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One of the truths you learn as a news photographer. We all die. Some of us see it coming and some depart this planet not knowing what hit them.
Tonight I attended the memorial of a student of mine. He chose to leave. Otherwise known as suicide.
I cannot even begin to imagine the grief the family is going through, but tonight they came and they were brave. The Hmong Club at my school wanted to show their respect and love for a fellow student and moved so quickly not even the administration knew the event was scheduled for today…but my principal okayed it quickly with the understanding we were not to glorify suicide. Understandable – I’ve seen my share of copycat deaths.
What touched the parents and other family members was seeing all the young caring faces…some smiling, some tear-stained. All there to remember and recognize and celebrate the life of their child.
My contribution came as candles were lit. We all die. A simple truth. But we all have the opportunity to grab life and make it ours…to live and remember and be outrageous and have great joy and sadness. Without pain there is no joy. Without darkness we cannot understand light. Take risks…love and be hurt and move on to love again. And remember those still with you and those departed. Say “I love you” every day to those who are close to you. Hug your friends. We newsies know that death comes quickly and without warning. But we also know that life will go on…and memories are forever.
Addendum: There is a reason suicides rarely make the news. There is a societal taboo surrounding suicide. It is viewed as a private matter – a person vs. their own inner devils or delight…a mind vs. itself. It may also be a source of embarrassment to the family (again, a societal taboo).
Although the ripple effect of a suicide touches many, there is no direct threat to society, unlike a murder or raging epidemic. The danger in reporting suicide lies in its attraction. The warm embracing arms of the Lorelei…a fatal attraction for those who may be considering a similar option.
It is called self-censorship…but at times suppression of facts leaves many wondering what really happened…
I’ve been watching this for the past few weeks and still find it refreshing. No video…just scrolling words. You have to watch it to at least the half-way point to get it.
I love bright and shiny new toys as much as the next person, but am cautious when it comes to spending cash or plastic on the latest and brightest and newest. I’d rather wait for others to figure out the bugs – so instead of having iPad 1.0, I figured I’d wait until version 2.6 or 3.1.
But one bright TV station is bolding moving ahead by using i-Pads to replace – PAPER!
WFXL in Albany, Georgia, is using the new devices to replace paper scripts given to anchors on the desk as backup to the teleprompters. Yes, they’ll still use paper in the teleprompter, although apparently – yep, there’s even an app or two for that too.
But the annual savings in paper scripts for anchors and producers is around $9600…well worth the price of low-end i-Pads at around $499 each.
Interesting…as newspaper VJs move towards more complex and larger camcorders, broadcast is downsizing to smaller, more mobile cameras.
In the beginning newspaper photogs were learning video – all about motion and audio. How what they had been shooting their entire lives had to be rethought once they stopped aiming for a moment in time and instead were aiming for a sequence and telling a story with flow of motion and sound. Video is more complex – more akin to weaving elements together than stopping time.
As they got better at their new craft, these new VJs, OMB, backpackers got better and better gear…and some of their gear is even redefining standards for moviemaking, not just news (think 5D here).
The opposite has been going on over on the broadcast side. The one man band has always been part of TV news…kind of the poor cousin. OMBs were used by the smaller stations or even larger stations in their outlying bureaus.
Mike Rosenblaum (among others) broke the collar of shame, re-coined the craft as Videojournalist and rightfully set things straight…VJs can be masters of vision. On my side of the coast KRON in San Francisco raised them to star status – and buddy Stanley Roberts showed that even the toughest glare-you-down street shooter could masterfully craft stories all on his lonesome.
Now the camera is following the craft. In a much earlier post (which I’m still looking for) I asked why TV stations weren’t allowing their VJs the freedom of smaller cameras (Stanley by the way does use a compact size Sony).
Earlier this week a major player in broadcasting announced that it was ramping up use of prosumer cameras by its staff.
Hearst Corporation’s Next Generation Newsroom Project portends a major shift in thinking for television news room. Beginning with three stations in 2009, moving on to six this year with six more projected to come on board next year, JVC GY-HM100 cameras are marching into the hands of camera crews.
These crews (according to Hearst) will NOT replace, but rather will augment the traditional broadcast newscrew…aiming at the Internet audience rather than the (again, traditional) front of the tube group.
The good – overburdened crews get a respite for their backs…and hopefully this move will continue so eventually all crews get the more portable cameras. Laptops to edit…this camera natively imports to both Adobe Premier and Final Cut. Hearst is going the PC route with Dell laptops and Premier (which is dual platform by the way). The camera is a three-chipper with 1/4 inch CCDs and has both XLR and mini-jack audio inputs. Best yet, it shoots to SD cards (don’t know if you have to use the nearly $300 SDHC cards or can get by with less expensive ones).
The bad: one little line buried in the end of the press release:
…the GY-HM100 is the ideal camcorder for the Next Generation Newsroom Project, because it is a full-featured professional camcorder that records to inexpensive SDHC solid-state media, yet it is not intimidating to non-technical personnel.
Yeah…those three words at the end. Non. Technical. Personnel. Hmmm….reporters? Interns?
(Thanks to b-roll for the heads up.)
Just got home (12:30) from a school board meeting. Rather strange – nearly every major vote or action touched on my present or past life.
A charter independent study school lost its bid when the board had a tie vote, which essentially was a no vote. Independent study in my district has a waiting list. Why did they not approve it? It is a valid alternative – which I feel should be widely used throughout the district, not just for students falling between the cracks.
Next up – the closure of Clements School. Hey! I graduated from there in 1968. Again a tie vote mean the action didn’t take and the school stays open. I loved that old school…went there for three years. I think the board heard the appeal of the board member, Bonnie Castle, who represents the area. The school in a small town IS the community. That and the post office. And Clements is small…
Job sharing came up next. A prickly issue…took the board a while to figure out what to do. They are in favor of job sharing…but didn’t want to micro manage the personnel director and really didn’t want to take action that would result in more folks coming in to appeal every personnel issue in front of the board. Something I am definitely interested in – considering easing out of education by going part time.
Blah blah blah blah…public comment, board comment. Time to walk the (guide) dog and wake up.
Around 10:05 the teachers’ union prez announced the vote of no confidence in the superintendent. 917 to 107. The board commented, showing support for the superintendent…thus sidestepping the vote.
Midnight-ish
Senior project had only a few speakers/none in favor of keeping it. One student who said it cut into college app time, an AP teacher who said it cut into teaching time, an administrator who said it wasn’t fair to require and not fund the project and me and Alexis, my very own senior. This was what i’d waited for all evening. Senior project is a great concept – but it has fallen on hard times. No money to support it properly and it is a barrier to students who would otherwise graduate. Board came out in favor of continuing to work on eliminating it as a graduation requirement.
Not a happy decision. All of my girls loved their projects – and learned a lot about their topic and themselves. But uneven grading and support doomed senior project. The luxuries must go when it is belt-tightening time.
Changing gear was the challenging workshop at the JEA/NSPA conference in Portland…at least for me. I’d done my research and the sad news there were no clear-cut solutions to the issues between the proliferation of consumer cameras and their various video file formats.
Carol Knopes with the Radio Televison Digital News Association (yep – they changed their name to fit the times) says she purchased a bunch of new video cameras and it caused such a hassle trying to decipher the file formats that she sent them back. I’ve had students laboring with similar problems, trying to use their new cameras and running into problems with the files not being recognized by their editing programs.
A tiny but passionate group sat in describing problems from issues with firewire ports going out on cameras to new cameras that weren’t recognized by their editing programs.
The only truth: everything is backward compatible. Nothing is forward compatible. Now that’s a generalization…but what it means is if you buy a computer or software, you can open older documents or files. You (again, generally) cannot open files from newer software. I ran into that when a student brought in a PowerPoint presentation I couldn’t open. Solution: go on the Internet and find a program that will convert/decipher it so my older software could read it.
I suspect until a definitive format emerges for video, there will be a battle between manufacturers as they push their proprietary formats, hoping they will be the winner. There’s copyright bucks involved.
So the (temporary and frustrating) is as follows.
1. Do your homework. Research your camera, know your software and computer…they are all parts of the same team and must work together and communicate and understand each other.
2. If you’ve made the mistake of buying something that does not work – be it software or hardware, begin your search for a solution.
I suggested to attendees that they use fileinfo.com for information about their video file format and links to free downlaods that will convert to a more useable format.
Wouldn’t you know it – one of the attendees suggested what may be a better solution: anyvideo which he says will convert any video to another file format.
Let me know how these two work for you. I suspect (since this is only the beginning of the problem) this will be a big workshop next year.
…or rather limping. Kathy Newell and I arrived last night in Portland for the JEA/NSPA conference. It’s nice to be in a city where the public transit not only works, but is reasonably priced.
We both have sessions this morning and tomorrow. Today is critiquing student videos. Tomorrow is workshops.
Oh – and the limping. Well, I have a bad knee (courtesy of a line drive by Willie McCovy back in the late 70′s) and had a ton of fun walking around the convention center district. Today is payback. The knee went out, so I’m confined to short hops.
Been following localnewsqueen for a while now and am becoming disappointed. While the initial promise was there to point out failures in broadcast news (and hopefully ways to fix them), what I’m reading is more personal rants and complaints.
From coroners and oranges to the post office and potholes and reposting youtube videos I’ve seen before…the variety is there, the concept is there, but the writing is becoming weaker…less about news and more about her.
I’ve had a couple of friends in the biz point out the ethical issues of anonymity in a blog such as this one…a journalist exposing the guts of TV news. Yeah, that bothered me…and I’m beginning to suspect the reason for secrecy is that these stories may not be about one person.
Posted on the blog is the following:
Vent to the Queen
Do you work in local news?
Share a story:
Localnewsqueen@gmail.com
(Your name and email will remain anonymous)
So are these her stories, ideas, rants? Or someone else’s?
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