Practising Videojournalism

A picture in The Guardian newspaper’s centre-spread yesterday showed the unveiling of the Nelson Mandela statue in London. The photo showed large numbers of people in the crowd. What were they doing? Not clapping or waving…no they were all raising their mobile phones to take a picture or video. What I wonder did they do with the result? Is it for their friends to see or their own records?

Why now do we think that taking video validates our very existence and attendance at an event like this?

I always saw video as a way of opening up the world to others- now it has taken on a very different form of daily celebration or confirmation of life.

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Teaching broadcast journalism, video journalism and new media was easy compared to writing a book about the subject. The problem is that there has never been a book written on the history of how it all began – so I wanted to fill that gap.

The other thing was that new media and online journalism has to be the fastest moving medium ever – hardly had I written about one takeover than another happened. Hardly had I mentioned the fact that newspapers might soon be investing online when The Daily Telegraph went and did it.

Still, this book I think helps us British catch up on the trends in online journalism and also registers the need NOW for more video training and thinking about online journalism. NOT that the book is for UK students and journalists and those readers interested in video only- but that we have yet to establish a debate on the level that blogs have done in the US. We have not taken to online journalism like ducks to water – whereas the Americans have. But we have to be there or be square, or rather left way behind.

I have been surfing through the US sites on recording video for online journalism- and I am stunned by the poor level of advice that so many blogs contain! Can Mindy McAdams really know what she is offering as “academic” points. I believe that online journalism has the same discipline as broadcast journalism – and that there are no shortcuts. A story has to be good, well-researched, well-shot and edited. The medium should not change the message. Otherwise it’s a slippery slope for those of us academics and practitioners. What are we saying to students and those picking up a video camera for the first time? Do you agree?

Videojournalism keeps being re-invented and keeps moving with the technological changes. It is growing in demand as a skill,which is good news for students and others looking to work as VJs, because newspapers are now filming video stories for their websites too. Also companies are needing better website profiels so they want to run or stream video and it’s also being pushed by PR companies. They have finally come around to realising that e-PR is where it’s at. So now you have news organisations sending their print journalists on videojournalism course run by the Press Association or the Thomson Foundation.

The other change is that while traditional broadcasters continue to employ professional news camera people to film video for their newsgathering operations, a growing percentage of content is coming from non-professional or ‘citizen’ reporters who happen to record an event live as it happens. This has given us pcitures of the tsunami of 7/7 in London when the bombs went off and of course of 9/11.

I think the most exciting change is in local TV where what’s happening in the community is being filmed and then broadcast. It is helping knit together people and gets them interested in their local issues which we all need to do, with environmental demands on us to be better citizens and to police ourselves and others. So if you can pick up a video camera, or use your mobile or even digital camera to record something then you are making a contribution and you can be called a VJ or maybe a videographer or maybe no label at all.

For all you students studying media courses I think you need to think about this and about how you need practical video skills, not academic theory- to get jobs- to take part in any media debate- and above all to be CREATIVE.

What do you think?

Practising Videojournalism