How the regional papers use video: Not The Leicester Mercury

Posted on August 27, 2008 by Andy

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

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 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.

How the regional papers use video: The Belfast Telegraph

Posted on August 26, 2008 by Andy

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 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

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

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.

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.

How the regional papers use video: The Manchester Evening News

Posted on August 14, 2008 by Andy

Yesterday I looked at how the Express&Star and the Liverpool Echo use video as part of a series of posts looking at the way regional newspapers use video on their website. In this post I’m going to be looking at the Manchester Evening News.

The MEN is part of the Guardian Media Groups Regional Media arm and sits in a portfolio that includes ‘local TV station’ Channel M. The close relationship with Channel M and the GMG interest in a number of radio stations has resulted in the MEN becoming the regions first fully converged newsroom. It isn’t the only first the paper can claim. In 2006 the decision was made to make the paper away free in central Manchester. A decision that caused a bit of a kerfuffle at the time.

The site itself got a redesign in 2007 and I have to say I am a fan. The layout is clean and even though the ads get pride of place they feel a lot more integrated than some of the other regional news sites. But what about the video.

The MEN video index

The platform.
The video on the MEN website is easy to find. A navigation item in the left-hand-column, a video feature block and little icons on stories with video where all present on the front page when I looked.

The player feature box also appears on section pages with related content. So the Sports section carries a nice mix of sport content which is lost in weight of news content the video section

Clicking on the video link you get a video index page based on a brightcove player. The player size is good but it could perhaps be a little bigger to play against the large ad. A clear search box could be better balanced by a larger headline and even though there is a little summary of the video they are often too short to offer any decent context on the article.

The pop-out related article link in the video player

Instead of the Jukebox style favored by many the MEN follows other regional papers and has a kind of grid index display. Nice sized thumbnails work well and the organisation by month is nice. Again the headline could do with a bit of work. For example a story headlined wheelie bin fire doesn’t thrill does it. I found myself thinking that it was the very definition of local tv. But it’s actually a story about an arson attack where two people had to be rescued. What’s more newsworthy? A couple rescued or the senseless slaughter of a wheelie bin…

But my favorite part of the page is the way they add related articles. A click on the related articles link opens a pop-up with links to the stories. A really nice touch and one that carries through to the article page.

When you do click through the video appears in a right-justified block in the article along with any pictures and an ad. Again, the page design works well here (although I think the headline is too small) but the way the brightcove player overlays content on the thumbnail frame makes the video block look heavy and dull compared to the nice bright picture and white space. It’s like a grey hole on the page which is a shame.

The article layout makes good use fo video

The article layout makes good use of video

The presentation
The video on the MEN site is predominately Channel M content so it’s accurate, rather than a criticism, to say that this is just like TV. The predominant style of presentation is packaged content with interview and vox-pop wrapped with GV’s (b-roll) .

There are exceptions. CCTV footage that isn’t packaged () and the occasional piece, like the fridge magnet police message does come without the obligatory VO and piece to camera. This clip is also one of a few packages that creep in with a ‘MEN Read more’ graphic rather than the ChannelM branding. Another is Nicola Dowlings piece on community service.

It’s a nice package in a video diary style but the diary style piece to camera was lost in wind and tree noise and too wide a framing. Given the size of the player a tighter head shot would have read better, made for better sound and made the thing more personal, emphasising that personal diary feel.

But despite these little flashes of clip content or something that shows a little more MEN personality the editorial approach is pretty much consistent with standard TV packaging. So it’s lots of scripted intros, pieces to camera and plenty of GV’s. This is okay for TV but does it work on the web?

Every so often a piece creeps in that opens with a snippet of interview or interview sound under GV’s setting the scene before the VO or presenter adds context. This dropped intro style (similar to the stuff on the Express&Star site) is well suited to the web especially when it’s embedded. The story about the dad arrested for slapping his daughter is case in point. You read the story, check the picture out and play the video. The first thing you see and hear is the Dad talking about the ‘ordeal’. For me, that works better on the web. In fact I think that’s exactly how it should work. Any set-up from voice over is redundant.

Take a look at the lightening strike article for another example of how strong leading pictures work. The rest of the package is typical TV but I see what I need to – the burn marks etc – right up front. Remember, Best pictures first

As you would expect the technical production values are good although the shooting can be patchy in places. But I’m not reviewing ChannelM’s output.

One thing I would say is that the quality of production means that the odd howler really stands out. The video of X factor hopeful Emma Chawner is a case in point. It’s just crap and it makes me wonder if this is the wrong clip?

Overall
The MEN is an odd one when you consider some of the other papers on the list. Its the only one that has a direct connection to a TV station (the Belfast Telegraph has a tie in with a production company but nothing like the MEN) and that makes it difficult to judge against the others in the list. But this is meant to be a review rather than a comparison. So is it any good?

The short answer would have to be a qualified yes. The amount of video and the solid integration in the presentation really adds to the website experience. Some of the viewing figures on video show that there are people clicking. They have also resisted the temptation to take the shows that ChannelM produce and move them wholsale on to the site. That would be an easy way to build the themed video that some of the broadsheets have adopted but I’m not sure it would sit well with the MEN.

The qualification would be in asking whether the video itself, rather than the presentation, stands up online. And on that point I would have to say it’s a qualified no.

The way the video is constructed could be much more online friendly. Loading good soundbite and pictures at the start makes it work more effectively in an embedded. The pieces that do that work in stark contrast for me to the standard TV fair. The reliance on pieces to camera and onscreen graphics – all of which are tropes to the production pressures of the TV channel – loose their effectiveness online. Perhaps there needs to be some intermediate approach. Some form of video subbing that filters out the TV bits would make for more usable clip content embedded on the page. But I know I’m asking a lot there.

The truth is that the steady flow of solid local stories that channel M provides is a rich vein of content that the MEN is lucky to have. Combined with (what I think is) a good template for article display the video implementation feels solid, professional and sets it apart from much of the stuff you see out there.

Do you produce video at the MEN and want a post to tell people about what you are doing? I’m offering an open post to al of the papers I’m reviewing. Let me know

How the regional papers use video: The Liverpool Echo

Posted on August 13, 2008 by Andy

After a look at the way the tabloids and the broadsheets use video I’m looking at the UK regional evening market and next on my list is the Liverpool Echo.

The Liverpool Echo, owned by Trinity Mirror, is the daily evening paper for Liverpool and Mersyside along side it’s sister paper The Daily Post, a daily morning paper. (The post has recently been making a name for itself with a live blog and video of its editorial meetings) The paper has had video on the site for a few years and at one point the company also ran a cable TV channel , Channel One. Channel One is no more and after a few brushes with joint ventures (The occasional Echo TV branding is a legacy of this) the paper is producing its own video in house.

The platform.

The front page video feature box

The video on the Echo website is combined with stills in a Pictures&videos section where pictures get first billing (nothing wrong with that). But the front page does have a sizable video feature box just below the scroll. In keeping with the whole site design the video feature is big, bold and clear. It displays the latest video with a clear headline and tease. It offers a list of the most current videos along with the latest video.

The video is served from youtube via a flash player and does suffer the occasional mix-up in aspect ratio. The video is shot widescreen but the 4×3 youtube player won’t handle it unless it’s letterboxed before upload. The stories I spotted this on had an air of user submitted about them so perhaps it’s pre-existing.

Another problem with the widescreen video is some tearing at the bottom of the screen. This is usually caused by problems with digitising from tape and seeing ‘more’ picture than you normally would. A little masking would help here but it doesn’t happen on some videos

The video player itself is useable but there is no obvious backlink to related articles so linking through to video from the frontpage feature takes you away from the articles. I say obvious because the tags do work as functional navigation to related content but I’m not sure how intuitive that is.

Video is often presented in a sidebar as well as embedded

Video is embedded in articles and also presented as a related video sidebar. Given the general lack of images on a lot of stories perhaps embedding video and using it as an image as well would kill two birds. But the option to embed or go in the sidebar is nice to have but the same from the video player, given its front page prominence, would be a bonus.

The presentation.

The majority of the content on the site is self-produced packaged video with the occasional user or third party submitted video. Subject wise it could be best described as feature based. Local events, interviews and interesting stories with the odd video showing the scene of a shooting. The format is pretty standard with voice over, general views and a smattering of interview and vox-pop but the quality of the video is variable.

Being the paper of record in Liverpool it’s no surprise that sport plays a big part in the video. Divided in to three sections – Sports, Liverpool and Everton, the content comes in much the same style as the news stuff and some of the same problems surface. Mike Torpey’s preview piece Open Championship at Royal Birkdale is okay but it contains an almost textbook example of how not to shoot an interview and proof of just how valuable a shotgun mic can be.

How not to shoot and record an interview

And there in lies the biggest problem with the Echos video. The shooting is generally good and whilst the video is clunky in places it holds together but the audio is very patchy.

The video of the threatened closure of local brewery Cains is a good example. The voice over quality is poor, some of which could be youtube’s notorious audio mangling but it sounds distorted from the start. The interview sound is worse with the voice lost in background noise. I think some of this is likely to a problem with stripping out audio tracks but lack of a decent mic could also be to blame. Lack of mixed audio also kills a piece on the annual Brouhaha parade. Great pictures but none of the fantastic location sound. Its squashed in the background,

The Cains piece also highlights a problem that all newspapers face with journalists making the change from print style interviews to ones that work on video. If you listen through the Cains piece you can here the problem. Questions that suit reported speech and a constant ‘yes’. This often makes the video longer than it needs to be as the question, which can often seem labored on video, needs to be left in. Some more open questioning and maybe (ethical police look away now) a little more direction of subjects would tighten things up.

Overall
The range of video on the Echo website feels slightly limited. Light features and lots of vox pop seems to be the order of the day. That’s not a problem in itself, given the amount of work they are doing with live blogging and other initiatives to better cover breaking news stuff. But there is an opportunity there to stamp more of an identity on that style. A move away from the package to more clipped stuff for vox pops and interviews with better embedding/linking in stories would put more of Liverpool in the story and could cut down on production pressures. That way the heavy packaging could be left to more evergreen features.

Unlike a lot of papers where video is the visible nod to digital the Echo has a huge amount of digital content to play with – Maps, blogs, liveblogs and widgets – fitting video in to this portfolio is a challenge. It seems that video at the Echo, as it has been in the industry, has had a varied history. Joint ventures and TV channels have given way to a in-house team working hard to establish an identity. How they develop that identity and integrate video in to that rich mix will be a challenge. But a bit more work on tightening things up and working out better integration with articles could see them in an even stronger position.

Note: In writing this I made a mistake which must be a regular bug bear for the Post and Echo people in confusing some of the stuff the post are doing – live blogs etc – with the Echo output. There is obviously a lot of good stuff happening in Liverpool full stop. But credit where credit is due to the Post staff. Sorry for the confusion.

Also, in the same vein as the Express&Star review. In return for letting me waffle about your efforts I’m happy to offer an open post for anyone at the Echo (or post) to tell readers about anything they like. Let me know.

How the regional papers use video: The Express & Star

Posted on August 13, 2008 by Andy

This week I’m looking at what the UK regional evening newspapers are doing with video. I’ve selected (using a highly scientific method) seven papers to look at and I’m starting with the Express&Star

The Express&Star is the daily evening paper for the West Midlands in the UK. It’s owned by The Midland News Association Ltd and is generally acknowledged as the biggest selling regional evening paper in England.

The website got a re-design a few years ago and I have to put my hand up and say I’m not a fan. It’s cramped and the contrast of text sizes is wrong for me. But its usable and they have certainly thrown a lot at it over that time.

The platform.

When it comes to video the Express&Star is nothing if not obvious. There is a clear navigation tab at the top, a horizontal feature bar just above the fold and an occasional image teaser on the left-hand-side of the page. Go through to the news section and you get another menu item.

Confusingly the tabbed navigation and the vertical navigation on the news index takes you to two different places. The tab links to a standard Brightcove powered jukebox – chunky and functional. But the menu takes you to a video index. Given the choice I would link to the video index exclusively. It’s more usable, feels richer and sits better ‘in’ the site.

The Express&Star video index page is full of video stuff

The video index offers a great range of content that links directly to article pages with embedded video content which is fantastic. The downside is that the video player is too small, cramped in to the corner of what is already too narrow a column for content. I would cut back on the graphics and controls around the player. Double the size and run it at the top of a page rather than right-justified. It also works as a picture that way.

The page design swamps the text and squashes the video

Back in the video index, there is a nice archive and you can page back through previous video articles. It’s a shame that the thumbnail disappears after the first page. The headlines need the image to help sell the story. The other problem with the video index is that you don’t need to go back very far before most of the video is unavailable (a problem that cropped up every now and again on newer content too). I’m guessing that this is due to a shift in player at some point or perhaps technical problems full stop. That’s a shame would have liked to have done a comparison between old and new video.

The presentation
The video is a mix of self-produced packages and third-party content, commonly user-generated but there is the occasional agency stuff. There is also a healthy smattering of youtube content on the site which appears in the Your Video section of the video index. This tends to be in the entertainment area. This is worrying in the sense that a copyright crackdown on youtube would effectively remove half the content on the site. The Kasabian article is a good example of this .

But stepping away from that particular minefield its safe to say that it’s the self-produced packaged content that makes up the majority of the content and there is loads of it. It tends to be 2-3 minute packaged content mixing talking heads, GV’s(b-roll) and voice over. The occasional piece to camera does creep in which sometimes works but more often than not doesn’t.

Overall the production values are good and generally the packaged stuff is shot well. The sound suffers from occasional wind noise and mic handling problems but the ever present shotgun mic generally produces good results.

The journalists seem to have settled on a workable format for their video. It tends to lead with interesting video or a snippet of interview and then a voice over comes in. Some of the packages go on a little too long with one too many vox-pops the most common reason. Take the Disney Cars feature (above). The kids are cute and well done to the reporter for getting something usable out of them. But there is too much. This package also highlights an issue with sequencing. There are a lot of cut-aways here. A shot of a wheel etc. But they are cut one after the other. It’s quite disorientating. Shooting enough cut-aways is always something to remember but they have to tie together. Get a wide shot that will make sense of the cut-away. I don’t think I saw more than one wide shot of the cars through the whole package.

If remembering cut-aways is good mantra when shooting then cutting ‘best pictures first’ is one of for the edit. It’s a concept that the journos at the Express & Star seem to gave taken to heart and it works for them. It fits the print story construction well and you can almost read the text of an accompanying article and follow the voice over. As well as trying to grab you in the first few seconds of the vid , this must cut down the turn around times for the production.

But this tie in between article and video isn’t always consistent. Take the story about people using pawnbrokers. Instead of the people featured in the article there was a video of a jeweler talking about the value of gold. I really missed seeing the people in the article who had some real human stories to tell. Where was the guy selling his wedding ring. A definite case of a story that didn’t need video.

Elsewhere the content shifts from packaged to interview based stuff shot in the newsroom. It’s been a while since the E&S has had a video news bulletin on the site but much of the content takes its cue from that format. I’ve always been an advocate of the bulletin approach as I think it is as much about building capacity as it is content. It’s nice to see the E&S have developed. But where a bulletin is easy win video, much of this stuff feels like visual podcast. The video of Peter Rhodes and Internet News Editor Tim Walters is a great example of video that should be a podcast. But it’s really the sport that takes this format to the limit – Fan forums and weekend round-ups. I’d love to see some stats on the this stuff to see what the take up is.

I suppose that the use of video in this way says more about the uptake of technology like podcasts by the audience than the appropriateness of the delivery platform. And it’s clear that there is some clear evidence of developing style there. This development also manifests itself in experimentation with live football reporting.

Last year the E&S announced Sportingstar.co.uk a live football site. Not that you would know it on the site. Following the URL takes you to a subsection of the site with no obvious difference from the rest of the content. I will have to check back on Saturday to see the full action. But the little snippet of Qik video from reporter Tim Nash after the recent Plymouth game is good and it will be nice to see what other content appears alongside it.

Overall
I could write a lot more about the Express & Stars video offering. There is a lot of it and the content is generally technically well-produced. That said, some of it feels stretched editorially -it’s too long – and some of the content just doesn’t need video. I get the feeling that there is some kind of quota for video that someone has in the back of their mind – x number of videos a day please. But rather than push video too hard it may be better to let photographs carry the story.

The TGI fire story was a case in point. The video was okay but the pictures in the Gallery where better. They could even have run both. I don’t think the layout of the page helps with presentation, it isn’t multimedia friendly. I wonder if a bit more space to play with might encourage more of a useful presence.

That aside this is a strong start for the regional press. Let’s see what The Liverpool Echo can offer up tomorrow.

Do you work on video at the Express&Star? If you want to reply to any of the points in this review, talk about what you do or call me an idiot then feel free to leave a comment but I’d also like to offer you (and anyone from any of the other papers I review) an open post response. A post on the blog to say what you want. Interested? Let me know

How the regional papers use video:Part One

Posted on August 12, 2008 by Andy

Over the last two weeks I’ve been looking at how the UK national tabloids and the broadsheets use video on their websites. It yielded some interesting results in terms of getting a feel for the general practice and areas of interest.

To keep things rolling and get a little balance I decided I would continue with a look at the way the regional press are using video. But before I kick off, I wanted to say a little bit about what could be laughably be called by methodology.

Now the regional press is a considerably bigger constituency to work with, so I have narrowed it down to five evening papers. I did this on the basis of the circulation figures.

I asked the good folks of Twitter what the top five circulation regional papers where and got a great response. A big thanks to Joethedough (and his vip contact), foodiesarah, alisongow, nigelbarlow and psmith for your help. It was Patrick Smith pointed me to a Press Gazette article that listed regional papers by circulation which I used as my starting point.

Going through the list I originally thought I would look at the top five but I’ve mixed things up a little and expanded the range to get the high circulation papers and a mix of the big providers – Johnston Press, Trinity Mirror, Guardian Media Group, Northcliffe.

So the selection was not scientific in the least and I haven’t checked all of them to see if they actually do video. So if anyone feels like something should have been there then let me know. But here is the list (with a link to the Newspaper Society database which I used to check the owner)

Here is the list of sites I will be looking at over the next few days.

Express & Star (Data)
Liverpool Echo – (Data)
Manchester Evening News – (Data)
Belfast Telegraph – (Data)
Leicester Mercury. Actually the Hull Daily mail- (Data)
Yorkshire Evening Post – (Data)
Bradford – Telegraph & Argus – (Data)

Brace yourself

How the UK Tabloids use video: The Mail

Posted on August 8, 2008 by Andy

It’s Friday so it must be the last day of my review of the way the UK tabloids use video and I’m rounding things off with the Daily Mail.

The Daily Mail sits alongside the Daily Express in the tabloid ‘mid-market’ apparently setting it an order above the Red top Sun, Star and Mirror. It’s actually one of the more successful online newspaper websites considering how late in the game they where in setting one up. The Mail have made a particular point of targeting women web users which you can see from the tone and structure of the site.

The platform

The Daily Mail's video player. Hard to find but nice information when you do

When it comes to video there was no obvious sign of video on the front page of the site either through the navigation or flagged stories. A search on the website (please get rid of that offer of an embedded search tool or add No) revealed two articles in a video category. Clicking through took me to the Daily Mail’s video section. Fully formed, large as life but not linked.

Its the standard jukebox player but, unlike the rest of the tabloids who use Roo, this is a Brightcove player. The player isn’t the only thing that’s different. The page layout is more in keeping with the article page layout on the site rather than the ‘TV’ box style on others. Sections are presented in one long thing sidebar. It’s a layout that, like some of the other pages, hides too much content below the scroll. I think filling boxes with reams of links is a habit the Mail need to get out of.

One nice thing to see was the content box below the video window. There is the usual headline, short description but there is also a byline. A nice, human touch. Better still is some useful meta. A date, time and most impressively a source for the video is given. It is often missing which makes me think Brightcove are supplying the information for some of this data. I think the presentation could be better (bigger) but it’s good to see.

But it’s a step in the right direction. I didn’t see any of the other papers crediting the Bournemouth News & Picture Service for the Mini Hendrix footage. In fact, most of the agency footage is credited which slowed me down for a half-hour or so as I looked at what other stuff they had. I suppose that’s the lot of a news agency but it was nice to see.

If it's a screen grab why not just embedd the video?

If it's a screen grab why not just embed the video?

Most encouraging though was the presence of links back to articles. At last! When you do follow the links through the video is usually embedded towards the end of the video. I think this is shame as it often duplicates pictures on the page. A story about violent yobs (good Mail fair) features a heavy number of screen-grabs from CCTV video that is embedded further down the page. One of the pictures at the head of an article is a screen grab. It is exactly the same as the poster frame of the video. Why show both?

The presentation

Unknown source or the BBC? You decide

The thing that really struck me about the video on the Mail is the lack of news feed content. There is no dedicated news feed of PA or Reuters content. In fact there is nothing approaching a news feed at all on the site. All of the content can best be described as illustrative or feature based. Like the other tabloids it’s rounded up entertaining clips from the web that it thinks will appeal to the audience and the editorial line is firmly in the middle of the paper not the news pages at the front. So we get news it’s a mix of besieged middle-Englanders battling yob culture or birds that sound like ambulances and Herons learning to fly.

The only exception to that when I looked was a video of teenage Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr. It’s illustrative video, it supports the news story. But I single it out as it’s clearly BBC footage grabbed from TV – I’m pretty sure that’s Frank Gardner voicing it- but it isn’t credited. Having seen the Mirror pull this trick I wonder what the form is here.

There is some homegrown content on the site. Mark Lawford’s interview with Monte Panesar was interesting but the lighting was poor and the shot could have been tighter. Listen to the interview though as a good example of a print person doing a video interview. That isn’t a criticism. Listen the way he qualifies statements, jumping in, looking for stuff that can be used as reported speech later on. It’s a questioning style that gives you print stuff but it won’t stack up for long in video.

Drop one presenter and half the time

The other, consolidated, bit of video content was the Live magazine tech-review video. James Mannion and Rob Waugh do a double-header reviewing the latest gadgets. Its shot in what seems to be a photographic studio using two cameras – or some pretty meticulous single camera set up. The idea is okay but the production and format don’t work for me. The editing is too tricksy and slows the pace. The presentation is also too stilted. They have a bit of a star in Rob Waugh and my view is that they should let him do the slot without James (no offense James). That way it could be half the length and have a lot more pace.

Overall.

I get the impression that video is fairly new to the Mail. It feels cautious and the fact that the video section is so hidden away just emphasises that. But that could be a smart move on the part of the Daily Mail.

They are not selling the site as having video and then backing that claim up with feed video. This is more a site that has the capacity to use video and the video section is just a bonus. I’m not sure I would go as far as to say that they use video well; there isn’t enough of it to tell. But where it is used it seems appropriate. It could be used better on the article page and I don’t see a clear editorial line. But it’s there.

How they move forward from here will be interesting to see. My money would be on a movement more towards The Sun where the video is a mix of stuff that may appeal to the audience rather than a more broadsheet style of authored pieces. I think they may end up doing it very well.

So that’s it. A week of tabloid newspaper video. So what did I learn from looking at The Sun, Star ,Mirror Express and Mail? Find out on Monday.

andydickinson.net

online and digital journalism, newspaper video and digital media

Category Archives: video