Monthly Archives: July 2008

The Top Ten tips for newsaper video from the UK broadsheets

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Over the past few days I’ve been looking at the way that the broadsheet newspapers in the UK use video.  That meant The Times, The Telegraph, The FT and The Guardian all got a picking over.

Today, I wanted to look at what we can take away from what they do – good and bad. So based on what I’ve seen, here are my Top Eleven ( I know it said 10 in the headline but you can’t have an odd number Top list can you) observations and pointers:

  • Make video part or the article sell, not a related link.
  • Make sure the link from your video player to a related article is clear
  • Make sure any accompanying text in your player clearly cues your video
  • Embed your video in an article page
  • Make your video poster frames work as images
  • Make the embedded player as big as you can.
  • Keep pre-roll out of embedded video
  • Get some variety in your ads
  • Niche works
  • Formats kill variety
  • Feature formats kill long tail

Want to know why I think that?  Here’s my reasoning.

The FT and The Times cue video in the article thumbnail. The Telegraph and Guardian flag it as a link to the player.

The FT and The Times cue video in the article thumbnail. The Telegraph and Guardian flag it as a link to the player.

Make video part or the article sell, not a related link.
The way articles with video are presented on a page varies in the broadsheets. The Times and the FT add a little logo to the thumbnail for the article. The Guardian and the Telegraph add it as a related link with a little logo. I prefer the former.

We know that embedded video is and important tool and I may be more inclined to click on an article if it looks like there may be some juicy video. I’m not alone in that. The Telegraph obviously thought it was a good idea when they splashed the Anne Darwin story with video.

The problem I found with having a separate link is that it invariably takes you to the juke-box video player and that takes you out of the article context straight away.

Make sure the link from your video player to a related article is clear
Having a juke box style video section has some benefits for the casual video browser(and nosy lecturer reviewing video). But it isn’t the first stop for most people. They come via the story. So to present them with recommendations for other video rather than content related to the story they came for seems, well, dumb. It says ‘I know you’re interested in the whole Iraq thing and wanted to see our serious video but how about a video of a film with Thong in the title, or Lemony pudding?.’

If you are going to offer a player then you need to keep as much of the context as you can. That’s why you should…

Make sure any accompanying text in your player clearly cues your video
The idea that your video needs to work stand alone is one to consider when creating feature video. Script or a clear structure of actuality should set the story up.

But we know that short form video is best served as a clip; A snatch of interview or blurry CCTV taking its relevance and context from the content around it.

The problem is that without the article that content becomes just another talking head or blurry splodge. And that’s exactly what happens when the video is presented as part of player instead of the article. So if you remove the video from the context it fails.  That’s what the jukebox players do to your clip video. They strip out context. So you need to make sure that it’s put back in somehow.

Adding context: The way the Guardian add the headline in the player is a step in the right direction.

Adding context: The way the Guardian add the headline in the player is a step in the right direction.

A well written supporting caption is the easy pick-off. Better still take a leaf out of the Guardians book and build the page around the headline. Even if it is a subtitle over the video, that’s better than nothing.

That’s why it’s better to…

Embed your video in an article page
As new CMS’s and layouts come on board in the broadsheets its clear that they have ‘got it’ when it comes to embedding video on the page. This should be high on your list of things to get right. Getting mixed media on a page, when the story allows, is like adding nitrous to your news section.  Each element supports and builds the other.  But it also means that the content should work on a number of levels.

Make your video poster frames work as images

Make your embedded video work as an image.

Make your embedded video work as an image.

If you have an embedded video player on the page then it should display a meaningful poster frame (the image it shows until the user presses play). You should apply the same editorial consideration to selecting these images as you would a photograph. You should also avoid hiding them behind a mass of text and icons. That stops it working as an image and turns it in to a distracting, visually messy, page element (leave that to your ads).

And, of course, we all know that the bigger the picture the better, so…

Make the embedded player as big as you can.
Broadband and better delivery platforms mean that the days of postage stamp sized video is gone.  Most of the video that is being produced is high-quality stuff. Shot widescreen on hi-def kit. Some of it is even shot in studios. Show that off to best effect. Looking at the broadsheets, there is no reason why the video should be so restricted.

If your design limits that then change your design.

Keep pre-roll out of embedded video
For me a pre-roll ad in embedded video is like those banner ads that break up an article page after the first couple of pars. It’s the equivalent of sticking Starbucks iced coffee in the middle of your reporting. Don’t do it.

The industry is working hard at making ‘time spent’ on a page key metric in measuring user engagement and the quality of the use experience. So why risk putting people off with pre-roll ads. Leave them to your players.

But if you are going to include it in your player…

Get some variety in your ads
This is more a complaint than a tip. <rant> How crappy is it to play the same ad, from the same company, again and again and again? Here is what it says to me. We don’t care about the advertiser. For us it’s the equivalent of taking your advertising leaflets, promising we can deliver them and then dumping all of them in the local sewer.  It also says that we care even less about the about the number of people watching, who have to sit through it and may never come back. We got the money so what? </rant>

That’s better.

Niche works
For all the production flaws the Financial Times video worked fantastically well because they have a clear remit and understand the audience.  The Guardian is the same. Even though they are serving the broader news market, compared to the FT, they have defined the remit and looked to the audience. Their focus on liberal, world affairs coverage is a clear niche.

When that remit is not clearly defined, as with the Telegraph, or missing completely, as with the Times,  the results are messy. Even the Guardian starts to lose its shape when it moves away from its remit.  The result is a over reliance on formats to add definition and that’s a problem.

Formats kill variety
Instead of ignoring video when it doesn’t fit the remit most publications fall back on episodic , format based content; I know, they say, let’s have a weekly show about ‘x’. But formats create a number of problems.

Keeping a flow of content in to a format is hard enough. Keeping it within the format is even harder.  So we get format creep.  We get football corespondents filling half a video diary from a football tournament with motorized scooters.  Have a look at the definition of Jumping the Shark. Get it? That can happen in a very short space of time on the web.

Feature formats kill long tail
The other problem with formats is that they require a large amount of padding to maintain a conceit – presenters, title sequences, set-ups. All of which trap useful content.  To take advantage of search, tagging and the long tail the content needs to be accessible, stand-alone.  If I want video of an estate agent in Chelsea to illustrate the impact of the credit crunch I don’t want to have to sit through Cool in your code for 10 minutes to get it.

The episodic nature can also kill effective search and chunking as the archiving is driven by something other than the actual content. The push is for the latest episode. That takes some time and effort to manage.

Summing up.
So there you have it, wisdom from the Broadsheets. But what advice would I give them?

Based on those points here are my suggestions with an indicator of who is doing better than others.

  • Big-up their embedded video. (Good: Times, FT Bad: Guardian Telegraph)
  • Make video work harder as a page element.(Good:Guardian Bad: FT, Times, Telegraph)
  • Ensure their video player works as an image (Good: Guardian)
  • Put more context in their stand alone players. (Good(ish):Guardian Bad: FT, Times, Telegraph)
  • Know their audience and look for the niche in that audience. (Good: FT, Guardian. Getting better: Telegraph Bad: Times)
  • Avoid formats like the plague. (Good: FT Goodish:Guardian Bad:Telegraph, Times.)

When I started the round-up it was as much about kicking myself out of a bit of a blogging slump. But it’s clarified a number of things up for me and I hope you found it useful. In that vein I’m going to keep the pressure up on myself (sorry). So…

Starting Monday: The Tabloids.

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links for 2008-07-30

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How the Broadsheets use video : The Guardian

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Over the last few days I’ve been looking at how the UK broadsheets are using video. I’ve cast my eye over The Times, The Telegraph and the FT.com and now it’s Wednesday so it must be the Guardians turn for a review of their video efforts.

The Guardian Video Section

The Guardian Video Section

Platform
The Guardians has a clearly visible section for video and the page layout works well; all laid back and white spacey in the Guardians re-designed layout. Nice big pictures and inviting.

On the Homepage and section pages you’ll see a smattering of embedded players as well as the little video icon showcasing a small amount of the considerable range of content they have.  There does seem to be some issue with playback controls disappearing once you start playing.

When you get to a video, the player itself follows the standard format of main playback area and then a menu down the side. But unlike a lot of the other players around on newspaper sites, the player integrates with the page. The way the headline and second deck appear above the player is very nice.  It’s a much better implementation of Brightcove than the Telegraph

Nice to see the usual selection of social network links and I also like the rolling menu at the end of a clip – although the recommendations around videos tends to be a bit generic.

Presentation
The news video is a mix of Reuters and Press Association for the news video with the Guardian providing the majority of the feature based and exclusive stuff. It’s hard to tell with the bylines. They often credit the news agency but there seems to be a whole range of credits for the in-house stuff. It could be guardian.co.uk, staff and agencies, guardian films. None of which impacts on the viewer but it makes me wonder how the internal politics works here.

You get captions instead of VO

You get captions instead of VO

None of the news stuff from third parties (and the in-house short form stuff) has voice over. Instead they use pop-up captions so you can read it yourself. I’m, kind-of, liking this. I imagine it adds a reasonable amount of time to the process – rendering captions is time consuming. But if they have a system in place it’s probably shorter than recording a VO and you don’t have the delivery problems.

Of course it’s the feature and special report content where the Guardian gets in its stride.

The piece with Nzube Udezue relating his experience being held at gunpoint by the police,  is well put together and shows the benefit of conducting an interview to get the story, and the good quality audio,  and then doing location stuff as well.  It isn’t cheating you know. It’s just good practice in these narrative led packages.

Less successful is some of the lighter stuff. There is very little evidence of the kind of brand/theme stuff that defines the telegraph, (there is some legacy stuff – The Observer interviews thread for example was best left in the archives ). But there isn’t a unified approach in its place.

The Life &Style section piece on Manly make up offers nothing a before and after shot couldn’t and there is a lot of this style of video on the site. It’s not all bad though. There are some nice features, packaged well.

The Wine in a baby bottle piece was well put together and fun. Not that I necessarily think that packaged stuff is better I just think that some of the videos only work embeded with an article and shouldn’t be included in the player offering

Condensed milk plugs the video gap

Condensed milk plugs the video gap

I also want to mention the pudcast, Not because I think it’s any good. I mention it for the fact that the source for the clip was carnation.co.uk. Let’s hope that the Guardian doesn’t get too high horse about product placement. And that seems to be a common theme downfall of a lot of the ‘lighter’ stuff on the sight.

As I said before, there is very little brand/theme stuff on the site. When there is it tends to be hiding third party or poduct placement content. And that’s when the Guardian attempts something theme like that the quality filter occasionally slips.

Football Daily’s James Richardson and Barry Glendenning video from Euro2008 was pretty tedious. The segway vid in particular  was pointless. I never thought I would hear the Segway referred to a ‘bad boy’. Leave the brand and banter stuff to the podcats where it works.

Of course it’s what could be called the ‘world affairs’ content where they Guardian do their best work. They’ve have made no secret of their aim to focus a lot of their video work on world affairs – telling the stories that they think aren’t being told.  Guardian films really has got in to it’s stride as the new go-to commissioner for liberal, authored voice, VJ style doco.

Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa feature heavily and the process of pairing a Guardian/Observer journalist and VJ works well. It’s like having a Producer and Director/Camera working together. Of particular note is the work of Peter Beaumont and Antonio Olmos. Their Afghanistan: Other voices stuff for the Observer is first class.  It’s sometimes painfully poignant but sometimes painfully earnest.  But since when has that been a crime in documentary.

Slideshows

The Katine interactive Village

The Katine interactive Village

I couldn’t talk about the Guardian and not mention their slideshow and interactive work. High quality and interesting the range is nice. Shame they aren’t given their own section to play with. The Guardian Films produced Katine: Interactive village is a great example of what they can do.  A visit to the inpictures section of the site is a treasure trove of great images and soundlsides slideshows. Some of the navigation needs working out but It’s a shame this doesn’t have a menu link like video does.

Overall
The Guardian has a high opnion of itself when it comes to multimedia and I often feel that they have become a little more pious than they need. You could argue that, with Guardian Films, they are the London centric production/commisioning house that they rail against.  But you can’t argue with the evidence; even if you don’t like the tone.  But away from that excellent coverage are the Guardian offering anything different?

When it comes down to it, the answer is a (qualified) no.  But when it comes to the actual content the range is limited to third-party promos and agency content. Rather than variety it’ a mixed bag. But I say qualified because there is so much that they do right.

The Guardian has some great video chops. The way the player integrates in to the page and the way they subtitle rather than voice over are nice. I also like the indiscriminate way that video is presented on section pages – it’s content to use when appropriate.  There is no doubt that the way they present video and a lot of the video they present is first class. But If the Guardian wants to set the lines of video quality, it needs to do more.

If you are going to go the route of producing the high quality stuff and essentialy providing a filter to the rest ( the model discussed at the recent media summit), the filter needs to be a better quality one and less dogged by adverts.

So, thats the broadsheets. Tomorrow I’ll look at what we can learn, if anything, from the way the broadsheets use video.

And ,yes, I do know that I missed The Independent. More about that on Friday.

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Make your own bluescreen.

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I would normally stick this in my daily links but one of the comments made me smile and it’s cool, so I thought I would share.

Now you can present the weather in your own home

Now you can present the weather in your own home

Theodore Watson is running what sounds like a fantastic class called ‘The Make Class’. It’s about “making stuff! It is also about sharing the process!”. They make everything from Helicams to sex toys! Brilliant.

With all the talk about teaching innovation and creativity, this sounds like the kind of course I’d love to take.

Anyway, the project that caught my eye was the portable blue screen and he shares how on his blog and on Instructables

And the comment that made me laugh? Instrcutable member sciamannikoo offers an alternative.

1. take a second hand laptop
2. Install any MS system
3. Delete few system files (with Vista you don’t even need this step)
4. Enjoy your blue screen ;)

Thanks to FreshDV for the tip off

Why has the NCTJ changed its name?

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News reaches me through the feeds – that multistrand thism of knowledge – that the NCTJ are creating a new arm called the  ‘Journalism Qualifications Board’. For those outside the UK the NCTJ is the National council for the training of Journalists (newspaper).

The new board will bring together…

the NCTJ’s chief examiners for each of its journalism disciplines – newspaper journalism, public affairs, media law, shorthand, photography, sports journalism, sub-editing and video/online journalism.

It’s going to be led by ex Glasgow Evening Times editor Donald Martin who has big plans.

“I want this board to take a completely fresh look at the structure, content and assessment of journalism qualifications we offer to ensure they continue to meet the demands of modern newsrooms.

But in the absence of, say, anyone from the PTC or the BJTC it’s effectively still the NCTJ. So why the name change?

There is no doubt that many newspaper editors hold the NCTJ qualifications close to their hearts as a defining part of newspaper training. The NCTJ even describe themselves as “administering training to journalists, reporters and photographers for the UK newspaper industry”. So could it be that the NCTJ brand has become so ubiquitous with newspapers that they needed to re-brand to stay relevent .

Or could it simply be that the NCTJ are looking to ‘own’ journalism qualifications in the UK and this is their way of (not so subtly) parking their presses on the training lawn.

Of ocurse, as is my modus operandi this week, I will be reserving judgement. But I’d be interested in what others involved in J-schools here in the UK think.

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Will the ‘ledger live’ save newspaper video?

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There has been a mixed reaction to the unveiling of the Star-Ledger live video show - Ledger Live.

It’s a short presenter lead bulletin that aims to…

bring people into the newsroom each day for a quick take of the day’s top news, a dose of some good video stories, and a sampling of comments and contributions from viewers.

It’s one of the fruits of their relationship with Micheal Rosenblum who has been putting aside the usual ‘sky is falling in on old media’ posts on his blog to explain why this is a logical progression in empowering the newsroom.

The newsroom seems the logical place to report from. The web seems the logical place to do it. Video seems the logical medium. This is not a ’show’ with hair and teeth anchors. These are real Jersey reporters doing real reporting.

The general response seems to be positive and I have to say that the video reporting out of the SL is pretty snazzy. But the ledger live has picked up a number of doubters.

Don Day at lost Remote thought it was boring – “There are ways for print sites to get in the video game… but this isn’t it.” But the commenters didn’t pull any punches particularly for Jeff Jarvis’ praise for the TL’s efforts.  Cue lot’s of personality driven bun fighting. Man, everyone needs to move on from the not like TV news thing if they aren’t going to try and articulate what that is beyond crappy throwaways like ‘hair and teeth’, ‘cheesy’ or ‘lame’. Why? Because, well, they’re cheesy and lame.

My reaction

My first reaction is that we’ve seen this before. All credit to John and the team for all the hard work, but we’ve seen this before. The Timescast springs to mind first.  Now I happened to like the Timescast but this feels like a step back to me. And it’s not like there isn’t some pretty polished video out there to aspire to.

Shawn Smith takes 6 of those as examples that could work in a newsroom setting(great post). From his list WebbAlert seems to fit the bill

If your news org is mentioning a few stories in your daily video, this is the way to do it. Have someone deliver the stories fast, with a little commentary, and include images in your videos!!!

Some different styles but one thing that they all have in common is niche (well, two things. Niche and a good looking lady presenter to keep the boy geeks happy) and that niche isn’t geographical. It’s audience based.

What newsroom video bulletins should look like

What newsroom video bulletins should look like

As I found earlier with the FT, you can forgive some shaky presentation if the content is right. But broad appeal stuff delivered in a niche way?

So is it any good? Well despite my reservations I’m going to reserve final judgment for a while.. You see, I’m a bit conflicted about what’s good and bad about this approach.

  • Good – I like the Timescast so seeing it work here would be great.
  • Bad: It’s a model that doesn’t seem to tick the money box
  • Good: It’s live which is is a real shock tactic for breaking the newsroom out of a paper deadline focus production cycle
  • Bad: I think ‘live blogging’ is an example of a more valuable ‘appointment to view’ than video and the quality of interaction is better.
  • Good: It isn’t like TV
  • Bad: It’s just like TV

Give it chance to develop

But what does my opinion count for. We all know, and this is the sad thing, that this will only be judged a success by some if it can be monotised quickly. I hope that John has done some work persuading his bosses to look away from the stats for a few months to let it find its feet. Generating revenue is the holy grail of this stuff.

As Zac Echola points out in a great post, video (in comparison to a photograph) has an inbuilt capacity to earn

a photo in the paper (or online) doesn’t open up new opportunity for a new type of revenue stream (video ads).  If videos require more energy to view than a photo, they also command more attention, which is lucrative to advertisers.

But you have to have time to see the return and John deserves a little support as they try and work this stuff out.

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