Are newspapers losing their multimedia mojo?

Around the multimedia blogosphere, the January doldrums seem to have kicked in. My usual inspirational haunts like Newsvideographer.com, Teaching Online Journalism, Multimediashooter.com have all slowed their publishing cycles. Even my own blog is in need of a New Year’s kick-start. With all the newspaper layoffs last year, over 8,000 from one count, I’m sensing a definite decrease in the multimedia mojo I felt just a year ago. Even the NPPA Monthly Multimedia Contest I run had the lowest amount of entries ever this month.

I’m not saying there’s not good work being produced. There is. I just feel the recession and layoffs have forced the pace of newsroom innovation to slow to a crawl. I fear the brain drain at many newspapers, including my own, has left them frozen in place. Many papers simply do not have the staff or resources left to be competitive on two, let alone, three platforms anymore.

In the last round of layoffs at my newspaper, we lost many of the multimedia journalists who embraced the idea that the web would eventually become our main publishing platform. Talk of innovation has pretty much ceased at the grass roots level. Now, most in editorial are waiting for direction from higher powers to see what comes next.

As I sit in my supply closet video editing suite, surrounded by shelves of unused gear from laid off former co-workers, I wonder if the last five years of training myself to break the chains of legacy storytelling was all for naught. If tomorrow, I stopped shooting video, stopped being a cheerleader for multimedia, stopped asking for new features on our website, would anybody at my paper care? Would it be more of a relief to some that I was not challenging them to try new ways of storytelling? Perhaps. I’m sure some acquaint our former push to be web-centric as a cancer that has gone into remission. Me? I am constantly fighting the forces of negativity from an industry that seems to be in an endless tailspin of turmoil. I don’t brandish terms like “the printed newspaper is dead,” anymore. That just gets me eye rolls.  Most in our newsroom have retreated to focusing on our traditional print product that thankfully, for now, still pays our salaries.

I went from being part of one of the most innovative, forward thinking newsrooms in the country, to now taking a back seat in my out-of-sight supply closet. I feel frustration that mine and most other newspapers are not doing more to prepare for their digital futures. When I started this blog a year ago, I was so full of hope. Now that hope too, has been forced into unwelcome remission. Not totally gone mind you. I’m just going to wait this downturn out. You see, if I can survive the next future round of layoffs, I believe the need for innovative people and ideas will flow once again.  If not, I’m sure what ever rises from the ashes will need a visual journalist who can do it all.

A young girl’s death brings a community together

There was something about the short news brief on our website that caught my eye.  A teenage girl had died in a two-vehicle accident on a state highway the previous day. Friends were organizing a last minute candlelight vigil in the girl’s honor. Lorissa Green, a 16-years-old Cheney, Washington resident died when the car she was driving collided with a pickup truck as she crossed a busy highway.

Usually, candlelight vigils do not interest me much. But that little voice in my head was going off: “You need to be there Colin, you need to be there.”  It was my day off, and weekends are not good for web traffic at my newspaper I countered. Still, I fidgeted about going out in the cold night air. My 13-year-old daughter Brenna finally told me to, “just go Dad”. “You need to be there with your camera,” she said. Maybe having two teenage daughters of my own was the reason I was drawn to this tragedy. They will be driving soon, which ages me to think about it.  The thought of them making a fleeting mistake–like not watching for oncoming traffic–is bone chilling.

I thought a lot on my drive to the vigil how I was going to cover this. I first thought about themes.

• Loss
• Community coming together
• Shock and grief

About 100 fellow students, parents, friends and family of Lorissa Green gathered in a parking lot near where the accident occurred. I started out getting b-roll of candles being handed out.  There was emotion everywhere.  Visual moments came easy. People seemed ok with me shooting them as tears flowed and candles flickered in cold hands. The sister of the Lorissa gave a tearful thank you to the crowd gathered. I put my video  camera on a tripod and did some interviews with friends of Lorissa. 

Then something happened that made this vigil different than the dozen or so I’ve covered as a still shooter. Small groups walked the down the dark road to the intersection where Lorissa’s accident occurred. A Washington State Patrol Trooper escorted them across the highway to the median where they placed flowers and lit candles in the snow bank. It was emotional, haunting and just plain sad. These flickering lights in the median must have startled drivers as they passed the dark intersection.

As I returned to the vigil, Lorissa’s mother arrived. She lit a candle. I asked her for an interview, but her daughter said she’d rather I speak to her. I got my ender sound bite from her talking about how incredible it was to have all these people come and honor her sister.

Community.

That’s what this story was really about I decided.  On the drive home I started to write some narrative in my head. I didn’t have much of a hard news story. That had already been reported anyway. I find video storytelling is so different than the type of print stories we do at newspapers. The “just the facts” journalism that feeds the daily beast rings hollow to me sometimes. Video, many times, lacks the hard facts, but plays instead to the emotion and humanity of a person or event. In this case Lorissa Green, age sixteen, died the day before in a tragic car crash.  She is gone. But it’s the friends and family she left behind that matter now. Connecting to their grief, their loss was, I think, why I came to this vigil on my day off. I wasn’t being paid to tell their story. I guess I just wanted to honor the memory of a young girl whose time on this earth ending tragically in an intersection median now covered with melted remnants of candles and fading flowers.

 

I’m feeling lucky

I’m feeling lucky. I still have a job. I’ve ditched the management title and have returned to the photo department as a still shooter. My video camera sits idle on a shelf—at least for now. The couple of years away from my still cameras have left me a bit rusty, but I coming around. Still photojournalism has always been my calling. It’s really what I’m best at.

The Spokesman-Review photo department has changed dramatically in the last eight years.  S-R shooters were rockin’ in the 1990’s. It was like the golden age of photojournalism at The Spokesman-Review. We did lots long-term documentary projects that were supported by an enlightened photo-friendly management. I worked with a group of really talented photographers that made coming to work (a least most days) worthwhile.  But even then, I knew the good times could not last forever.

The first round of layoffs hit in 2001, which started a downward spiral that still never seems to end. By 2003, I knew the space devoted to documentary photojournalism was never going to return. I turned to the web and with a video camera in hand and set out to reinvent myself as a videojournalist. I was thankful for the support I received from a new team of management who seemed hell-bent on making our newsroom web-centric. Back then, talk of innovation just scared the shit out of everyone in the newsroom. But as time passed, the idea that we were scooping ourselves by publishing to the web first had started to feel kind of ridiculous. The increase of broadband penetration in 2004 gave me hope for a future where my 320 pixel wide video stories would someday be able to be seen full screen.

In the last three years, I’ve put lot of energy into sharing what I have learned with other S-R staffers and journalists from all over the country.  I’ve made it a point to not guard my gift, but instead share what learned with anybody that wanted to learn web-based video storytelling.

This last year was going to be my crescendo of sorts. I was promoted to multimedia editor. I trained and outfitted 12 reporters, photographers and web producers with top-notch video cameras and MacBook Pros loaded with Final Cut.  A new Spokemsan.com website was conceived and developed with multimedia in mind.  Within days of launching this video/web initiative, the economic house of cards came tumbling down. Seven of the twelve young journalists I trained soon joined the legions of other out-of-work reporters, web producers and photographers. Two senior managers who pushed all this web innovation also resigned.

As a much smaller organization, I am not sure what the strategic vision for my newspaper is now. Losing half the newsroom staff to layoffs and buyouts changes things. No longer can we devote as much time to stories. I’ve seen this in the few short weeks I have been back in the photo department. We used to have the luxury of hanging out with our subjects or choosing the best time to shot a documentary style photo. Now it is run and gun, just get it done. Where we used to have 13 shooters, now we have 6. Three of us are multimedia willing and able. I am putting most of my chips on us to carry on the multimedia tradition. But I got to tell you, I not feeling very creative right now. With the recent layoffs, the spirit of innovation has left the building. Retrenching is the order of the day.

What I have to remember is that the work I did this past year was important. We truly were moving toward a multi-platform, multimedia centric newsroom. That is still the recipe I believe will save newspapers. What coming challenges the new year brings is anybody’s guess. Short-term, I have to stop staring at my unused video camera and get the hell out of the building. There are too many good stories out there that aren’t being told.

Layoffs hit The Spokesman-Review hard

It has been a trying week at my newspaper The Spokesman-Review. It didn’t start out that way. Last weekend, co-worker, Multimedia Producer Brian Immel and I drove down to Portland, Oregon to give a couple of presentations on multimedia storytelling and editing at the NPPA’s Flying Short Course. On the six-hour drive home, conversation turned to innovative ideas about how we could improve our new website that was just about to launch. As the sun set in my rearview mirror, Brian said to me, “Attending a conference like the Flying Short Course makes me appreciate our situation at The Spokesman Review even more.” That workshop glow didn’t last long. By Monday there were rumors and rumors of rumors regarding layoffs.

Like every newspaper in the country, the economic fundamentals are in freefall. On Wednesday, my editor Steve Smith gathered the entire newsroom together and read off the names of twenty-one of my co-workers, which including Brian Immel, to be laid off. Audible gasps could be heard with each name called. Then Smith promptly resigned. He said he simply had had enough.

Four to six managers are also going to get the axe in the next two weeks. Until someone tells me for sure, I could be one. By my best guesstamate, we will have lost roughly 35 percent of our total newsroom staff in the last twelve months. This is the forth round of layoffs in seven years. I have to wonder if it will ever stop. I am beginning to feel like that frog in the slowly heating pot. Will I get out before boiling myself to death?

I am trying to understand the economic reasons for continued layoffs within our industry. Blame happens. That is a constant. We are one of the only industries I know that believes it can get away with giving the customers less while at the same time charging them more for a diminished product. That model, my friends, is so broken.

Most newspapers are clamoring to change their newsrooms from a print centric model to a web centric workflow. In the past year, with support of a sizable capital budget, I trained and outfitted a dozen newsroom personal with video cameras, computers and audio recorders. All learned to edit video in Final Cut. A newsroom reorganization plan was just put in place. A brand new multimedia centric website was ready to launch this week. Then the layoffs hit. A sizable portion of those new reporter/video uber journalists ended up on the layoff list. Most were twenty-somethings who had little seniority.

Now faced with this new newsroom reality, I personally plan to refocus my creative energy on what I do best. Telling compelling stories for our readers and viewers of our website and newspaper. If needed, I will train the next wave of video journalists—god knows there will be lots of spare computers and video cameras available. Still, I just have to think of the lost opportunity of what could have been. I grieve the lost of these young co-workers who were not given the chance to make a full impact with their video storytelling skills or innovative ideas. Even sadder, many say they will never return to newspapers. The bitter pill of their short newspaper experience has left such a bad taste that most have rinsed and are mentally ready to move on.

Video: Quality vs. Quantity Debate Rages On

Over at Newsphotographer.com, Angela Grant has an excellent post about the “Value of enough time to shoot and edit.” She used one of my breaking news videos as an example of the quality vs. quantity debate. The good enough approach valued by online gurus like Howard Owens basically puts production time on a fast track for news video. Quality of storytelling, visuals, editing and camera gear, well, let’s just say it’s not high on Owens’s priority list.  In a way, this debate is beginning to sound a lot like the Canon vs. Nikon, or Mac vs. PC smack downs happening on Internet forums daily. Hey, I admit to jumping into these conversations with the best of them.

Still, this endless debate about quality vs. quantity makes me feel a bit punchy. Owens has spent the past several years pushing his rigid point of view that web video for newspapers doesn’t need to have high production or storytelling values. His mantra: Get video, and lots of it, up on your website is the shortest amount of time possible.  That has us folks who have photojournalist DNA running through our veins feelin’ a tad bit uncomfortable. Coming from said gene pool, I’ll defer to the fact that most photojournalists are a bit high on the quality horse. I don’t know many shooters who’d want to pick up their daily rag and see a bad photo they’ve taken staring back at them. The same can be said for video on their newspaper’s websites.

So, for now, we hurl points of view back and forth through blog posts and comment fields. For the most part, it’s really just wasted bandwidth. Nobody’s ever going to change Howard Owens’s mind. He has too much time invested in the theory to show that type of flexibility. Same can be said for the quality-first crowd that values their art more than news value. I think we should all just take a deep breath for a moment and ask yourselves a few questions:

• What is the overall vision for video in your newsroom?
• Why are you doing video in the first place?
• Is quality video valuable to your viewers?
• Has video gained traction on your website over time? If not, why?
• Has your paper invested in training that empowers your video producers to be able to tell and edit a story effectively?
• Do you have (need) a web-savvy management structure in place to filter out bad video ideas and is an advocate for video based storytelling?
• If you are producing lots of video, do you have a website that showcases this valued web-only content?
• Can viewers find your videos quickly if they land on a story page and not on the home page?
• Can lower levels of video quality be acceptable if they meet a high news value bar?
• Should small papers with dwindling resources really be adding poorly produced video to their already bleak shovelware websites?

If you can’t find a decent answer or solution to each of these questions, then maybe you shouldn’t be messing with video at this time. The newspaper industry has really changed in the last 24 months. Gone is the sense that everything is going to be OK in time. As newspapers finally begin to follow their readers to the web, I believe video is going to play an increasing role in how we keep them in our growing multi-platform family. TV news websites are beginning to kick sand in our faces. Live streaming video from breaking news scenes is the new rage. If we don’t respond soon, it might be too late to take ‘em on in earnest. So this discussion about quality vs. quantity is pretty small in the big picture scheme of things. What really matters now is that we embrace wholeheartedly in the idea that web video is a good thing for our websites and viewers. It is important to understand for video storytelling to gain viewership, it will need lots nourishment and encouragement in its infancy.

What if you had a website like this?

What if all your multimedia were instantly findable on your newspaper’s website? What if the video player on your site was built for speed, incorporating the latest Adobe Flash technology?  What if that player was large enough to showcase your video and had a full-screen mode that actually worked without stuttering? What if all your multimedia and stories had tags to help viewers narrow and refine their searches? What if your newspaper website didn’t have 300 links on the home page, but instead offered a better way to get to the content inside? What if, on a story page, you could instantly see how many photos, videos, audio clips and documents were associated with the story? What if all your stories and photos were geo-coded and you had the ability to build Google-style maps on the fly? What if you let viewers embed your videos into their blogs and websites knowing that the player will call back allowing you to track and count the clicks as your own?

Has a newspaper website like this ever been built? Why not? Anybody who produces multimedia for newspapers knows the dirty little secret of low viewership on video and audio slideshows. Could it be that most of these websites hide their multimedia content in a sea of story links? And when the link is discovered, it takes you to a crappy 320 pixels wide video player that doesn’t support full screen.  Is it any wonder why many viewers don’t bother with multimedia?

As newspapers transition to producing more multimedia, they need to address these shortcomings.  I have heard too many horror stories from dedicated online producers whose audience is severely limited by bad website content management systems. I should know. I’m one of them. In a month, all this will change with the debut of our ground up redesign. As the finishing touches on our new Spokesman.com website are applied, the usability roadblocks viewers face accessing multimedia will be removed for good.

Dog Days have me feeling verklempt

The dog days of summer have got me feeling a bit verklempt lately. Staring at this blank page for the last half hour has left me wondering if I have said all I’m going to say about my journey into multimedia storytelling. I know every blogger eventually hits that brick wall where words fail to flow and thoughts and actions turn to things more important, like spending time with family and friends.

Maybe my lack of blog ideas stem from all the uncertainty gripping my chosen profession. We’re all being asked to be more innovative. To reinvent, to change what and how we do our jobs. At the same time, the guillotine blade hangs precariously above our heads. Over 6000 journalists have been forced to leave the profession in the last year. I’m certain more will follow. Conglomerate journalism has left many newspapers in such dire financial straights that next year, I believe, we will begin to see the shuttering of some of these publications.

On the bright side, I work for one of the few family-run newspapers left in the country. Unlike the leveraged, debt-ridden gray ladies like the L.A. Times and Chicago Tribune, The Spokesman-Review is on solid financial ground. We are shrinking our footprint, staff, and expenses like most newspapers, but outright panic, thankfully, is nowhere in sight.

I have read so much industry news about the plight of newspapers, that none of it really makes much sense to me anymore. It has really just become a blame game, where fingers point in all directions. Where talk of would of, should of, could of, trail off into the abyss. This talk really doesn’t solve the problem at hand, which is how do we recapture all those former readers that have moved on with their lives? Some have headed into cyberspace, while others have given up reading all together.

The biggest challenge is finding a way for newspaper websites to generate enough income to offset the staggering losses facing traditional newspapers. I know there is an answer out there; it just hasn’t been discovered yet.  Newspapers are notorious for their lack of true innovation. It really hasn’t been part of their DNA –until now.

If we are going to make it through this digital news revolution, then we need to start fostering innovation at the grass-roots level. Innovation at newspapers tends to be top heavy, always looking to executive and senior managements to come up with new and better ways to do things. Trouble is, most of these ideas have failed to stem the tide. At my own paper, I am surrounded with incredible smart co-workers, many who have innovative ideas of their own. The challenge for management, if they are willing, is to tap this mindshare and see what it will spawn. If we are to succeed, we need to start acting like a startup business and less like, well, a newspaper.

Somewhere, in some newsroom, someone has already figured it out. A spark of an idea that will lead to the disruption of the status quo, It will make other innovators smack their craniums wishing they would have thought of something so simple, yet so industry changing. The Holy Grail that saves journalism is out there. I, and a lot of other people have a lot of innovative thinking to do. The clocks ticking folks…

Stand and fight!

As my restless vacation continues into its second week, my mind reels with the prospects of an uncertain future. Like most newspapers across the country, steep revenue declines are disrupting any semblance of job security for print journalists. Media companies seem to be in a race to tear down their brick and mortar operations and reinvent themselves as digitally delivered platforms. In my own newsroom, a large radio production studio has been built where hourly news broadcasts are being produced.

In September, our new modern website will debut. With it will come cutting edge tools for social media integration, an enhanced navigation that will break paradigms and a clean, airy, low-contrast design that will forever free us from our stodgy past.

The Spokesman-Review, like most newspapers, has begun to fully embrace change. The 700-pound gorilla on everyone’s back is the, “is it too late?” question.

Under the duress of a deepening recession, media companies are making rapid changes to their organizations. We are now in a war of transition, where the bodies of thousands of laid-off journalists line the road leading to their former newspaper’s digital future. The diminishing relevance of the print product, for some, relegated to the status of niche; weigh heavily on the minds of many.

At a Spokesman-Review newsroom staff meeting last week, my editor, Steve Smith, laid out the sobering facts of how far and fast our decline has been. There were lots of charts with graph arrows pointing toward the carpet. Smith’s voice, tinged with emotion, filtered through the room with a heavy cast of “this is it folks.” “I want to save everyone’s job, including my own,” said Smith.

He and everyone in the room understood that his statement comes with no guarantees. The truth is there will soon be less of us to carry on the battle. Unless. Unless we quickly build out our digital platforms in a way that they can begin to generate a potential for steady revenue growth.

For this to work, Smith says a lot of mindsets have to change. The focus on the print product will be diminished. Instead a web-centric approach will be strengthened. A new newsroom structure is being conceived, one that is vastly different from the one in place now.

For all of these changes to be successful, I believe innovation, a catch phrase of the new millennium, will have to become the new DNA that drives the reimagined newsroom. Creative ideas will need to be rewarded. Grassroots innovation is where, I believe, that one brilliant idea that saves us all will emerge.

For many in journalism, the future doesn’t seem too bright. It is hard to be innovative without having job security. Many of us wonder what our futures would be like if we cannot be storytellers anymore. To be relegated to some job as a PR flack or a wedding photographer dealing with the bridezillas of the world would be sad indeed.

Instead, how about we all stand and fight for the profession we’re passionate about? Our jobs are already hanging by a thread, so what have we got to lose? This is a unique time to be in journalism. Yes, it is changing, but now we all have a chance to shape what those changes will be. The focus now needs to be on the future, not on the past. Accept the changes that have already occurred and then find a better way to implement the changes the future holds. The failed strategies of the past need to fall away.

Yes, it is time to stand and fight. Fight for the journalism values ingrained to our core. Stand and fight for our role as watchdogs and muckrakers. Stand and fight to hold those in power accountable. Stand and fight against the tide of backlash–because new thinking is sometimes perceived as a threat to our comfort zone. The reality is there are no comfort zones left. From now on, it is survival of the fittest. Game on.

The message is clear: Change or perish

Black Monday seems to be striking American newspapers on a daily basis. With almost a thousand journalism jobs lost last week alone, there seems to be a concerted effort by everyone in the industry to reinvent the medium. While noble, it’s sad these changes didn’t take place sooner. But hey, we had a good gig going for the last 150-years, why mess with what works?

It’s strange how the people running newspapers have been talking about changing for most of my 20-year career. Yet, all they’ve really done in that time is tinker under the hood a bit. Now as the revenue crisis deepens by the day, publishers and editors around the country are willing to start listening to their content producers for fresh ideas. The reimagining of our industry, no longer a covenant of the suits, will probably be shaped by those of us who have the most to lose-reporters, photographers, editors and online producers.

Yesterday at my newspaper, The Spokesman-Review, we had our annual come to Jesus meeting. My editor, Steve Smith gave all of us the gloomy news: Revenues are way down, the cost of doing business is way up and cuts need to be made. Luckily, the layoff demon has been held at bay—at least until the next round of dismal revenue projections hit. Smith asked the newsroom to just do what we always do—produce good journalism. He also let the room know that we can’t do things the way we have in the past. I, and pretty much everyone in that deadly quiet meeting got the sense that we are now done talking about change. If we are going to protect our jobs, then we need to find a way to reinvent the newsroom on a completely different multi-platform model. No job, or job title is secure. The message is clear. Change is now baring down on The Spokesman–Review newsroom like a runaway logging truck without brakes.

A few days before the newsroom meeting, editor Smith quietly invited eight of our newest, young journalists into his office. He asked each of them, who basically have no stake in the processes of the past, to suggest ways to streamline the newsroom operation. He wants them to find a way to make it more efficient, thus letting people spend more time on developing quality journalism instead of just shoveling content.

The “Great Eight” as I call them, are meeting daily to share ideas and work up a plan. What they come up with is anybody’s guess. They have been given boundaries with which to operate. No suggestions to stop publishing the print newspaper, no downsizing or upsizing the present newsroom staff. Whatever they come up with, the challenge is for management and older co-workers to really listen to what they have to say. They are the future of our business. If we don’t change fast, they won’t stick around for the sinking of the ship.

Lesson learned: Buy the lens filter

Ya know how the sales person always tries to sell you a lens filter for your shiny new camera?  It usually involves some pitch about how one day you’ll be glad you paid the $20 bucks to protect that front element from all sorts of freak occurrences yet unnamed. Buying all my newspaper’s video equipment online, I guess I kind of missed that lecture.  So yes, I now regret not having a filter to protect my Sony Z1U lens.

At first, I thought the out of focus spots I was getting on my last few videos were from something on the lens. Under further examination with a magnifying glass, I found small pits in the front element. I’m not one to abuse my equipment. On the contrary, I’m obsessive when it comes to protecting it. How the hell did I get a dozen mini chunks taken out of my lens? After little detective work, I just had to groan when I figured it out. I’m pretty sure it happened during this video of an artist grinding on a metal sculpture of a gorilla. The shower of sparks captivated me. The low angle shot is when little bits of molten metal struck my lens. Damn.  I packed it up and sent it to Sony service this week. I feel naked with out it…