the past in Clayton M. Christensen’s words, the new things will be “cheaper, simpler, smaller, and, frequently, more convenient to use.” So what’s wrong with that? Maybe the real paradigm shift is how can we produce quality journalism that is cheaper, simpler, smaller, and more convenient to use.

I think the future DOES offer opportunities. It IS an exciting time for print journalists and the possibilities that audio and video bring to the mix.

And it’s probably true, as ‘Murley’ wrote that:

[viewers] “…are much less impressed by the photographic/artistic quality than they are with the power of the story told.”

But of course his examples, the subway bombings, Katrina, the tsunami, are not the bread and butter of most daily journalism. Sure great stories don’t require brilliant journalism - the stories can tell themselves. (Though great storytelling raises the bar for even those stories).

But I don’t accept that there isn’t value in a story well-told. Compelling images, beautifully crafted language, strong audio or video DO make a difference.

So then the question for me becomes, is that the direction that our industry is going, given all these opportunities? Does equipping Washington Post writers with video cameras at the same time that buyouts reduced the photography staff by 25% signal an industry that embraces the value of storytelling and quality.

Sure, as ‘Murley’ writes:
If you meld the two, certainly, you can re-train a photographer/videographer to shoot in a different way, to see things both as “time-based” and as “frozen images.”

Yes, some people, maybe even most, can learn to shoot stills and video. But can anyone do it well at the same time?

I think that it is lovely to talk about all the possibilities this brave new world presents. And of course it is going to happen in some way shape or form.

But the bottom-line pressures from publishers and stockholders that will drive us to “Al Franken-style” satellite-dish-wearing video/still/audio-ographers should not be confused with what is really best for our viewers and readers or even the long-term bottom line.

Let me just take a couple of comments as illustrative:

It seems a shame that newspapers would compromise their photography because they forced their photographers to shoot both. I know I for one will be fighting to keep the disciplines separate wherever it is I end up.

Who says newspapers are “compromising” their photography? Could it be possible that newspapers are getting better photo*journalism* out of a video camera than a still camera? Is the goal of a newspaper to have pristine still photographs, Award-winning photographs, even? Or to tell the story?

In a related vein, nobody seems to mention the readers/viewers when these discussions come up. Could it be that we’re more worried about the approval of our peers than the approval of the people who pay our rent? If anything, the web has shown us that TPFKATA (The People Formerly Known as the Audience, to use Jay Rosen’s term) are much less impressed by the photographic/artistic quality than they are with the power of the story told - even with cell phone cameras and choppy video (think New Orleans, the London bombing, the Tsunami, and, in an unrelated vein - YouTube).

Another issue with video I’ve found is that people react differently to a video camera than a still camera. If a photographer is moving around with camera to eye it seems like people are never quite sure when the picture is done being taken. But with a video camera they know they’re always on.. or assume they are. It’d be cool to see what kind of images you’d get shooting video with a camera that looked like a still camera.

I see people do amazingly stupid things on video all the time. Clearly they aren’t aware that the camera is filming. People are people, and some people will react to the camera, and some won’t. The size of the video camera also makes a difference. Are people reacting to huge TV-station video cameras, or mini-DV palm-size cameras?

As to the camera that looks like a still camera, I’m sure that there will continue to be advancements in technology that shrink the size of the camera even further, and HD format will eventually end up in the little flip video cameras everyone carries these days (remember that HDTV format is supposed to be phasing in by 2009).

Ultimately, fighting to keep the “disciplines” apart may be akin to fighting to keep the levees in New Orleans from overflowing during Katrina.

Will Yurman writes:

Isn’t there a distinct difference in the way, visually, a videographer tells a story from how a still photographer sees?

Yes. There probably is. But why is it so? Because they were trained to see that way. If you meld the two, certainly, you can re-train a photographer/videographer to shoot in a different way, to see things both as “time-based” and as “frozen images.”

Were I an enterprising young photojournalist, I’d be working hard to find new ways to work with that HD video camera that blend the best of videography with the best of still photography to create a new form and new methods.

In short, what may happen is that the cross-pollination of video and still creates a new form of visual communicator.

I’m sure those folks are out there. And they will be creating the future apart from their bean-counters.

I’m stoked to see what the future holds. I began in this business with b/w darkrooms and hot wax and composition tables. Now, to give print journalists the chance to tell stories with audio and video … what an exciting time.