Budget cuts and new technology are shrinking newsrooms. Cameraman Carl Filoreto explains how news shooters can find new opportunities as doors close.
It’s a mirror of the times. An unrelenting squeeze between economic and technological forces is causing the news media at all levels to implode. Budget cuts and layoffs are rampant. It’s occurring at all levels and across the media world. National broadcast networks, local stations, cable news operations, newspapers and magazines are all being affected and feeling the pain.
Shoptalk, a daily industry newsletter with a pulse on the business, is filled with a litany of layoffs on a daily basis. In just one recent issue it included information about more on-air layoffs at CNN, buyouts at WUSA, Washington D.C., buyouts and layoffs at three stations located in Buffalo, N.Y., and high-level corporate layoffs at CBS Entertainment and CBS Paramount Network TV. That’s in one day!
It’s alarming, somewhat shocking and rather depressing. But why am I recounting these StudentFilmmakers magazine? Well, the shockwaves having an impact that’s spreading far from ground zero. The overall implications are much too great to concisely navigate here. For now, I’m going to look past the dilemmas presented by a society without a functioning news media, aim more directly at the manner in which these changes are affecting news coverage, news production and overall film and video production in its many forms.
The ripple effects are being felt beyond the news world. Cuts are taking place at cable channels and other entertainment forums, even at Internet based media businesses. Most people reading this magazine are probably working in one type of media business or another, or they’re studying to become a part of it. What’s happening today is reshaping the landscape of jobs, salaries and opportunities. It’s changing the pipelines for delivering media, and the methods of producing content are being revolutionized. It’ll be difficult to work in a media based business that’s not affected by the current environment.
So I feel like Dr. Doom at the moment. There’s a conundrum present though. At a time when many traditional media businesses are cratering, video and its many close cousins ubiquitous.
What’s going on? I wasn’t an economics major, but my take on it is two-fold.
First, the Internet has put news at our fingertips. We expect to get the latest developments in stock prices, baseball scores and reviews on the latest iPhone app immediately. Now that web video is becoming highly watchable, we’re also expecting to maybe see a report from the floor of the stock exchange, a clip of the walk off home run Derek Jeter jacked moments ago and have a detailed look at that iPhone app. On the surface, this is all good, and is part of a major revolution in information dissemination. What’s not working is the business model. Advertisers are becoming reluctant to put their ads in newspapers or within television programming, when more and more eyeballs are turning to the net.
But wait, newspapers television stations, and the like all have web sites and are placing their content there. True enough. From what I’ve been told, though, these web sites don’t generate the income of their traditional counterparts in their heyday.
And then there’s convergence, one of those somewhat menacing buzzwords of the day. Newspaper websites and local television news websites are beginning to look very similar. For some time now, many newspapers been training their photographers, and some enterprising reporters, to shoot and edit video. Photogs have also been recording audio sound bites and are producing audio slideshows. Likewise, local TV news operations must put words on the page in order to have meaningful content. Both entities have the same goal, to provide a more exciting, attractive, and yes, hopefully informative product. The end result, though, is a meeting in the middle. For the first time, these news organizations are competing with the same tools for the same customers in the same space. And not only isn’t there room for both of them, the companies themselves can’t figure out how to generate enough revenue out of the operation.
As I’ve been told at several times in my life, though, when one door closes, another one opens. Even with the rampant loss of jobs, there are opportunities, in the news business and beyond. The era of the media specialist, though, seems be waning rapidly. At local stations, and even at some of the network news operations, producers and reporters are shooting, writing and editing their own stories. And increasingly, photojournalists are shooting, writing and editing their own stories. The skill sets are defined but the line between job descriptions is blurring. This is an opportunity for some, a downfall for others. This type of, in this instance, job convergence, is also appearing in non-news related media businesses as well.
There are many businesses information gathering organizations that have sprung life as the Internet has evolved. For now, I bestow the name information gathering organizations because many web based “news” operations have a distinct point of view. That’s okay, and of course many fingers have been pointed at the “traditional liberal media”, but these news organizations developed a certain credibility over many years for covering news, all the news, not just the parts of the landscape it chooses to cover. It’s an interesting topic, though, and deserves a discussion of its own. Suffice it to say, there are many successful web sites based in areas like entertainment, finance and investigative reporting.
When I discussed the idea of doing news-based production with the editors of StudentFilmmakers magazine, I thought it would be a slam-dunk. Then as the days slipped by, I began to wonder, if – wait for the drum roll – the news media would simply disappear in a few years. I think it’s an interesting and important subject. It’s sometimes difficult to grasp how quickly it’s changing and evolving. The methods of producing its content transforming at lightning speed. And news organizations still put a staggering amount of edited video material on the air and the net every day.
I also have some personal disclosures to make at this point. My formative years in the video world were spent at local news stations. And since I started my own business, I still work for a number of network news organizations, primarily NBC News, at both the national news and magazine level. So I’ve always had a strong interest in this area. And I have a strong interest in keeping a pulse on the business as it moves through a period of hyper rapid evolution.
I’d also like to see a lot of interactivity with this topic. I’m curious about what students and pros alike are thinking and experiencing this rapidly changing technological era.
I encourage you to write to me at [email protected], and provide your observations and thoughts about the world of news and beyond. It’ll help me construct more informative focused articles in the future. For example, I’m highly interested in the thoughts of the folks in broadcast journalism schools, as they watch the business transform before they ever collect a paycheck. For now, I’m planning on writing about one of the changing production and editorial facets of the biz, looking at the trend toward back pack journalism.
Carl Filoreto is an award-winning DP, and his company is Elk Run Productions, Inc. (www.elkruntv.com), which has a roster of clients that spans corporations, production houses, crewing agencies, and broadcast and cable networks, including Dateline NBC, The Food Network, and The Travel Channel. Prior to starting his business, Carl won seven regional Emmy awards, numerous national and regional National Press Photographers awards, and multiple awards from Colorado Ski Country and the National Snowsports Journalists Association, while working at KMGH-TV in Denver, WTNH in New Haven, and WGGB in Springfield, Massachusetts.
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