Picture from Flickr user Huladancer
This has been sitting in my list of things to blog on, so with a bit of delay, here is an interesting bit of data from a recent report on digital journalism from a couple of PR companies.
[T]he study has uncovered a ‘40/40 Factor’ in action – 41% of respondents now produce more than 40% of their output online in the first instance. The ‘40/40 Factor’ is even more interesting when one considers it was only in October 2005 that the Daily Telegraph became the first UK newspaper to publish online, before the print edition.
Interesting stuff. A 40/40 distribution of web first. Could this be a candidate for 50/50?
Video
But more interesting for me was the what the report has to say on video
61 per cent of UK respondents said their publications offered video or TV content as part of their online presence compared with 41 per cent of respondents from other European countries
That from Laura Oliver’s article on the report over at Journalism.co.uk.
Sounds like good news. But wait there are some howevers (they’re the new but you know):
However, over three quarters of UK respondents said that producing additional multimedia content for the web was the biggest challenge to their jobs.
Oh, dear
However, only 10 per cent of the overall respondents – and 14 per cent of those in the UK – said they had received training for producing multimedia content.
Double oh, dear.
In fact the survey says that 65% of those surveyed said they had trained themselves in podcasting and video.
Here is the reports take away graphic:
That’s pretty shoddy isn’t it.
But video seems to happen regardless. Some form of training must be happening.
My experience is that there is a lot of under the wire training going on. That’s born out by something I read on Journalism.co.uk today.
In an interview with Alison Gow about the Liverpool Daily posts fantastic efforts online, we get an insight in to the way video works in Liverpool.
Video is a separate entity altogether – one video journalist is responsible for managing libraries, cutting pieces and training newsroom staff and reporters in video-journalism.
She has trained eight other staff so far, giving them a week’s hands-on training so that they can manage handicams and cut footage. They aim for a new web video each day.
That seems to be the way a lot of this is happening. A few people are training in house but the majority of journalists are doing it themselves.
I get (some) satisfaction
Does that make them unhappy?
It seems not.
Playtime
This may come as a shock to the more for less brigade and, though it may be it’s a leap of logic on my part, it would seem that journalists enjoy learning new skills – wherever they are doing that.
For me that just underlines again the real importance of my hobby horse of playtime (set aside time for journalists to try new things). Give your journalists time to learn the new skills and maybe that ‘enjoy it more’ figure will grow.
