My ex-boss Kurt Andersen does a nice piece in NYMag, writing about how newspapers have taken to putting video and videoblogs online, and may just become better at it than TV news outlets themselves. And he has some great lines in there: “Whereas the YouTube paradigm is amateurs doing interesting things with cameras, the newspapers’ Web videos are professional journalists operating like amateurs in the best old-fashioned sense.” Example David Carr’s Carpetbagger video blog on NYTimes.com.
“I can easily imagine newspapers’ Web-video portals becoming the TV-journalism destinations of choice for smart people—that is, in the 21st century, the dominant nineteenth-century journalistic institution, newspapers, might beat the dominant twentieth-century institution, TV, at the premium part of its own game.”
He also compares NYT and WaPo’s differing strategies on this. “At the Times, the strategy is to merge operations with the regular newsroom, and convert as many of its journalists as possible to part-time videography. But the Post and washingtonpost.com remain distinct entities—a sore point for some people on the Web side. The Times highlights its several fresh daily videos prominently on the home page; the Post hides them beneath a tiny, generic ‘Photos & Videos’ button”.
For a slightly more number-filled take on this, read our earlier post: “Online Newspapers Are Attracting More Local Ad Dollars With Streaming Video”