Feb 18 2008
Why video sucks
All right, here it is: the long-awaited diatribe over the use of video on newspaper websites.
Now, at first glance, it might seem cock-eyed to impugn the use of video. After all, it’s something that newspapers couldn’t do before. They had to leave the use of action-pictures to TV stations. Now they have a shiny new platform that lets them compete: websites. And if you CAN do something, you SHOULD do something, especially in the current experimental phase papers find themselves in with respect to the web, right?
No. That’s not a good argument for anything. Saying newspapers should do video because they can is like saying they should have nothing but opinion and editorial in their print product, because they can. It requires some analysis.
Keep in mind that I’m not saying video is bad, and that nobody should do video on websites. Video, especially embedded in Flash implementations that work really well, such as YouTube’s, has matured to the point where the old browser/platform incompatibility issues don’t matter any more. The old dial-up argument doesn’t matter anymore either, since the majority of us (in Canada at least) are in the fast lane.
Nor am I saying that every news organization shouldn’t do video. If you’re a TV station that has a website, or if you’re the CBC, and doing video for TV is part of your everyday thing: why not put video up online and get the most out of it that you can? Why not re-use that content, why not leverage what you’re good at?
Principle: leverage what you do best.
Nope, I’m talking about newspapers and their websites. I’m talking about the committing of resources by newspapers to something they have no particular expertise with, to something for which they don’t necessarily have experienced people, to something that will cost them money, in the hopes that it will do something useful for their websites.
If you don’t think it’s much expense or trouble – if, for example, you think “What’s so hard about getting the reporter to take a video camera with them when they go do a story?” – we need look no further than the recent labour strife at the Toronto Star, when reporters were huffing and puffing about extra duties imposed on them by the need to produce video in addition to their “normal” work. Or ask just about any Metroland editor or reporter what they think about video.
This is really all about leverage. A company can and should leverage what it does best, and expand those skills out into new businesses or new areas (or platforms). For example, newspapers can do exceedingly well on the net just by re-using the oodles of print content it produces for the print product. Newspapers know how to make written content. It’s what they do day in, day out, all day long. It costs next to nothing to take those same stories and features and opinions and briefs and put them on the website as spider food.
Video is not one of those talents that a newspaper can expect to leverage.
Maybe it would be worth doing if somehow it made the website better. But it doesn’t. It literally makes it worse. How? Because, as we’ve said before, if you’re committing resources to one thing, then you’re not committing them somewhere else. So you’re probably not taking care of your first order of business, which is to increase your traffic. Everything you do on your newspaper website should be done with an eye to increasing traffic.
Does video help with traffic? Not one bit. Search engines can’t read video, so they can’t help send traffic to your videos. They don’t know what’s in them. And if you think your regular customers are waiting anxiously for your next video to come out, think again: they’d rather poke their own eyes out with sticks than sit though your 10-minute video on karate at the local martial arts club, or a high school dance, or your interview with the local school trustee. That’s right, a sharp, painful stick right in the eyeball.
People would rather watch that on TV. It’s more comfortable.
And for the love of Christ, would people stop calling things like video and slideshows “interactive”. They’re equally as interactive as the big rock on your lawn.
To sum up: Video costs money, time and resources. These are things you don’t have a lot of as you figure out how to make the best of the website. Nobody wants to watch the silly amateur videos that you don’t know how to make because you don’t have the right people to make them. And they do nothing for your website traffic or its cool-factor. In fact, it has a negative influence because it takes away from basic things (traffic strategies) that you very much should be doing. And it could make your reporters all disgruntled.
Stop it!
7 Responses to “Why video sucks”
Leave a Reply
Additional comments powered by BackType
Now don’t get me wrong. One of my favourite pastimes, too, is to sit around and groan long and loud about what newspapers are doing wrong on their websites. And speaking of past, by the way, I say this somewhat tongue-in-cheek, because as users of the Internet go, I’m a bit past it at 41. Yes, video sucks when done by reporters who know that very few people will look at it and no one will read blogs written by staff who are told not to be too opinionated, etc. And in the absence of actually doing these things with young readers/users in mind, you might as well, as you say, chew on bark for shits and giggles. The answer is simple: provide a forum for the people who are doing this the best, a paper’s young readers/users (OhmiGod, did I actually say that? Can we really claim to have any readers/users under 40?) to upload blogs, videos, pics, the stuff that interests them. Bottom line: We are doing this cool stuff, video and such, for the wrong audience. If we shift our focus away from a video installment on RRSP’s for instance, and instead, develop a series on, say, when young people die or what their ideas are for fixing certain socials ills, we may have a future. After all, I don’t know about you, but I’m have an increasingly difficult time reading a lot of stuff online with my glasses
This isn’t even about what young people want or do not want. Old people don’t want to watch videos on RRSPs either. Not when they can watch better content on MoneyTV or whatever it might be.
This is about newspapers making a go of the web. It is a complete knee-jerk reaction to say, hey, look at how popular YouTube is, and then set about making videos, expecting Internet viewers to pile on. They won’t. They haven’t. And newspapers would be much better off spending their limited resources taking care of basics. Like traffic strategy, getting comments working (and other truly interactive things), but most of all, leveraging their talents.
I don’t disagree with you in principle. A traffic strategy, good search capability, comments and an online sales strategy are all important, to be sure. They’re the basics, as you say. What’s missing is a youth strategy, particularly for online products. I believe if newpapers want to make a go of the web, they’ve got to make it easy and fun for young people in their communities to connect, share and learn. This is where new revenue streams reside. Ask any parent and they’ll you this: their kids have more spending power than they do.
As long as your youth strategy doesn’t involve newspapers doing video, I’m with ya.
Yes, we have no video in this strategy, except for that which is generated by the users.
I was reading this and finding myself agreeing with much of it. Then I read this bit and realized we may be talking about two different things.
“They’d rather poke their own eyes out with sticks than sit though your 10-minute video on karate at the local martial arts club, or a high school dance, or your interview with the local school trustee. That’s right, a sharp, painful stick right in the eyeball.”
Even the most respected journalist or academic would have a hard time watching 10-minute video. Which is why most videos on newspaper Web sites are not 10 minutes long.
Effective video on a Newspaper site is 3-5 minutes long. Five minutes if it’s a really good piece. Your argument, I believe, falls under this caveat because I believe that newspapers are capable of producing 3-5 minutes of video to complement their print content, by telling a ’short and sweet’ video with an easily followed narrative. Photojournalism students across the U.S. — and Canada? — are learning how to shoot this kind of video because it’s in-demand at newspapers.
That’s the kind of video that is successful for newspapers.
And as for the SEO component, while it’s true that there is no one true video search engine for Web video, I believe it will come sooner rather than later. And when it does, you want to be able to jump right into it.
Also video presents a great opportunity for embeding, which links back to your site. Let local orgs embed video that you shoot, and have it link back to the site itself. Or set up a system where to be able to embed video, you’ve got to pay a small fee.
Bottom line: I agree with some of what you’re saying, but I believe newspapers can and should be producing its own video content.
Thanks Ben,
I was clearly hyperbolizing when I talked about 10-minute videos with school trustees. Sure, there’s a right and a wrong way to do web video.
But my argument is that a newspaper’s – maybe not a TV station’s, but a newspaper’s – resources would be better spent taking care of basics and doing things they already know how to do.
I know that newspapers are asking for people to do video, and j-schools are quite rightly responding to that by teaching it. But I’m challenging that demand. I think it’s bandwagon-jumping with no real thought given to the business model.
I agree with you about the embedding bit, very good. When I did the website for a community newspaper, that’s how we did it. We put our own videos on YouTube and embedded them back on our site, and invited citizens to do the same. Even though we had our own Flash tool and plenty of server space.
Cheers
Tim