This post from Jack Lail's
Random Mumblings: A crew of one lead me to the blog of one
Michael Rosenblum, a man very well known in the television journalism parish. I interviewed Michael for
Press Gazette about five years ago when he was running one of his legendary 'bootcamps' for the BBC in Birmingham. In fact, I seem to recall borrowing the brilliant
'pencilguy' analogy that he recounts in his post today as my intro for the piece.
(Sadly, I don't still have that piece in my files. If any of the remaining
PG crew read this, maybe they could look it up in the archive as a favour for their old boss and send it to me so I can put it up here.)
Rosenblum is a firecracker of an individual from the seven-ideas-before-breakfast mould. He was putting the wind up broadcast (and journalism) unions last century with his then-revolutionary ideas for putting more power in the hands of the indiviudal television reporter and encouraging them to get out and shoot and edit their own stuff.
Now of course, his ideas have been adopted widely and are coming to a newspaper and magazine web site near you as we speak.
Interestingly, he notes that his current experience of training print journalists is very different from training their television counterparts.
"The irony, at least from my own perspective, is the comparison between news organizations that have traditionally worked in print and those that have traditionally worked in video - that is, local TV news stations. The magazines and newspapers have far less problem adapting to video; at least in the VJ model - that is where the reporter carries their own small camera and laptop, and produces their own stories. The magazines and newspapers ‘get it’ right away because this is they way they have always worked. Newspaper journalists have never worked with a crew. They have never had to wait in a reporting situation for ‘the pencil to arrive’."
It neatly echoes what Kurt Anderson was saying in New York magazine
the other day.
The journalists that emerged from those intensive BBC bootcamps did so with an almost cult-like zeal - it really did revolutionise the way they thought about covering some stories. If you're lucky enough for Rosenblum to be working for your publishing house, don't miss the chance to take part.
(Just one word of warning. Don't make the mistake of calling him a 'videojournalism guru'. I seem to remember him getting cross when I did, for some reason. I still think it's a good description.)
Labels: BBC, Michael Rosenblum, videojournalism
