• Podcast
  • Blog
  • FAQ
  • How to Podcast
  • Newsletter
  • Take a Survey

It's All Journalism

The broccoli of media-focused podcasts.

  • Podcast
  • Blog
  • FAQ
  • How to Podcast
  • Newsletter
  • Take a Survey

#296 — Cinematic video journalism shakes up old model of visual storytelling

March 8, 2018 by Amber Healy

 

The concept of video journalism is as old as the television broadcast, but it doesn’t need to be predictable or boring.

“It’s been through the ring,” says David Dunkley Gyimah, a video journalist who leads the Innovatory disLAB (UK) and is currently an Asper visiting professor of Journalism at the University of British Columbia.“Video journalism, as a label for whatever this thing is, has been around since the 1950s. It meant something else then. It surfaced again in the 1990s as a way of one person doing video … one person would grab a camera, go out, shoot, do the stand-up and sometimes come back and edit.”

David Dunkley Gyimah

The BBC itself adopted the one-person-band approach to video reporting in the early 2000s and newspapers soon followed, he said.

Reporters are still out there telling stories, finding and searching for the truth in their work, but Dunkley Dyimah compares it to the impressionist painters that came after realists.

“Impressionists came along and say ‘we’re going to do the truth, but this is our impression of it,’” he said. “That’s what happened. The idea of training people still within the (premise) of telling the truth, being honest, letting them tell their stories in a myriad of ways and styles changed. It became something akin to the package,” or the concise ways in which broadcast reporters produce and air their stories.

But therein lies a risk: Now there’s a generation or more of “marketeers and PR people” who can present information in visually the same style and cadence as a reporter’s package because they know and understand how this presentation works.

“The result of video journalism being absorbed into this mainstream idea of oh, it’s just TV journalism, it’s forced a number of people, including me, to look for new ways to define this thing,” he said.

They’re finding inspiration in cinematic elements – not of the big screen Hollywood variety, but of powerful, strong images as a way to grab viewers’ attention and bring the news in more meaningful ways.

Visual storyteller and cinematic journalism expert David Dunkley Gyimah joins producer Michael O’Connell to discuss how video journalism has changed, and stayed the same, since its inception in the 1950s. 

#290 — What’s it like to report from North Korea?

Share Button
If you like this post, please share it along:

Previous Post


#295 — Putting sports second, athletes first

Next Post

Richard Davies
#297 — Learning, relearning and unlearning the magic of broadcast

Leave a Reply Cancel reply




Related Posts

  • Jesse Holcomb is the associate director of research at the Pew Research Center. (Photo by Michael O'Connell)#159 – Local news in the rear view mirror
  • 391. America has a bad case of truth decay, according to new RAND report
  • Amy Webb#79 – Catch Amy Webb if you can, the technology consultant and author is charging forward with or without journalists
  • Daniel Ha is the executive officer and co-founder of Disqus, the commenting platform.#250 – Engaging readers while keeping out the nasty

Learn How To Podcast

Turn Up the Volume equips journalism students, professionals, and others interested in producing audio content with the know-how necessary to launch a podcast for the first time. It addresses the unique challenges beginner podcasters face in producing professional level audio for online distribution. Beginners can learn how to handle the technical and conceptual challenges of launching, editing, and posting a podcast.

Order this new book by It’s All Journalism Producer Michael O’Connell.

Take a Survey, Earn Some Swag

If you haven’t heard, we created a five-question online survey to help us assemble a toolbox for journalists that we’ll share on our podcast and website. Please take a few minutes to share the tools that help make your job easier.

We’ve also just launched a new survey on how to improve our podcast. Let us know how we could do better.

To those people who complete one of our the surveys, we’ll be sending out a limited number of It’s All Journalism coffee mugs while supplies last. Show your support for good journalism by taking the survey and get a reward in return.

Help Support Our Podcast

Promoting good journalism is essential in a democracy. By donating to the It’s All Journalism Patreon page, you will help ensure that we continue producing the weekly podcast that focuses on good journalism. You’ll also help to boost us to the next level with live events and exclusive content. Donate here.

Sign Up for Our Weekly Newsletter

Latest Posts

  • 444. How Documented uses WhatsApp to reach its audience
  • Better News: Use Slack to host cultural conversations in your newsroom
  • 443. Tucson newspaper proves to be a vital source for the Latinx community
  • Top 10 podcast episodes of 2020
  • 442. 2020 Lookback: America from Canada’s perspective

Copyright © 2021 · Pintercast Child Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in