What kind of video do you want in your online newspaper?
Broadcast-style stand-ups? Afternoon reports from the newsroom? Snarky into the camera videoblogs from your columnists? Straight news packages?
Mindy McAdams at Teaching Online Journalism has been talking about this all month, drilling down on things like the fancy new HD cameras that will let photojournalists shoot video and just pull the high-quality stills they want from there.
Yesterday, she pointed out Cade White’s efforts to get into the field and find out how pros are dealing with newspaper video. Cade followed a photog to a shoot that led to this cool bartending trick.
Okay, so here we have another category of video for your online newspaper, and I’m a bit of a fan of this one: supplemental content.
That’s right, I think blogs, podcasts, and video should all be supplemental content when it comes to newspapers.
Video is a great example of this: No one really wants to sit through half an hour of a city council meeting or a talking head interview or a panel discussion when they came for news and maybe entertainment. Hosting that sort of thing in a searchable archive is nice, but I’d rather be reading a story online and see a package of links in a box, one of which is an image that leads me to some relevant and interesting video.
A blog or podcast can be a topical, focused way to get more information to your readers about your beat. Does it mean more work for you? Maybe. Does it mean driving readers to your brand that wouldn’t have stumbled upon it otherwise? Surely.
And that translates, bluntly, to more eyeballs on your advertising. Because in the news business, page views still matter, although getting respect and Attention (with a capital A) for your brand gets more important with every link.