Monthly Archives: August 2008

How the regional papers use video: The Yorkshire Evening Post

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For the next in my series reviewing the way the UK regional press use video I’m going to take a look at The Yorkshire Evening Post owned by Johnston Press

Before I get in to the review I should disclose an interest. I provide training for JP journalists and photographers in the use of their video kit. It’s a two day course that introduces the camera (a sony a1e) and Avid Express software as well as shooting and editing tips. So as well as an interest you could also say I have take some responsibility for the content as well. eek!

The platform

The YEP has a number or routes to video

The YEP has a number or routes to video

The Yorkshire post site follows the same centrally designed template that all the JP papers do. I’m not really a fan as I think it is too cramped by generic content and ads. Too much sales and not enough content. But I guess I’m not reviewing the design.

Video is available through a link in the main navigation through a link in a block further down the page. The Yorkshire post also has a number of themed video strands – The Sin Bin, The Boot Room and The Pavilion linked from the main menu and small image ads but more on them later.

Clicking the video link takes you to a menu page. No player here, just thumbnails to the stories as all the video on the YEP site is ‘embedded’ with an article. But the page has clear headlines and some neat descriptions as well as the odd thumbnail. Generally I would have mixed feelings about not being able to view the video here as well as in an article. When you get to an article page there are plenty of links to other stories; a bonus of using the article part of a cms to serve the video link. But in this case I think it’s a mistake.

The main reason for this is that the video page doesn’t seem to have an archive of any description. Go to /audio-and-video and you get a fuller set with a paged archive but it seems a lottery if it turns up or not following video links. That’s a real shame as the standard page only gives you ten or so videos to work with and if you are looking for a particular video, a good repository here would be better than wading through the search for the article that it appeared on.

A lot of this, I’m guessing, comes down to the way that JP serves it’s video.

You have to work for your video

You have to work for your video

Go to an article page and you’ll see that video isn’t actually embedded. You have to press the green play button and a pop-up window appears with the video in a window. This is generally WMV format video – which meant intermittent reception on my mac. I think the delivery platform is something that JP are going to have to bite the bullet on and change in their CMS if they want to properly integrate multimedia content in to their sites.

The Presentation
The content falls in to two clear forms of presentation – video and slideshows. But both are served through the video player as video clips. So in this case slideshow is probably more descriptive of the style rather than the delivery.

The slideshow quality is pretty good but suffers from the lack of context caused by the problems with the external player. Take the VW Camper story as an example. Nice pics and groovy music but where is the context. No graphic to set it up or captions. If the story had been embedded then it would make much more sense. The same follows for pretty much all of the slideshow content.  If it’s going to be seperate then it needs a hell of lot more context. Location sound would help. How about some interview sound or sync sound of the sermon over the pictures of Don Fox’s funeral?

The video sufferes the same problem. The stuff is generally well shot and well put together but a lot of it lacks context. The recent post office closure protest video would keys well in to the article but the lack of VO or set up means it doesnt stand alone and in the seperate player, I think it has to.

The Pavillion - One of the YEP's sports shows

The Pavilion - One of the YEP's sports strands

Away from the general video and slideshow content is the YEP’s themed content that I mentioned earlier. The paper has put together three exclusively sports based strands. The Boot room for Football, The Sin Bin for rugby and The Pavilion for Cricket.

These take the form of double-header talking heads between a journalists , one of them usually the senior writer for the sport, sitting at a desk in front of a greenscreened background. The technical duties for this, I happen to know, are handled by the Visual Communicator and though sound can be a bit rough at times and a tighter shot would work better for me, the quality is consistent. Presentation wise things can get a bit stilted. Once they find their stride the shows are pretty entertaining but they are too long.

The shows also have the offer of some interactivity and they’re sponsored which I imagine ticks a lot of boxes. Perhaps the addition of some onscreen graphics highlighting the fixture or match they are talking about and the punter they are answering would break up the presentation a little. Oh, and a nicer table.

One other themed video that’s worth a mention is their Haunted Leeds feature which is a hokey bit of fun. This is a sponsored effort and takes the Most Haunted format and makes it a bit web2.0. Not directly video produced by them but, although it does have one of the ghost hunting locations at the Newspaper offices. If nothing else, I thought the thing was worth a mention for the only user submitted video. Nothing to see? No really.

Overall

That may seem a bit of a cursory overview of the video on the site. But to be honest the quality and range of the video is pretty good. Yes, the increased reliance on the slideshow format on the YEP site means that any talk of video has to be done in a kind of inverted commas. It’s not video but it is, if you know what I mean. For me that’s not a problem it’s semantic.

There is obviously room for development. Their slideshows need to break out of the music and pictures formula and get a littl more editorial and narrative drive if they are going to be locked in the linear delivery of the video player. Otherwise they need to allow flash embedding or somehing equally as interactive in control.

Maybe the slideshow approach is more here interesting not for it’s content but for the way it illustrates a clear editorial shift away from ‘traditional’ video to something more ‘managable’.  It feels like the way someone like the Croydon Advertiser has approached thing, excpet a bit in reverse. Wheilst they started with slideshows and slowley integrated video. It seems that the YEP ar going the other way. That’s not a negative assesment. It shows that things will find a level that the newsroom is comfortable with.

Away from the quality I think the real issue is  the way the content is presented generally.

What really causes problems for me on this site is the way the ‘video’ is served. Having no embedable player system essentially cripples the video on the site. Where other papers have the capacity to archive video in a section and, though many chose not to, link and embed it in article pages, the YEP can do neither. The video exists in a no-mans land to be summoned by a benevolent user who will click, hopefully not have blocked pop-up pages and has the right mix of media player and codecs on hand.

Both the video and slideshow stuff is becoming more illustrative and the seperate player robs it of valuable context. But rather than spend a huge amount of time trying to shift a lot of the context in to the videos, (although they need some) they need to address the delivery.

There is some good stuff here that could really lift an article page, yet the player makes it so near and yet, so far.

The Parrot theory

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In any line of work there are rites of passage. Sometimes it’s the trial you have to go through to be excepted by your peers – like being sent out for tartan paint or a left handed hammer. Other times its the jobs that just make you groan. ‘not again’.

In journalism its the stories that crop up that can mysteriously clear a newsroom leaving a rabbit-eyed intern right in the firing line. The prime suspect for that ‘groaner’ is usually a vox-pop (for snappers it’s the big cheque picture) but in online I’m sure that it’s the parrot story.

Now I haven’t done any empirical studies on this. I base this purely on a rough bit of googling. But the thought came to me when I watched the Croydon Advertisers video on Frisco the talking parrot.

What a great little video. A nice treatment of a traditionally duff story.

So remember it may be parrots catching burglers, prediciting earthquakes or even revealing affairs but one day you will be sent on a parrot story. Are you prepared?

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How the regional papers use video: Not The Leicester Mercury

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When I said that my list of regional that I picked for a review of their video was unscientific I suppose the next choice on the list proves it. Going off a mix of circulation figures and a balance of owners has, I think, worked well so far…so far.

Then we get to the Leicester Mercury and, of course, it has no video. None. Nada. Some picture galleries, and my what a fine looking bunch of people the folks of Leicester are. But no video. I suppose a smarter person would have checked.

The other thing I noticed about the site is it is still running under the old ‘This is’ design and the Leicester Mercury’s owners, Northcliffe, have rolled out a new design. First to get it was the Hull Daily Mail and their This is Hull and East Riding site. So I thought I would look that one over instead. (did I get away with that …no…oh, well.)

The platform

Video gets pride of place on the front (and other) page. A space normally left to ad's

Video gets pride of place on the front (and other) page. A space normally left to ad

When the site loads the first thing you see is a nice big video player sitting high on the page in some pretty valuable screen real estate which it hogs for pretty much every page. It stands out against the fairly week visual line at the top of the page. All this curvy edges look nice but, for me, they seem to delay the start of the content.

It’s good to see the player but I think some for of headline to tell you what they video was could be integrated in to the design as the thumbnails are sometimes less than illuminating. You can get through the main video content via this player or via the video link in the main navigation.

The main video section is the familiar grid jukebox style with a number of separate sections and recommended video panels. It’s nice to see a range of embedded and link options as well as the option to have the video sent to your mobile – a nice touch.

The video index has a nice feel

The video index has a nice feel

The player is a nice bold and clean design with a clear headline and a text area for a lead paragraph. In common with one or two other sites this is underused. If video is going to stand alone it needs a lot more than just one line and a date to key a user in the story, even with a voice over. Even when it’s a bulletin it can be used. Looking at the Belfast Telegraph yesterday this I noticed that this is used to list the stories. The same thing could be done here. It’s space wasted.

You’ll see very little evidence of embedding content on the site – no links back to articles is the obvious one – but it is there. When you stumble across some it’s okay but the player is a bit small and given the range of content they could make more of it.

The presentation

The page leads with a bulletin and it’s not just any bulletin. It’s the funky news. In the latest one the music bed just runs and runs under this. I found it intrusive and unnecessary. It’s an attempt to speed things up and, yes, music does help pace. But the addition of some whip pan transitions show an attempt the sex up something that should be short and sweet. When they are short and sweet (and the music is better balanced) they work as well as bulletins can. Just some quality control on the production.

But the bulletin isn’t written in stone. When the local team went in to the football premiership the bulletin came out in team colours with one headline and some nice location video taken on mobile phones a nice way to add some personality.

Moving away from the bulletin stuff and you have a load of different styles to chose from handily arranged in sections. Two sections that caught my eye where the Your video and Caught on camera.

Your video is a user submitted part of the site where, once again, I think some issues of copyright might come back and bite one day. But more interesting is the Caught on Camera feature.

Caught on Camera takes video and stills from CCTV and does a kind so crimewatch round up of them. The approach in one video is so overblown it made me laugh out loud but I think there is a germ of a nice idea there. CCTV is a popular ‘short tail’ on sites and whilst I don’t think it will stretch the tail much the idea that kind of appeals to my ‘lets give it a try’ side. So it’s a shame that it isn’t worked through and developed: another episode is cctv footage a badly recorded VO.

Caught on Camera is one of a limited number of ‘themed’ bits of video on the site – the first I’ve seen in a regional so far. Another is an embryonic version of out on the town style feature called Hullvibe. Think of it as a mix of youth magazine and snaps/video of local club goers. This is now a fully fledged facebook/forum/myspace style thing with its own site which looks very snazzy.  I suppose you could also count the motoring section video in that vein. But I have to say I found them over long and at times a bit dull. Sorry

Much better are the serial efforts of the site like the talent show strand which can have a really great tie in to the paper. Best of all though is the coverage of the Clipper race earlier in the year with lashings of video – via a sponsored source. Another nice tie in to the paper.

Most of the content is general packaged news/feature stuff with the usual mix of interview, voice over and GV’s and the production values are, on the whole, pretty good, though the editing often lets it down. Take the Wags boutique piece – an almost criminal bit of puffery but pacey but well put together – was let down by the lack of control over the incidental music. It should have come right down over the interview. It also snatched the end of the VO off. But the speeded up montage and the modeling was neat. A nice package. Someone has really got the hang of that style of piece. The ladies day package followed the same vein and though the vox went on a bit it was another nice job. And now I know what a hatinator is!

Some of the footage is less successful. Much of it is packaged when it doesn’t need to be. The interview with Sir Michael Pitt was neither one thing or another and would have been better served as tight clips embedded in a story. The ‘standing ovation footage from the Hull City fans at Blackburn Rovers didn’t need the VO wrapping.

Conclusion
Looking at the site in the round I have an issue with problem with the bulletins on the site. Production wise they are okay and occasionally show some real colour but they are a bit ‘stuck in a rut’. Where some have used bulletins to prime a newsroom and then opened the floor to all journos and punters, This is Hull seems to have stalled. Yes, they are flashy and I’m sure they knock them out at a wicked pace but there is a next step.

Looking at the recent output you could be forgiven for thinking that they won’t make that step. That seems to be the major output but to see an over reliance on the bulletin content and damn them for it would only be half the story.

Once you get past the bulletins and recent glut of Hull City FC (yes, they are great, can we move on please) there is a nice mix of generally well made and entertaining packages. Ok the editing may be a bit rough round the edges and mobile phone footage may rub shoulders with more polished footage but it is more dynamic for that. It often gets a good local tie in as well. I liked the odd flash of fun like the collection of Hull fans singing Old Faithful.

But I think that a bit more emphasis on the embedded content in pages would open up the range and maximise the opportunities to develop articles. The video on the Hull and East riding site gives me the impression not of video being ignored – there is too much range and content for that. No it’s more like video in a bit of a holding pattern away from the main site. When it does fly in, like the wags boutique piece, it works well and helps generate a huge amount of comment – worth a read in themselves – and I’m wondering how much video helped stoke the input there.

But I hope they don’t stay still. Like the Express and Star there is a lot of video on This is Hull and the sheer range alone is something to be congratulated. With all that commitment and talent its a shame it doesn’t leak through to the rest of the paper where it can have chance to be challenged and grow.

On a side note I may have searched harder for the embedded video but, to tell the truth,  the search facility on the site is nigh on useless. When I search Hull’s website I don’t want the first result to be from Devon! I think there is a bit of work to do on your ‘hyperlocal’ geo-journalism tagging there folks.

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links for 2008-08-26

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How the regional papers use video: The Belfast Telegraph

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I’m back from my holidays refreshed (and a little fatter) so its time to restart my review of  the way regional newspapers use video . You may remember that I started with a rather arbitrary list of papers to look at which started with the Express&Star and then the Liverpool Echo and the Manchester Evening News.

Next on the list is the Belfast Telegraph
The Belfast Telegraph is owned by the Independent News and media group who publish the UK daily broadsheet The Independent (which I looked at before). It’ picked up a number of awards over the last few years and continues to be one of the top performers in the evening newspaper circulation listings (the reason it’s on the list)

It started publishing video in 2007 with a much trumpeted introduction of video news bulletins. I had a bit to say about that at the time and my views prompted a nice response from the Deputy Editor Paul Connolly.  who outlined where they wanted to go with the video stuff beyond the video bulletins

The news bulletin is just a tiny part of our multimedia approach, don’t be fixated with it. We are forging ahead with our video and audio journalism and a range of other measures. First, we need to train our staff … then you’ll see the results.

So I was eager to see how far they had come.

The platform
The Belfast Telegraph brands its video as Telegraph TV and there is a Belfast Telegraph Television link on the main navigation. But try as I might I couldn’t see anything else on the page that flagged the video content – no links or other navigation.  So I clicked through, via the BTTV link, to their video player page.

The Belfast Telegraph Video page - its all the same!

The Belfast Telegraph Video page - its all the same!

The player follows the thumbnail jukebox style, split in to tabbed categories, with an embedded flash player delivering the video. There where a lot of videos here but I’m sure there are more and I missed some kind of archive access. Unless that really is it!

The player is a nice size although the poster-frame often doesn’t display leaving a faceless black box. Luckily the display of the video headline and intro paragraph is clear and neat with a nice big headline to identify the story and plenty of space for text. This space is very rarely used well though. I’d like to see more text alongside the video to set the scene. But despite some nice layout the whole effect is let down by the way the thumbnails are displayed.

The first category you see is the BTTV news section, exclusively made up of bulletin style content. With Three bulletins a day there is a lot of content but it all has the the same thumbnail.  It’s a thumbnail wall registering almost zero on usability. Dull. Even if the thumbnail was the same then a date wouldn’t go a miss. It’s a daily newspaper!

Looking at the special reports section everything begins to look a lot more exciting in terms of layout but the news section really needs work if its the first block you see.

Links to articles? No. But there are some links to other videos

Links to articles? No. But there are some links to other videos

The player does suffer the usual problem of a shortage of links through to related articles. There are some, including links to multipart videos like the What type of society do our children want? video which was split in to two. Others pointed to other content, like The Omagh fire: Murder hunt launched piece, but I couldn’t get any of these links to work.

There is embedded video on the site within articles but it’s usually Youtube – couldn’t find others. The article about ‘Adorable’ Derry teenager Eoghan Quigg and his appearance on X factor takes a youtube video showing an off-air recording of his audition. Once again you have to question how long this can go on considering the crackdown on copyright material.

The presentation
The Belfast Telegraph video can be considered in two halves. The main thrust of content is geared towards its bulletin which follows a very traditional news bulletin style. Produced by Macmillan Media, this is a very, very slick virtual newsroom style piece, presenter lead with video inserts. By all accounts the inserts and the studio work is all done by Macmillan and the fact that they also produce news inserts for GMTV it’s clearly visible in the style and approach.  The content is technically very well produced but the whole thing is TV with a capital, well, TV.

It's TV news time folks

It's TV news time

The three bulletin (four on a weekend) approach kind of makes sense. The evening and morning bulletins key in to the papers publication cycle (there is an AM version of the paper) and the lunch one grabs the lunchtime browsers. But the reality is there is very little to tie these bulletins to the paper.

There is a brief bit of scripted ‘in todays paper’ but it tends to be very generic or promos for  the papers evening sections; jobs, business etc.  Thankfully TV doesn’t stretch to anything other than promos. Ad’s are few and far between bar the odd short pre-roll ad and a sting for the Magners league before the sport.

The other rest of the site video falls in to the packaged feature category. Whether it’s sport, special reports or business, you can expect a nice vo, lots of b-roll and interview. Outside of the bulletins the major offering is in Special Reports. Rather than investigative stuff this is generally light feature based stuff. The only exception to that (that I could see) was Lindsey Armstrong’s Omagh piece, mentioned earlier. A solid package, confidently put together.

The packages can sometimes be too long and would stand an edit here and there.  The Belfast bus tour was a case in point.  The script sets up ‘chatting to those who are taking the tour and then goes in to a prolonged montage of the tour. We have to wait nearly 4 minutes before we get the punters which is then a bit drawn out.  The result is that all the best general shots have been used in the montage and Gary has top resort to dipping to black or the odd very shakey GV.

It does serve as a good example of the mechanics (and pitfalls) of vox-pops though. Check out Bill and Nancy Gaunt at about 4:45 in. The first part of that is just misunderstanding it should have been cut out. Vox-pops should be quick and flow, one in to the other – quote, quote, quote and out. The rest of the package has done the set-up.

But credit has to go to Gary Grattan  for producing a nice range of content. Gary is good on camera and puts together some nice stuff. Tighter packages would push the personality to the front. Take the Big Wheel Experience package as an example. A nice idea – Gary suffers from vertigo so stick him on a giant ferris wheel and film the result. (You need better office mates Gary!) – but a ponderous execution. Twice as long as it needed to be and the whole interview with the wheel guy was another package.

Vertigo video: You have some cruel office mates Gary.

Vertigo video: You have some cruel office mates Gary.

Some of the filming on the wheel piece Martin Nelson  whose work pops up a lot more in the sports section. In fact a large chunk of the Sports video and the odd special report seems to come from Martin via EagleEye Films.  Again the content is okay and generally well shot and edited. The format gets formulaic with a music intro, some gv’s with a heavy music bed and then the meat of the package. Some of the packages run very long and again the TV influence kicks in with credits at the end.

Overall
There where obviously big plans for the multimedia content at the Belfast Telegraph so have they born fruit. In short, no.

Of all the sites I’ve looked at, that disconnect between the video and the paper makes the Belfast Telegraph’s offering the most like a national newspaper I have seen. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.

Whilst the video is often well produced and in the case of the bulletins, I would expect nothing less, it feels very disconnected from the paper. The main thrust of dynamic content is in the bulletins but i feel like I could be watching any TV news bulletin not the Telegraph TV.  The odd ‘read more in the paper’ does little to make it particular to the paper. It’s almost like they send the odd screen grab of the days pull-out and they send back a generic bulletin with the odd insert. This just reminded me of the ‘exclusive’ efforts of the tabloids.

I wanted more from the paper, more tie in and more relationship between the way stories develop through the day. The morning bulletin is a great point to flag up developing news stories and spin them through the day. There is a real chance to whet my appetite for the whole day so that I’m desperate to buy the paper in the evening. It’s a chance missed and in it’s place it’s a local newsfeed instead.

The rest of the content suffers the same disconnect. Whilst there is obviously an effort to produce good stuff the lack of tie in with the paper – good embedded video and related articles – means the video ranges off, doing its own thing. The need to split video over a few clips is a sure fire sign of a lack of editorial focus. It should be split over several articles. Each chunk complimenting the story. That’s not a criticism of the work that’s there, as I say, credit to the staff for keeping the flow of content.  It’s just that without proper integration in to the online offering it seems to do it’s own thing.

Perhaps a good deal of the problems I see can be blamed on the CMS. The lack of a solid relationship between the articles and video is a sure sign of different systems fighting each other. But ultimately there is a real lack of integration on the site. It’s a opportunity missed both practically and editorially.

For me the bulletins don’t add anything to the mix anymore. I’d rather see more news and local colour, tightly integrated in to the articles – more Garys and Lindseys please and less GMTV.

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Temporary disruption in service

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In a great example of why I have no time management skills I’m going to interrupt the current series of post on regional newspaper video for a weeks holiday. So posting will be slow to no for a week.

The series will continue on my return

Your feed reader can have some peace and I will try and get some sun on my legs. Seem fair?