Thanks for that. I need to check out the pre-roll. I think there is a direction at the e&s but my view was that there was too much of the right thing in the wrong places – if that makes sense.

I’m sure that the lack of archive is purely technical. Change the player and you have a whole lot of work to do with old video re-encoding.

In that respect I can see why many eds would be suspicious of the go and play idea given the stress on the newsroom. Without anyone giving guidance to what kind of content strategy – what kind of video do we do – its easier not to do it.

Two people were sent for a weeks training and got stuck straight in on their return.

I’m not sure if they have a quota system but it was definitely made clear that their training should not be allowed to go to waste.

I agree that lots of video can be evidence of someone told to ‘go and have a play and see what you come up with’ as this is a pretty good way to learn, but from my experience on in local news, eds and news eds wouldn’t be too keen on this method.

Actually my experience is the opposite. The kit will often lay dormant for a while until the training kicks in or someone is brave enough to open the box. A sensible strategy can use quotas to push more video through to get a critical mass – which kit strategy you follow is the tricky call- but it needs something beyond that. Something those middle managers you identify need to be aware of.

More video can also be evidence of someone really trying to work it out. If you can work out a way of doing it in a cost and time effective way then you can afford to throw a lot at the site and see what works. Just as you would with stories in the paper. In the case of the Express and star I think there is a case of wanting to give people the space to explore how this video thing will work. Whether theirs is the right approach, well, my view has always been the best approach is what’s right for the paper and their audience and I think they are further down the line than many in working it out.

As far as the IT goes the shame of it is that there is often lots of investment in the IT infrastructure but it tends to be centralised. Essentially many of the larger regional groups are running IT strategies that are enterprise IT size. But there management model (individual publications) is SME size. So you get restrictive templating, centralized IT poor technical support – all the stuff you get with enterprise IT. And none of the flexibility and local awareness that SME’s need.