Practising Videojournalism

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?