Based on what's going on at the Tallahassee Democrat, the push for more video across Gannett is gaining strength.
Two 90-second local news shows will launch next Monday, one at 8 a.m. and the other at 5 p.m., Executive Editor Bob Gabordi said in a blog post today about what he calls the paper's new Content Revolution: "Give us 90 seconds and we’ll tell you what you need to know without all the fluff and puff."
Meanwhile...
Just in case anyone wondered, Gabordi is, indeed, armed at home. "I promise if you entered my home illegally with the intent to do harm to my family," he wrote in an earlier blog post, "shooting is about the best outcome you can hope for."
Related: Tallahassee's weekday circulation is 32,206, and Sunday is 38,697, according to the Sept. 30 ABC report.
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| Gabordi |
Meanwhile...
Just in case anyone wondered, Gabordi is, indeed, armed at home. "I promise if you entered my home illegally with the intent to do harm to my family," he wrote in an earlier blog post, "shooting is about the best outcome you can hope for."
Related: Tallahassee's weekday circulation is 32,206, and Sunday is 38,697, according to the Sept. 30 ABC report.
I'd love to know where staffing for these videos is coming from -- and at what expense elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteThe Tallahassee press room is laughing at those inflated circulation numbers, Jim.
DeleteAnd no one is viewing those hideous iPhone videos.
If people want to see a video report from a local event down there, they go to wctv.tv, which BTW is not only professionally done, but FREE.
The lead story right now is a video of three guys making a pizza. A puff piece - literally and figuratively!
DeleteNo one is viewing this dreck, no matter how much Little Napoleon wants to crow about it.
Would you spend $40-60K on a j-skrewel education to learn how to make videos seen only by those you send a link to (your parents and brother?)
That is an advertisement, right?
DeleteNO.
DeleteIt was the LEAD online.
And to all those who think it couldn't be any worse,the video didn't even show a finished pizza!
The blind leading the incompetent/poorly trained at that hellhole.
I have tried to view a couple of these videos and the things don't ever start. The talent from the still appears to just be some writer type; not really video talent. I don't know about this whole thing. The set look like some crappy newsroom with the standard deferred maintenance problems. The drop ceiling looks crappy.
DeleteI still can't it to work. The most popular/ most commented thing doesn't work properly either. Do people just never post replies anymore or is that broken too?
DeleteIf we are going to be new age news distribution internet powerhouse , we need to get some tech that works. Clearly we got out of the journalism business.
Yep that's their ugly, oxymoronically-named "information center." The few kids left get paid to create the content, not make sure it works. You should see the comp. charts for pageviews - your jaw would hit the floor, and not in a good way.
DeleteAre they recording these segments using iPhones, or did Gannett let them invest in real video equipment?
ReplyDeleteSince nearly all the mediocre, cheap video equipment they bought back around 2005-6 is either broken or "lost", the answer should be obvious.
DeleteThis should be good.
ReplyDeleteChristalmighty, this is nothing new. The Wisconsin sites have been shooting video for years now. Not that they're worth watching, however.
ReplyDelete@Jim and 10:14: It's with the iPhones and existing staffers. No new staff or resources. "Every reporter with a phone should be doing a minute and a half of video every day." That's one of the key messages from a recent staff meeting at my site--which must double its overall video count this year based on corporate's directive. Meanwhile, $10K of real video equipment, bought in the first wave in 2005, is gathering dust, as are computers bought specifically for video editing. Most of the videos at my site are talking head type things (booooring) or voice over B roll. Some reporters are coming up with staged videos (like how-tos) in an effort to increase the number on the site and bring more traffic.
ReplyDeleteThen your staff should get together and tell corporate to STFU until they start stepping up to the plate and start giving them some raises and stop giving furloughs.
DeleteI've got 55 mbps speed at work and it takes 25 seconds for the initial load of any video on our website. By contrast, Yahoo video takes 5 seconds.
ReplyDeleteThis is the fundamental problem with us pushing toward video so hard with the infrastructure we now have in place.
Regardless of quality or production value or content, people are not going to spend time on site if they have to wait more than five seconds for something to load. At my superfast speed, I don't have the patience to watch our stuff on my lunch break - and I certainly don't have the patience at home where my DSL sees .5 Mbps or on my phone at 3 Mbps.
We need better servers and better software to push content to users quicker. Waiting for stupid content five seconds is one thing, but stupid content after waiting a minute? You'll be once and done with the users.
Amen to that. I don't have the speed needed at home to watch all these videos.
DeleteWhen Yahoo first started posting videos they had the same problem - the comments would overflow with people bitching about thinking there would be a story there and instead all they had was a video link.
DeleteNot that Yahoo users bitch anyway, but holy crap they would go to town.
Yahoo fixed it by somehow speeding up their load times AND placing text of the story below the link to load first - so you could get the gist of the story even while your dial-up struggled to start showing the vid.
We won't get a second chance from our audience.
Worst reporter video ever? 15 seconds of a hole in a bridge in Wisconsin. No audio, just traffic nats.
ReplyDeleteOh, there was a Post-Crescent video last week panning from one squad car to another at the site of a standoff.
DeleteIn the early days of the rush to video, there was a famous one in Cincinnati on how to make a sandwich.
DeleteAnother push for video? I read less than a year ago that it was deemed readers don't really click on video that much (unless you're on YouTube)? They much prefer photos and text. I remember very low numbers on click-throughs to videos when that first push came through 6 or 7 years ago.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget the Post-Crescent video of a reporter who slid off the road in a snowstorm. The videos at that site are embarrassing and juvenile.
ReplyDeleteI was part of the old video push, 6-7 years ago. In spite of producing the best work we could the videos did not get the traffic that a photo gallery of the same event would. It wasn't linear either. If the video had 100 views a 10 photo gallery might have 5000 page views. Also it takes much less time to produce a quality photo gallery. And it's not often mentioned but a photo gallery serves both the paper and website where a video only serves one master. Video for the sake of posting a video in my opinion is a step, again, in the wrong direction.
ReplyDeleteExactly, just like I've written on the blog a couple years ago. You get it.
DeleteObviously, you're not in charge of a Gannett rag.
For years I managed a network for a mid sized organization. In theory staff were expected to be working while, you know, they were being paid. Recreational surfing was frowned upon although we mostly turned a blind eye and gave people some space to do it unless the time -wasting or nature of the websites became egregious. However benign, video watching couldn't be tolerated, though, primarily because it was too disruptive to fellow workers to hear the audio, it chewed up too much shared bandwidth, and as an informational medium it took too long to watch. Sites like some newspapers and blogs like the HuffPo are going to find themselves blocked by workplaces if they rely too much on video. I've seen it happen in the real world.
ReplyDelete3:41 is right.
DeleteFor example, USA Today is producing more videos than ever. But too often, they consist of someone reading headlines or news briefs illustrated with file still photos or video. Here's a current example.
Unless a video includes exclusive content, there's no added value for readers. Why make them sit through watching a video when the content can be more easily, quickly and silently absorbed as text?
USAT has more resources than virtually every other Gannett paper. If it can't produce quality video, what chances do the smaller community dailies have?
Those jokers will have a hard time putting together 30 seconds of hard news. Look at those headlines. What a mess. Bubble gum news.
ReplyDeleteRelated circulation from Wikipedia
ReplyDeleteYear DCirc SCirc
2010 37746 47714
2009 41420 51148
2008 48298 59211
2007 49173 61438
2006 49355 62271
2005 49652 64546
Pretty sad state of affairs when newspaper executives feel compelled warn that they are armed! smh
ReplyDeleteHe is probably just trying to blend in with the natives down there. That is a college town, but all the University people I know there put the local paper on par with the college paper. I think it is just yokels and old people that read that thing now.
ReplyDeleteHe's not trying to blend in - Gabordi is just to the right of Genghis Khan; good journalist, person and family man, crappy manager of human beings. And as far as video goes, we just had about 20 Gannettoids at our newspaper for several days with heavy training on the new video initiative.
DeleteCrappy manager of human beings?
DeleteYou're being WAY too kind to Little Napoleon.
When we came back from our video advertising training in 2005, the price point for a month of ads was exactly what the labor cost was to produce them - and both were several times what a regular online ad package cost. The price was simply too high for our market to bear - and the reps refused to sell something that was largely ineffective.
ReplyDeleteWe're still using that same software and hardware, and we've now done six local ads... in eight years.
Those circ number declines look pretty nasty. How do those % declines compare to other Gannett properties? Is that pretty standard?
ReplyDelete