Changes Coming for TV News?

Stations in Nashville and San Francisco will train their anchors and reporters to use smaller hand-held cameras and laptop editing equipment in an effort to "maximize each station's news gathering capacity to achieve a higher news story count."

All News Staff to Film Video [United Press International] (I take no responsibility for the incorrect use of the word "film" here.)

Television stations WRKN-TV in Nashville and KRON-TV in San Francisco will give news department staff hand-held video cameras to gather news.

The goal of the "video journalist" model is to maximize each station's news gathering capacity to achieve a higher news story count by giving reporters, editors and photographers and some anchors the ability to gather video for stories and edit the stories.

Staff at WKRN-TV will begin an intensive eight-week training session with Michael Rosenblum, a leading expert on video journalism.

"Today's newsrooms despite all the technological changes that have occurred in our business are still running essentially the same way they did when broadcast news began in the 1950s," said Michael Sechrist, president and general manager of WKRN-TV.

"Using smaller cameras and laptop editing allows us to make long overdue and exciting changes to the way news looks and is covered."

The KRON-TV news team will begin training with Rosenblum later this year.

Sounds like the corporatespeak run-up to another "we need to do more with less" speech. Still, it could result in "news" being delivered in a different way. Glad we have a Powerbook that handles digital video editing via firewire.