And I thought the Bolton News was bad. The bar has just been lowered by Reading Evening Post’s Sports Editor David Wright’s video bulletin, a painful lesson in how not to do online video:
Rule #1: if you’re aiming to imitate broadcast television, make sure you’ve watched it since the ’80s.
Rule #2: if you use a cloth for a background, make sure you iron it.
Rule #3: tempted to use those fancy transition effects on your video editing software? Sleep on it. Please.
Rule #4: if you’re going to do ‘green screen’ make sure the green covers the whole background.
Rule #5: don’t start talking to your mate while the camera is still filming.
Rule #6: speak clearly, slow down.
Rule #7: film at a time or place when people are not coming in and out of a door and mumbling to each other out-of-shot
Rule #8: do more than one take.
It’s not David Wright’s fault that he has to learn his trade in public. I doubt Surrey and Berkshire Newspapers have invested in any training for him, and it’s clear they’ve not invested in facilities. Perhaps material like this may persuade them otherwise.
UPDATE: I hope David’s hits have shot up – they’re watching him in Australia and Hungary.
Online Journalism Blog 
Pingback: Wordblog » Blog Archive » Video help needed at Reading
Pingback: Martin Stabe » links for 2007-04-23
You could add a couple more:
9. Try being interesting or at least (unintentionally) funny.
10. If you can’t, at least tell us something new – not a list of the bleeding obvious.
It’s not confined to Bolton & Reading – this stuff is all over the place. Why do news sites persist with multimedia without hiring the right skills? You’d no more ask a video technician to design a front page than pay a graphic designer to doorstep the mighty. Surely it’s worse for a newspaper’s reputation to offer up risible stuff like this than to leave video to the experts? (Or at least to the gifted amateurs?)
That’s pretty funny.
Pingback: This critique is right up my alley | News Videographer
Pingback: Newspaper Video: do’s and don’ts : Andy Dickinson.net
Pingback: Hack Attack » Blog Archive » The Internet: jack of all trades, master of none?
Pingback: It's not the BBC the newspapers need to worry about, it's ITV Local « MediaBizTech
You know, none of you are funny at all.
Pingback: A new nomination for Worst Newspaper Video - Reading Evening Post does it again « Online Journalism Blog