Evan Milberg: Comm 361

This chapter focuses on telling a story with video. Your audience does not just want to read the story, but also see it. In Chapter 8, Briggs talks about the different sects within video journalism, its impact on the news industry, and specifically what tools needed to shoot video.

The Impact of Digital Video

The overarching theme in this textbook is the news media’s shift to more interactive stories. A common way of doing this is through video. With the advent of YouTube, everyone can view and produce video. This applies to any kind of journalist. Because of this, some TV stations are now video journalists – a team of two people who act as both a reporter and a videographer on assignment.

The expected quality of video over time has changed. Unlike the early days of video journalism, all levels of quality are accepted. An example comes when comparing David Pogue’s videos for the New York Times to Walter Mossberg’s videos for the Wall Street Journal. Pogue’s videos, which appear on CNBC, are painstakefully edited in order to be appealing to the eye on TV, while Mossberg’s material is comprised of a guy sitting a computer talking, often shot in one take. These two media can compete because all levels of quality are accepted.

Surprisingly, the less polished video content on news sites attracts a larger audience. This has caused newspaper to change their approaches to video journalism.

Planning Your Shoot

The key question to ask yourself when shooting for a story is to ask how will video help tell the story?

There are two types of video assignments – the documentary-style video and the breaking news and highlight clips approach. Documentary-style clips give you more control because you decide on what the content is, as opposed to breaking news, which cannot be manipulated due to the need to portray it accurately.

Some strategies to use when shooting (or even before a shoot) are storyboarding and mixing your shots. While storyboarding allows you to plan out the sequence of your shots, it does not mean you are confined to those shots while on location. In order to make the video visually appealing, it’s good to shoot from different angles – specifically wide shots, medium shots, and close-ups.

Briggs mentions that a video should have five different type of shots, known as the five shot sequence:

1. Close-up on the hands
2. Close-up on the face
3. Wide shot
4. Over-the-shoulder shot
5. Creative shot

Interviews

One of the most basic forms of video journalism is the interview. The first step in planning an interview is selecting the right location. The person you interview must be comftorable in the surrounding. Additionally, the environment needs to have the proper lighting and no ambient sounds. A good tip when interviewing is to focus on the content, not your own individual personality. However, this does not mean you should not be personable and engaging. Also, be prepared by having a script written and rehearsing it.

Equipment

Now, while all levels of quality are accepted in the field, it’s important to at least have high-quality equipment to produce your videos. Before a shoot, you should have all of the following

• Tapes and batteries
• Microphones
• A tripod
• Headphones
• Good lighting

Journalists have to know the technique of shooting video as well. Some good tips when shooting are to be selective in your shots, avoid panning and zooming (let the action in front of the camera determine where the camera goes), hold your shots, and be silent when shooting.

Many people forget that in video content, the audio is just as important as the video iteslf. You can use built-in mics, wireless mics, and shotgun mics. Built-in mics are good for sporting events and capturing the natural sounds on an environment. Wireless mics are better for sit-down interviews. Shotgun mics are best used when capturing audio among multiple people.

When Bob Schieffer first debuted on Face the Nation 56 years ago, the way journalism was done was completely different. There was no Internet. There were no microblogs that tracked the news in real time, no RSS feeds that let you subscribe to a particular type of news and nothing that let you have the news anywhere and any time you wanted it. Everything was different back then.

Well, almost everything.

“The one constant that will never change is the need for professionally trained reporters to gather the news” said Schieffer.

Schieffer’s message to journalism students is simple. The media for reporting and how they are structured and layed out changes what seems like every day, but no matter what the media are, the craft of writing a story remains the same.

Schieffer, who has also served as an anchor on the Saturday edition of CBS Evening News since 1973, joined students participating from the George Mason University Video Studio along with Steve Scully, the political editor for the C-SPAN networks, and students from the TCU School of Journalism (named after Schieffer) and the University of Denver last Thursday.

According to Schieffer, while lots of things have changed over the past half century, his show is not one of them.

“Face the Nation is basically the same as when we first broadcasted in 1954″ said Schieffer.

The basic objectives of a journalist have not changed, either. Among other things, two of the things that Schieffer advised the students participating in the video conference is that the journalist’s job is to find the truth and portray that truth in language your audience can understand.

“Tell the story the way you would tell your mother” said Schieffer.

With the advent of new technology, there is often as emphasis on being the first to publish a story, whether it has inaccuracies or not. Schieffer told the students that accuracy in news should not be sacrificed for immediacy.

“It’s better to be right than first on a story” said Schieffer.

The distance learning course, which is produced by C-SPAN, is a unique opportunity for students to interview guests via video conference. The course airs on C-SPAN3 on Fridays at 5 p.m. and also streams online.

You can watch the complete interview here

This chapter covers the fundamentals of building an online audience, specifically tracking content, web analytics, search enginge optimization, writing good headlines, and distribution through social media.

Track Everything

It’s important to track everything that you publish, inclduing daily statistics that covers how many posts you get per week, the type of things that are being written about, social networking feedback, and other user-generated content.

It’s important to track your audience as well by using Web analytics software. Services like Omniture, Hitbox, and Google Analytics are great ways to track how your Web site is doing and how it performs daily.

The things to be looking for are pageviews, unique visitors, and the amount of time each user spends on your Web site.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The way marketing has been traditionally done in the past is currently being supplemented by viral marketing. Everything is found through a search engine nowadays, so in order to garner attention to your Web site, you have to know how search engines work.

Search engines do three things:

1. Spiders and robots are programmed to scavenger the Internet for new pages or new information on existing pages for search engine indexing.
2. The indexing itself takes all of the information gather from the spiders and robots and compiles them into a database.
3. Queries take keywords entered into search engines and look into the index for the most relevant results and then presents those results to the media consumer.

Journalists use SEO to grow their audiences. The fastest way the online robots can pick up your material and index it is by assisting them by creating links that link directly to your published content. Tags are another catalyst. The same methods can be applied to video content.

Headlines

The best way to attract hits is by writing effective headlines. To attract readers, your headlines must stand out, but be simple at the same time. For the robots indexing information, it is important that you select the right text, preferably  text that is repeated in the story. These keywords need to include who, what, and where.

It’s also important that while you are trying to attract robots to not SOUND like a robot. Use conversational language that occasionally has a bit of attitude. An article can be well-written, but no one will read it if the headline is boring.

Social Distribution

As noted earlier, the way to go now is through viral marketing. The way to achieve viral success is by targeting specifics outlets on the Web so your content is featured on every type of channel possible to maximize your audience. Make sure your content links to social networks, blogs, video and photo sites like YouTube and Flickr, and bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon.

This chapter focuses on the interactivity of news that has been touched upon in previous chapters. The challenge in making journalism interactive is balancing objectivity and journalistic credibility with informality of conversation. There are also legal and ethical issues that come with people publishing anything they want and ignoring copyright laws. Finally, how do you attract an audience that is too apathetic to participate?

News as a Conversation

Most journalists would rather speak AT their audience as opposed to WITH their audience. However, due to the growth of journalism in accordance with Web 2.0 technology, stories must come in the form of conversations so the audience feels actively involved. It is no longer enough to simply make comments on blog postings anymore. Journalist must also communicate through social networking sites such as Facebook and microblogs like Twitter. The benefits of news as a conversation are:

• The stories become transparent
• You can manage feedback and communicate in real time
• You can spread awareness through word-of-mouth advertising

As mentioned in a previous chapter, beatblogging sites like NowPublic are already doing this.

Building an Online Community

In order to get an audience involved, journalists themselves must be committed to interactive media. Among things journalists can do to maximize the effects of their interactive web sites are:

• Asking for content from the audience, allowing them to become a part of the journalistic process
• Moderating feedback on stories and other types of user submissions
• Assisting your audience with the Web 2.0 technology
• Create contests which give the audience an incentive to participate
• ADVERSTISE!!

Some of your audience members can also prove to be valueable sources when creating content for the Web. Many of these sources can come through social networks like MySpace or LinkedIn. Journalists can also create their own niche social network and use pro-am journalism to collaborate with their community.

Maintain Accuracy and Ethics within the Web

There are some potential risks to collaborative journalism. The Web is anonymous, and anyone can post an offensive post that could do more harm than benefit. The journalist is responsible for monitoring all content that is published and making sure it isn’t offensive. The journalist also has legal responsibilities to make sure he or she is not breaking any copyright laws.

It is also important to note when errors have been made and to correct them as soon as you can. Journalism, regardless of its medium, is obligated to be accurate.