Angus Farquhar, Online Video Producer

Print publishers shouldn’t back off from online video

I’ve just managed to catch up on my blog reading after the Christmas downtime and one post stood out for me from Colin Mulvany, multimedia producer at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington, on his Mastering Multimedia blog.

Chris gives a neat roundup of how Newspaper multimedia progressed on 2008, but one thing stood out for me that just sums up how much print publishers still have to grasp about the importance of video.

“In these challenging economic times, many newspapers have backtracked into full retrench mode as they prepare to make their final stand to save the traditional print product from extinction. This last year, online and photo departments got hit harder than expected. I lost seven of the 12 people I trained to shoot video. Other papers disbanded entire photo departments.”

The last few weeks have seen a plethora of new statistics that show the continued rise in popularity of online video with consumers around the world and yet publishers are mad enough to cut resources in the only area they have that is growing!

This week I’m lucky enough to be at CES shooting video for which.co.uk and the rise of online video was highlighted to me at the show in two seperate ways.

Firstly, when I get up in the morning to get ready for a day of press conferences I want to check what everyone else is saying about the show (Hey, I’m a geek, I can’t get enough) but there is now way I’m sitting down to read text. So I click on the video links and leave it playing while I faff around getting ready in my Medevil themed hotel room. Now I know I’m not alone in doing this.

The second thing that really brought it home was just how many video cameras there are floating around in the hands of journalists and bloggers. (Photo courtesy Steve Garfield)

I’m talking about everything from little Flip flash devices to full broadcast cameras and I’d say at least 90 percent of them were recording for the web.

If print publishers really think this is a time that they can afford to scale back in online video to focus on the survival of their ‘core’ print business then this really will be their death knell. If they don’t do video and leverage their existing strong brands to make it a success then there are a hundred blogs in the wings just waiting to seize the opportunity and put the final nail in their coffin.

Posted by Angus Farquhar (08/01/09 17:04 Vegas time)