Why I don’t like (most) video journalism

(and podcasts).

Nowadays it seems like every traditional news organisation is trying to get involved as quickly as possible with the new wave of multi-media production, which for many seems to mean video or audio broadcasting as well as text. Am I the only one that not only doesn’t care for the majority of multimedia journalism, but is actually turned off by it?

I’ve been following Stef Lewandowski’s coverage of the SXSW event with interest, and he’s obviously done some great work out there. But to be honest my heart sinks to open up Google Reader and be faced with a bank of audio interviews waiting to be played.

I’m not too far off the ‘youtube generation’ but I can’t be the only one turned off by the increasing use of video and audio in online journalism, not for luddite old-media reasons, but simply for convenience. Is this a matter of convenience that my lifestyle somehow misses out on? Is it just people dazzled by the novelty of new equipment? Am I just an old stick in the mud? (The use of the phrase ‘stick in the mud’ might itself provide the answer to that last one).

This post was semi inspired by Paul Bradshaw’s work on scannability. He talks, very insightfully, about the need to make online writing easily scannable and full of eye-catching numbers, bullet points, lists, etc. But the scannability of text is what makes it much better, in my opinion, than any other medium the vast majority of the time.

I feel genuinely frustrated by the lack of ability to ‘skim read’ a video/audio file, to instantly glance at it, pick out bits and give them as much attention as possible. Frustrated so much that I’ll often avoid a video when I wanted a block of text, even if it’s something I really wanted to know about. And this is not even mentioning the technical problems, of looking at content on an old computer, or in public without headphones, or on my mobile.

This isn’t old-media dinosaurism, it’s quite the opposite. Video and audio dictate to you: want to know what’s going to be said? Sit and wait till the end, then we’ll tell you. Text gives users the power to easily decide whether they want to look at all, some or none of the content in front of them.

None of this is to say that there’s no place for video journalism. But if it’s there, again in my opinion, it has to have something that cannot be provided by text, some proper audio or visual quality, not just a recording of thoughts or conversations for the hell of it. And this doesn’t even need to be (in fact it’s better if it’s not) a particularly high-quality or in-depth recording, as Howard Owens writes here. Certainly not suitable for an interview.

So please editors, don’t get carried away with video or podcasting. It turns me right off and I can’t be the only one!