399. FedNet gathers latest multimedia news from Capitol Hill

When footage from Capitol Hill proceedings appear on local newscasts across the country and around the world, some of that video could very well be the work of The Federal Network, or FedNet. 

A business-to-business operation, FedNet provides material to news outlets in terms of video footage, but also nearly real-time text streams from press conferences and transcriptions that can be used to create a more thorough, detailed and extensive broadcast, says Michael Kerby, FedNet’s managing editor. 

“In the last few years, words were of just as much interest as people who wanted the video as well as the transcript business,” he says. “We started with video, but video’s just a medium.” 

Remember the Mueller Report? Some of FedNet’s transcription work is included in the document. 

It’s a service that’s also utilized by movie production companies interested in either archival footage or b-roll for features. 

FedNet first offered a searchable video database 15 years ago, where “within 10 minutes of the spoken word,” a video was published and available for anyone who needed it, Kirby says. During the 2012 State of the Union Address, “We provided the first broadcast strictly to mobile devices.”

But Kirby encourages people not to have the highest of hopes for a very exciting web experience if they go to FedNet’s home page. For that, users should dig a little deeper and check out FedNetNI.com, for the new intelligence. 

“We’re very excited about this,” he says. “These are live text feeds of press conferences every day. We’ve seen a lot of interest — we had not predicted this at all, but video people, as much as newspaper folk, have been using news intel because it’s live words that are beating the video, beating the broadcast. Someone might be monitoring for logging sound that they might want to quote (in order to cut the video for broadcast packages). That’s where the excitement is, I think, in our operation these days. FedNetNI.com is the place for live words. That’s cutting-edge stuff. That’s the frontier of news gathering.” 

It’s All Journalism host Michael O’Connell is joined this week by Michael Kirby, managing editor for the video and transcript production company FedNet, which provides news materials for outlets across the country and around the world in new and innovative ways. With FedNetNI.com, you can access live text feeds of press conference from Capitol Hill.