Newspaper Dumps Photographers, Wants Video

[pj1974]

I've found the following regarding 'news turns video' (from written article with a photo or few):
1) the quality of many news videos is often poor (quality of sound, shake, background distraction, etc).
2) it takes me MUCH longer to scan and/or receive information.

So when there are video links in news items (particularly if they are the main / only source of information in that article) - I will avoid it.

For years I haven't looked at news on TV (since the late 80's regularly - and since the early 90's I haven't used TV for news pretty much at all).
Both at work (in my breaks) - and at home - I want to choose what to read, by clicking on news headlines, and read the top paragraph - that will determine whether I need or want to read more. Only for world breaking news (eg huge natural calamity, or outbreak of war, or a truly good news story) - might I tune into TV, or view news videos online. That's only about once every few months (at most!)

I will continue to enjoy photography as a hobby - and appreciate seeing others' quality photography in various media (online, magazines, newspapers, etc). Even though video is taking over some of the traditionally 'written and photographed' articles - there will always be a place for it. And I expect quality publications will still reserve a space for photos and written articles. Who knows, there might even be a return to that some day!

Regards

Paul

 

[Ellen Schmidtee]

Please correct me, if I am wrong.

My assumption is that generally news consumption moves from old-fashioned paper to internet access, which is accompanied by a move to replace stills, which would fit print media by videos, which are supposed to be good enough for the internet.

Actually, they're not, for several reasons:

1. As pj1974 wrote, " it takes me MUCH longer to scan and/or receive information".

2. Search engines can't search anything inside the video, e.g. turn speech into searchable text.

3. It's still clearer to display some stuff in tables, graphs, etc, such as price comparisons.

Also, part of the problem is people expecting information available on the Internet to be free, which makes it hard for newspapers to make money from the information they put on their web site.

My expectation is that the measurement for success at news sites is nowadays how long a consumer actually stays on the site, instead of the quality of reporting and associated images.

No, the measurement for success is profit.

One possible way to make money is to imitate TV, with articles being shot in video and accompanied by ads breaks. For this to work, video would have to be good enough for people to watch till the ad break, stay for the ad, then come for more. That would require, of course, people who can shoot good video.

What has been mentioned in this thread remarkably often is the imposition of a marked political bias in news media, which pretty much alienates me to a lot of information spread by corporations selling news or even worse by government-owned media. The more we know, the more critical we must become towards what is presented as news, which in my humble opinion is at least in part a reason, why this kind of business is on its way to extinction.

I think news can't go extinct. People in general aren't willing to go back to the middle ages, as in settling for news travelling by word of mouth.

A lot of newspapers will go bankrupt, and a few will step up, provide higher quality material (analysis, criticism, balanced view, etc), and make the money.

 

[mrzero]

I also don't know where this stuff about iphones has come from. I know somebody reported on a comment from a laid-off staffer that he expected the Sun Times to go with more reporter-generated stills, and I think that is definitely true. But I don't know why that automatically translates into iphones. More likely, they'll hand over something like a 60D plus superzoom and show them how to work it in scene/green box modes.

This is where it comes from:

http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/214954/sun-times-will-train-reporters-on-iphone-photography-basics/

Thanks, that is the first time I've actually seen it sourced. I still think it is hard to believe. I know the iphone really transformed phone photography, but I just don't see it working here.

 

[thepancakeman]

My expectation is that the measurement for success at news sites is nowadays how long a consumer actually stays on the site, instead of the quality of reporting and associated images.

No, the measurement for success is profit.

One possible way to make money is to imitate TV, with articles being shot in video and accompanied by ads breaks. For this to work, video would have to be good enough for people to watch till the ad break, stay for the ad, then come for more. That would require, of course, people who can shoot good video.

Actually Ellen is correct, but only because you are also correct. The longer a person stays on a page, the more ads rotate thru, thus profit is increased by time spent on a page. And unlike TV, the ads don't have to wait for a break--they are in the header and side margins. But as others have pointed out videos take longer to consume than an article, thus more video=longer page view=more ads=more profit=more sucky user experience.

 

[Ellen Schmidtee]

My expectation is that the measurement for success at news sites is nowadays how long a consumer actually stays on the site, instead of the quality of reporting and associated images.

No, the measurement for success is profit.

One possible way to make money is to imitate TV, with articles being shot in video and accompanied by ads breaks. For this to work, video would have to be good enough for people to watch till the ad break, stay for the ad, then come for more. That would require, of course, people who can shoot good video.

Actually Ellen is correct, but only because you are also correct. The longer a person stays on a page, the more ads rotate thru, thus profit is increased by time spent on a page. And unlike TV, the ads don't have to wait for a break--they are in the header and side margins. But as others have pointed out videos take longer to consume than an article, thus more video=longer page view=more ads=more profit=more sucky user experience.

Question is whether the person is looking at the ads in the header & side margins. As the person is looking at the video segment - remember the gorilla experiment? - I wouldn't bet any money on him actually noticing the ads outside of the video.

 

[jdramirez]

the graphic quality of newspapers is pretty bad. you really don't need 22 megapixels to put a print in the newspaper. sure, if someone wants the print later... but otherwise nope.

 

[paul13walnut5]

A little secret... I work within the print media, and yes it is making the difficult transition...

We still do video, but what is really want are online galleries. Online galleries are cheap and quick to make and generate the main thing that's useful to our business - page impressions.

Video has it's place when it's well done. Cameraphones can tell a story much more effectively than 1'000 words sometimes (witness the footage from the Woolwich murder), the place for properly produced, crafted video is on TV, for newspapers the cost and effort per page impression is less good value to the business than a gallery.

Video no more killed the photographer than it killed the radio star. Times evolve. I've lost a lot of colleagues who just wouldn't adapt. Bums on seats is what matters. Giving the customer what they think they want is what matters. This is my head speaking. My heart is screaming how wrong it all is.

 

[jhpeterson]

As a photojournalist, I feel a need to weigh in. I posted the following on this very topic in a social media site yesterday:

"I'll admit to having a bias, but this seems such a tragic loss. Not only for photographers, but also for the publishing world in general, and, even more importantly, for an educated public. Too many stories these days are not given the treatment they deserve, and many others are missed entirely.
I still consider myself a photojournalist more than anything, and, despite the fact I've done this well for more than three decades, with each passing year it become more challenging to succeed in this field.
And, replacing the articles and photos with video? I may be a very visual person, but this doesn't fly with me. It's that I seldom have the patience to wait for one to load, then often wait some more to wade through a sponsor's ad, only to watch a six-minute clip when all I needed to see could have been told in sixty seconds. Not to mention having to pull out my headphones, so I can listen without disturbing those around me.
Am I the only one who finds that looking at words and pictures is actually a much more efficient use of time?"

While video has an important place in journalism (think insightful interviews or a story that needs to be told as a continuum), I find it used far too frequently as a poor substitute for good still photography.

 

[distant.star]

.
Good to see the working journalists weighing in.

Ramirez: You're right that you don't need a 22MB file for newsprint (or Web), what you do need is an eye for visual storytelling. I can put words on paper that will make you joyful, tearful or any other appropriate emotion, but I can't do that with a camera. I'll get a picture that connects you to the story (with any kind of camera, including my $35-P&S), but I rarely bring that spark a real professional photojournalist delivers consistently. Here's a page that shows the kind of work I mean:

http://guncrisis.org/category/crime-scenes/


Paul, your:

"Video no more killed the photographer than it killed the radio star. Times evolve."

reminds me of two people who did not transition from radio to TV. Jack Johnstone, one of the top five radio drama producer/director types walked away. In the early fifties, he was directing Marilyn Monroe, Jimmy Stewart, etc. in radio drama productions. In October, 1962, he sat in his living room listening to the last two radio dramas produced in the "golden age" of radio. When they finished, he walked over to the radio, turned it off and said, "Well, that's the end of an era." He was offered work in TV and film, but he was done at age 56. He considered TV and film "dirty business." So he moved to Santa Barbara, spent the next 30 years fishing and lawn bowling.

Radio actor Bob Bailey was a big star in the fifties. He tried to transition to film/TV, but he didn't have the physical appearance to match his big voice, so he failed. His big claim to film fame was a bit appearance in "Birdman of Alcatraz," ironically as a reporter. By the mid-sixties he was a drunk on skid row in Los Angeles calling his brother for money. He died in a nursing home 10 years later; even he did not remember who or what he had been.

Finally, Peterson, I agree completely. Unfortunately, I think we have become an attention-deficit-disorder generation. That and technology that serves it are forming a great storm that's chewing up old delivery systems. Few people seem to be able to concentrate for more than 10 seconds on anything. There seems an almost monumental level of self-absorption and narcissism that makes people look for no more than a quick dose of whatever "news" confirms their view of society/world. Good pictures are no more appreciated than blurry cell phone shots or horrible utube videos. The expectations are driving the creation of product. If crap sells, why serve filet mignon?

Oh, and stikk, good to meet you! I knew there had to be one photographer who could string good words together.

 

[jhpeterson]

Finally, Peterson, I agree completely. Unfortunately, I think we have become an attention-deficit-disorder generation. That and technology that serves it are forming a great storm that's chewing up old delivery systems. Few people seem to be able to concentrate for more than 10 seconds on anything. There seems an almost monumental level of self-absorption and narcissism that makes people look for no more than a quick dose of whatever "news" confirms their view of society/world. Good pictures are no more appreciated than blurry cell phone shots or horrible utube videos. The expectations are driving the creation of product. If crap sells, why serve filet mignon?

Perhaps, I too, have attention deficit disorder. Or, I am just impatient. But, I'm far less likely to wait for a video to load, when I can see words and still images right in front of me.

 

[paul13walnut5]

The great loss to me isn't the articles you seek out, which you can do quite easily with google, it's the articles, reviews, interviews that you stumble on quite by mistake. Sometimes because a strong image has drawn you in.

Blame the democratisation of the technology if you will, but everybody reading this thread has a DSLR and probably uploads their images to the web be it on facebook or flickr, and most of us will have a smartphone, and probably last bought a newspaper god knows when.

Can't be poacher and gamekeeper.

The tragedy is that, once newspapers die, what are we going to be left with? Mad forums with trolls and braggarts? How many will pay for news or analysis now that we are so accustomed to getting it for free?

These are questions that are above my pay grade.

 

[AmbientLight]

Paul, you raise a very good question here and I don't think this is beyond your pay grade at all. I also wonder about how information will be spread after newspapers as we know them have become more or less extinct.

On the positive side this trend might remove a lot of political agitation and propaganda, but what happens once we have only unchanneled information? In case of democracy taking away layers of obfuscation and manipulation is quite a good thing, as seen in the Swiss example. If you compare YouTube to old-fashioned TV, there is also a noticeable freedom of unwanted advertising, but then there are user comments out there on YouTube, which you wouldn't want to read at all, especially in case of religious themes. In such cases the quality of information actually becomes dependent on corporate censoring, which in such cases is a good thing.

The same trend may be happening to news and media in general, but we must all beware of companies misusing available streams of communication for viral marketing and how our precious information suddenly becomes dependent on very few corporate information sources such as Google.