This is one of the most thought-provoking articles I’ve read recently, and a divergent viewpoint from a Pulitzer prizewinning photojournalist in a world where photoj’s aren’t quite ready to embrace video:
The Shift. by Kim Komenich.
Found via Newspaper Video Yahoo group.
Komenich thinks the time is near that reporters and photojournalists will be working for a web company that produces a newspaper a few times a week. His reasoning, in part, is the environmental impact in producing the newspaper:
the concept of paying a guy to drive a logging truck into the woods (at $3 a gallon) to cut down a tree and drive the log to a paper mill (at $3 a gallon), then pay some other guy to drive a train or truck full of newsprint out of state to a newspaper’s printing plant (at $3 a gallon), then to pay some other guys to drive big trucks full of printed newspapers (at $3 a gallon) to a distribution point where some other guys (some driving cars at $3 a gallon and some on foot or bicycle) deliver the newspaper to the reader — wouldn’t get you much venture capital for your 2007 startup.
But the key concept he promotes is this:
Today’s journalist is (or soon will be) a “field producer” who is trusted as the person on location who will decide how the story will best be told (be it in stills and words, or stills only, or words only, or audio and stills, or audio only, or video — the possibilities are endless). This journalist then sets about to tell the story with the curiosity, empathy and originality by practicing his or her core skill as a photographer, reporter or videographer.
From my personal experience, Komenich makes sense. I can’t tell you how many times I covered a story and thought, “I wish people could hear the passion in this person’s voice” or see his facial expressions as he chokes back a tear or struggles to find the words. I wish I had a recorder or video camera as part of my toolkit.
The method of storytelling might change, but it’s still the reporter and photojournalist at the core, relating the story. It wouldn’t be journalism any other way.
