Rosenblumtv

Kyle Majors writes today from KGTV in San Diego. KGTV is one of the stations in the US that we are in the process of converting to the VJ model. There has been lots written about this online in places like b-roll.net or medialine or tvspy. But if you really want to know what is happening at KGTV and places like this, take a look at Kyle’s page and his work. It pretty much speaks for itself.

www.digitalcorrespondent.com

Television is the world’s most plastic medium.

It is about manipulating pictures, sound, writing, graphics, storytelling, music…

When we marry that power to news, it could be unbelievable.

It has such enormous potential to move us on so many levels that each time we look at it, it should just capture us.

Instead, what do we do? Stand ups? People eating bugs. Guess Who’s Coming to Decorate. What a tragic waste. (more…)

Check out The Bakersfield Californian’s multimedia web page.(Courtesy, Steve Safran, Lostremote.com)

http://www.bakersfield.com/231/index.html

Here is a newspaper that clearly ‘gets it’. You might try comparing this to the web page for y0ur local tv news station. Most of them are a jumbled mess.

As both newspapers and local TV news migrate to the web they are going to become head to head competitors. Local news, same stories, same advertisers, and now same medium. Who will dominate? My guess is the papers…..

Local TV news stations will increasingly be looked at as the “Kodak” of their industry. They believed they were in the business of anchors, on-air talent and ‘the show’. They were not. They were in the business of going out into the community, digitally gathering stories and distributing them to the public. That’s it.

TECHNOLOGY AND DESIGN

Since its inception, broadcasting has been based on a pretty simple model.

A few people decided what ‘the viewers’ wanted to see. They spend money to create that content, put it on the air and hope they are right.

One source of information broadcast to many.

(more…)

Former KRON on-air reporter Don Knapp took the VJ training last year. Knapp was admittedly an old timer, a long-time KRON reporter with a great track record and a great journalist.

There is always concern that the VJ movement will eclipse old established journalists.  Knapp certainly proves this wrong.  Although he is no longer at KRON, he just posted his first piece as a VJ for The New York Times.  Check out his story on “The Sutter Buttes.”  Now that’s journalism! Congrats, Don. Nice job.

While local TV stations agonize over whether to train and field a few VJs, Davina McHenry, a print reporter with The Bakersfield Californian, writes that the local newspaper!! has already trained and equipped 20 of their print journalists and 5 of their photogs with video cameras to shoot video stories for the website.   She writes that they also have a full-time videographer and multimedia producer (job vacant) who also shoots and edits.

That means that the local paper (!!) is putting 26 cameras on the streets of Bakersfield every day - far more (I am sure) than the local TV stations currently do!! Local news stations, please take note.  As all media move to the web, the local paper is your direct video competitor - and doing a much better job.

We took Ronnie Miller, Syracuse radio personality and former cast member of 5takes Europe, gave him a GPS device and a small HDV camera and sent him off to travel around the world. The only condition - he could not deviate from the 40th Parallel… not even by an inch. If he comes to someone’s living room - he has to go through it. If he comes to a military base, he has to cross it. “What if I come to a wall?” Ronnie asked. ‘Chain Saw’.

The first Episode airs tomorrow night on The Travel Channel - Check it out. Boost our ratings. Here’s the link: www.travelchannel.com

We are in Utrecht, Netherlands, this week, working with RTV, the Dutch state broadcaster - a kind of Dutch BBC.  We have been working with RTV for the past 3 years, and visits to the Netherlands are a regular stop on our agenda.  This week, in Utrecht, we are reaching a kind of conclusion here.

Senior VJ Instructor Tim French conducts the RTV/Utrecht bootcamp

We will be running a 2-week, on-site bootcamp where another 20 VJs and managers are being trained.  This will give the Utrecht station 40+ cameras in play every day 40+ edits and a management team fully trained to deal with the VJ-driven revolution.

Between last week’s Sweden series and this week in the Netherlands, I am again astonished at how much more progressive Europeans are in adapting and incorporating new technologies into their ways of working; and how much faster they are to change and adapt.

As Mark Twain wrote, ‘I’m all for progress, its change I don’t like’.

Of course, the VJ/Digital revolution engenders enormous change.  There are enormous benefits at the end of the day , especially in a world in which a website must be fed video 24/7.  Both the Dutch and the Swedes eagerly embrace the change and have been quick to adapt the new technologies and techniques. What a stark contrast this is to US based local news stations which have to be dragged to this kicking and screaming.

This inherent fear of the new and of change probably does not bode well for an America which will soon find itself competing with both China and India on a world stage.  Those who both fear and resist new technologies are probably not long for the competitive world.

We have just spent the past two days meeting with VJs from all across Sweden. But first, some background.

In 1999, I got a phone call from a Swedish journalist named Leif Hedman. He was a TV reporter for SVT, the Swedish state broadcaster, and he asked me if I would be interested in doing a weekend seminar in Stockholm to introduce Swedish journalists to the VJ concept. Hedman had been doing it on his own for years.

lisa lambden meets with Swedish VJs, March 15, 2007

I never miss an opportunity to fly to Stockholm all expenses paid for a weekend, so I said, ’sure’. (more…)

I am blogging live from the SVT (Swedish State Broadcasting) videojournalist conference in Vilhelmina, Sweden. I will have a complete report on this by the end of the day. It’s a 2-day conference with VJs from all over Sweden. Unlike in the US, there is no resistance to the idea of VJ driven newsrooms. Scandinavia is so much faster to embrace new technologies than the US, it is astounding.
I’m filing on my blackberry…which does not do photos..or video.. But I will upload later…