Sharing and Celebrating Points-Of-View: 'Video journalists': Inevitable revolution or way to cut TV jobs?

Thursday, July 28, 2005

'Video journalists': Inevitable revolution or way to cut TV jobs?

'Video journalists': Inevitable revolution or way to cut TV jobs?: "OJR introduces its first live collaborative story. This week, five writers take turns crafting a wiki-style article on 'one-man bands' who report, film and edit their own video stories. OJR's Mark Glaser gets it going.

Pity the pioneer. The trail-blazer might be first to latch onto an idea, but that also means those defending the status quo see a bull's eye on his head. Thus it is for Michael Rosenblum, called a "prophet" and "guru" in the quotes on his bio but also derided as a profiteering con-man by readers of the Lost Remote blog after a recent Q&A.
Rosenblum's idea is to bring "video journalists" to TV newsrooms and beyond, one-man bands that can report stories, shoot digital video, edit it on laptops and broadcast it. His client list already includes the BBC, New York Times TV and Oxygen, and he is currently helping to train VJs at local TV stations such as KRON in San Francisco and WKRN in Nashville.

Rosenblum sells his vision to station management by promising to cut the cost of production by 20 percent to 70 percent with no loss in picture quality or storytelling. In fact, he argues that TV news can improve by giving many more people the tools to tell stories rather than the four or five news trucks full of equipment that limit what they can cover.

But critics see him as the ultimate snake-oil salesman, breaking down the longstanding cameraperson/on-air personality duo and threatening the jobs of traditional TV newsgatherers while cozying up with cost-conscious management." (more)