Bobbie Johnson’s recent attempt at being a one man film crew at the Consumer Electronics Show for the Guardian seems to have faltered a bit. Although a decent effort from what appears to be an adequate print journalist, the videos critically lack content, as well as a tripod.
Although an ambitious endeavor, Johnson sacrifices actually covering these events well for covering them in a plethora of media. I came away feeling like I didn’t know as much about the CES as I could have if he had just stuck to one medium and gotten things straight. I understand this was a choice, at least in part, from his news agency, and in a later blog he shows the BBC doing all of this well by sending an entire team of reporters. Unfortunately, Bobbie Johnson does not appear to be the next coming of Kevin Sites.
I believe that in the end, news agencies must realize that if they want the kind of coverage Johnson attempted, they will have to send out entire teams and spend a good deal of time editing. There’s too much quality lost in terms of content, production, and execution to sate the news consumer when multimedia news is attempted by just one person.
Bobbie Johnson said,
January 20, 2007 at 11:47 pm
Thanks for your criticisms, blunt as they are.
I opened up a public conversation about this specifically because I knew my *experiment* at CES had produced mixed results. I think if you bother to properly read the several posts I’ve written on this topic, you’ll understand it was about finding where the limits are.
In my book it is better to try, fail and learn than simply sitting off the field sniping. I realise that you’re studying me under your little microscope for class, but joining in the conversation would have been a more appropriate way than slinging mud from the sidelines. And when you’re not TV news – and, crucially, not TRYING to replicate TV news – there is still a lot of exploration to be done.
One of the good things about interactive media – as I’m sure you’ll discover – is that there are lots of two-way conversations, where there are real people at the other end of your comments. As a prospective journalist you might want to take that into account in the future, rather than simply complain.
PS The Guardian isn’t a news agency; it’s a national newspaper in Britain and has one of the most popular news websites in the world, winning the Webby award for best online newspaper two years running. We like to try things out here.
pigtown said,
January 26, 2007 at 4:16 am
Thanks for commenting. I really didn’t believe anyone would read this thing outisde of class. That being said, I’d like to make a couple of notes.
The first off is that your considerable work ethic pays off in that your work is being studied in a journalism class. Every J-student out there is trying to get a hold on this multimedia thing, and you’re out there making. it happen. Kudos.
The second point that I want to hammer home is that this project didn’t suffer from a lack of effort but a lack of man hours.
In regards to slinging mud from the sidelines, I just want to point out that this was actually an in class assignment to post it here. My professor sent the link to the entire class and asked us to post our thoughts.
Good luck with your further adventures in multimedia.
joyceman2k4 said,
January 26, 2007 at 8:49 pm
I wonder which blog Bobbie saw first? Because he seems fairly upset by your comments, which I found pretty tender. Do you wonder that?
Charles on… anything that comes along » Attack of the killer students (with blogs) said,
January 29, 2007 at 11:10 pm
[...] Pigtown: Although an ambitious endeavor, Johnson sacrifices actually covering these events well for [...]
kentdanderson said,
January 31, 2007 at 2:49 am
I wonder if Charles and BJ are friends. My guess is . . . absolutely.
Well, at least in this cozy little blogoshpere we all just stumbled into.