Attacking and defending the VJ model

The moment you start talking about VJs, you’re bound to hear some people in the audience attack. It’s expected. There’s a threat to an old model here, and those who have made their career from that model now have a bag of questions and statements to put down the new tech. That’s what happened at the panel called “The New VJs: One-Man Bands or The Future of Newsgathering?” As soon as the floor was opened for questions, the attack of the reporters came: “VJ stories suck! The lighting sucks! They’re a joke! They can’t report!” Someone jumped up and yelled “Show us examples! Why won’t you show us examples.” So they did. And the audience liked the examples.

The floor at NAB is loaded with new technology. There’s more of it than I can remember. It’s also cheaper than ever before. So the panel called “The New VJs: One-Man Bands or The Future of Newsgathering?” comes at the right time. Because TV has always been about advances in technology – and now, for the first time, there is baffling resistance to it.

“TV hates change” I keep hearing. But this is not so. TV has changed and evolved since its founding. TV in 2007 is entirely different from TV in 1950. The stations have invested millions in new technology as it came along. They embraced the technology – anything that would give them an edge.

But now, as lightweight cameras and laptop editing enter the scene, it’s sniffed at.

The panel discussed this topic. Gary Brown, the news director of KGTV discussed his station’s evolution to the VJ model. Ditto Mike Sechrist, the GM of WKRN. Travis Fox, a video journalist from washingtonpost.com shared some amazing multimedia reports he put together singlehandedly. And Michael Rosenblum shared his own inimitable thoughts on videojournalism.

So why switch to the VJ model? Well, money is part of it, sure. “The local paper in San Diego said they were going to give the papers video cameras,” said Brown. “We said ‘if this happens, we’ve got an issue.’ So they Saw a competitive problem, and decided to compete.

“You’re looking at trends and revenue,” added Sechrist. “ In our market you can see things are going down. The evening time periods are off – some times 30%. The costs go up. It doesn’t take a business major to figure out that’s not a good thing. The internet intrigued me – and I wondered how to get more stuff there. Why anyone would buy an editing room is beyond me – and I was a traditional news guy. The laptops do everything.”

So about that criticism from the audience? Mostly fair questions. Joe Vazquez of KPIX-TV in San Francisco fully supported the model and wanted the quality question addressed. I asked him afterwards if he felt satisfied by the answers and he did feel he had a couple of takeaways. “I think we can do better journalism this way, but right now it’s clearly not the same quality,” Vazquez said. “But I liked the answer (about the video quality) ‘this is the worst it will be’ I agree the quality will get better.” Brown said ‘quality is in the eye of the beholder – are we looking at this from the eye of the viewer or our own?”

When challenged to show examples of VJ work, they did. We saw a charming story about a spelling bee. The report got laughs and a round of applause. It was done, in full, but a former full-on photog. Then for hard news, a reporter did a night ride-along with police doing a prostitution sweep. It was compelling because he took it past the standard “they busted 30 hookers” story and got personal with the women who were arrested with moving interviews. Now obviously they didn’t bring along lousy stories. But don’t traditional newsrooms do their share of lousy stories too? I have to tell you – the critics were pretty quiet after the demonstration.

The topic of this panel was “The New VJs: One-Man Bands or The Future of Newsgathering?” Moderator Chip Mahaney asked whether there is a difference between VJs and what we used to call “One-man-bands.” Rosenblum said absolutely yes, there is.

“A one-man band is that it’s a cheap way to try and imitate what the better stations in the market do,” said Rosenblum. “They drag around the giant cameras, the mic flags, the tripods and the wires. The results are terrible We wipe all that stuff out. We change the grammar – the way the thing looks. It’s the difference between the giant early still cameras and the small Leicas that came along. VJs don’t imitate what the giant cameras do — you’d be nuts to do that. It changes the approach to gathering.”

There were reporters in the audience who maintained that this is solely a budget cut play and that they quality suffers. They were not convinced, nor will they be. But the panelists will not be convinced they’re wrong either. What this – and the best panels at RTNDA@NAB are doing is producing great debate.