Someone agrees with me about the online video bandwagon (read my previous rant informed analysis here). Meanwhile, I am softening a little after reading the thoughts of the Guardian’s head of editorial development Neil McIntosh, who is quoted in a lengthy feature on video in this week’s Press Gazette (not online – argh!):
“Asking users to ‘sit forward’ and watch video online is a ‘big commitment,’ he says, but the rise of YouTube has shown that there is a huge market for ‘good, gripping video in short bursts.’ McIntosh argues that this has been almost completely ignored by other newspapers.
“‘They are often producing very long things or content that is not very gripping at all, or full of stock images of men in suits walking through revolving doors. That works perfectly well on broadcast television but when you’re demanding that the user pay attention for short bursts, you’ve got to do better than that.’”
[...] Paul Bradshaw picks up on this positive note, glad that someone else is hoping for something a bit different, and reflects on a previous post of his, Perhaps the genuine interactivity that the BBC and Guardian have done so well for years represents too much of a paradigm shift for their competitors – a change in thinking about how we tell stories. I only hope that the current changes in print don’t stop at filming the sports editor reading out his latest scoop. [...]