Last Updated: April 06, 2000
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A look at media
convergence
How much multimedia should students learn?
As newspaper newsrooms begin broadcasting news stories,
a debate emerges on whether to teach photographers how to shoot video,
as well
By Rod Sandeen
John Freeman remembers when Photoshop was becoming a standard tool in
newspaper newsrooms and the journalism school at the University of Florida
was wondering how much of the software to teach its students.
But photo editors told Freeman, associate professor and photojournalism
sequence coordinator, “You send us people who can take good pictures, capture
the moment, bring us back front-page photos, and we will teach them Photoshop.”
Freeman equated that memory with a nascent issue of today: Should journalism
schools teach videography to their photojournalism students?
The issue is bubbling up in newsrooms where traditional newspaper photographers
are expected to carry both still and video cameras. The mission: Shoot
stills for the newspaper and motion for the newspaper’s Web site and television
partner.
Photographers at the Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune are required to
shoot video, but Photo Editor Bill Speer isn’t looking to journalism schools
to supply his department. He is content to arrange on-the-job training.
“Video is a lot easier to learn than still photography because it’s
a lot less technically demanding … except that you have to pay attention
to sound,” he said.
Speer said still and video photographers approach assignments differently.
In his experience, “There is never one frame in all the video that encapsulates
the entire story.” Still photographers, he said, get one shot and everything
has to be in it.
“We’re both photographers, but that’s where the similarity ends,” he
said.
Photographers will have to learn video
Speer doesn’t require video skills as a condition for hiring. His 10
staff photographers were trained by a videographer from the Herald-Tribune’s
cable-based sister, SNN. The photo staff uses digital video cameras that
cost about $5,000 each.
Speer says videography is a skill that photographers will have to learn
as their newspapers add full-motion video to their Web sites and as they
partner with television and cable stations.
Besides, he said, “It can really be fun to do. It’s a nice change of
pace.”
If Speer hires a journalism graduate from Northwestern University, he
will get a multimedia-trained staffer. Most journalism students at the
Illinois school are learning to shoot video, said Richard Roth, associate
dean. “It fits into our philosophy that they all need to know how to do
on air and online.”
Roth said students in the newspaper and magazine sequences must take
a course called New Media Storytelling. In it, they learn to shoot video
for online news, he said.
Hard on the shoulders
Bill Phillips, photo editor at The Orlando Sentinel and an advisory
committee member for the University of Florida College of Journalism and
Communications, would prefer to hire a photographer with both still and
video capabilities. But he, like Speer, has found it easy to train his
19 photographers to use video equipment.
“My still photographers are so skilled in capturing the moment they
were easy to train,” he said. “The hardest part (for the photographers)
is carrying all the gear.”
Sentinel photographers provide video for their television partner, CFN-13,
a 24-hour news channel. A videographer from ChicagoLand TV (owned by the
Tribune, as is the Sentinel) and a Tribune trainer taught video to the
Orlando staff, Phillips said.
The trainer, Keith Hartenberger, manager of news and programming for
Tribune Regional Programming, teaches newspaper staffs about videography,
on-camera skills and video-content development. He noted that Orlando photographers
were shooting video before Tribune began coordinating video training at
its newspapers in 1998.
Hartenberger sees no immediate need for journalism schools to teach
their photojournalism students to shoot video. “Shooting video is just
shooting a series of still pictures. Still photographers have that skill,
so that translates very well,” he said.
But he said journalism schools should make their students aware of the
many ways to present the news. “It’s a multimedia world out there,” he
said. “If you’re just being prepared to write newspaper stories, you won’t
be prepared.”
Support is not universal
Mark Dolan, assistant professor of visual and interactive communication
at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications,
criticized the notion of adding video equipment to a photographer’s camera
bag.
“This is financially driven,” he said. “It has nothing to do with creativity
or photography.” Dolan likened it to working at a small newspaper where
a reporter takes photos as well as writes stories.
“Quality is going to wind up suffering,” he said.
Dolan said the Newhouse faculty has discussed dual training, and so
far has settled on providing the opportunity to those who want it. He noted
that broadcast majors devote a half-term to learning the fundamentals of
still photography before they pick up a video camera.
The University of Missouri encourages its photojournalism students to
take videography, according to Zoe Smith, associate professor and director
of the photojournalism sequence. She said that about three students out
of almost 100 in photojournalism are following that advice this year.
An obstacle, she said, is that accredited schools, such as Missouri,
limit the number of journalism courses that journalism majors can take
to 25 percent of their total course work.
Smith said a committee is looking into providing more online courses,
possibly creating a new major. She said the faculty also is trying to encourage
more cross-disciplinary education.
‘Magic moment’ dilemma
Mike Morris, program coordinator for photojournalism at the Western
Kentucky University School of Journalism and Broadcast, took a sabbatical
in 1998 and visited nearly 50 newspapers in the United States. At two of
the 50, he recalled, photographers used both still and video cameras.
Like Dolan, Morris wondered about quality. “If there’s one magic moment,
you can’t do both,” he said. “If it’s a county fair, maybe you can do both.”
Lou Toman also worries about that. Toman, senior staff photographer
for the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., took it upon himself to
learn video for the newspaper’s Web site and its partner television station,
Channel 4 in Miami.
Toman said he and a fellow photographer enrolled in the National Press
Photographers Association’s 1999 Platypus Workshop, a two-week program
designed to teach print photographers video techniques.
Toman, a photographer at the Sun-Sentinel for 43 years, said he routinely
covers assignments with still and video cameras. “It can be done, but it’s
not the right way to do it,” he said. It’s a challenge to approach assignments
looking simultaneously for the best still picture and the best video, he
said, adding, “The right way is two photographers.”
Toman remembered when he covered an airplane coming in for a crash landing.
Today he worries about how he would handle that assignment. While the “still
picture is the priority,” he would want to get the scene on video, too.
“It’s demanding, but I like it,” he said.
Today, at the University of Florida, photojournalism students learn
Photoshop and use it routinely. “No more chemicals,” associate professor
Freeman said.
Time will tell whether videography gains the same acceptance at Florida,
or at the many other schools that teach photojournalism.
Sandeen is vice president/administration of The Freedom Forum, Arlington,
Va.
