Videojournalism or web journalism

A story that you may have experienced.

A head of department said he'd tried to pin me down, when asking what I liked doing, working online or video journalism?

Both, was my reply, I see no difference with the two.

Today, he got it.

Multimedia journalism is a composite of online and video journalism, I added, though in its best guise the seams are invisible.

You'd find it a tad more confusing if I said I like making promos as well.

Couple of years ago, I got asked a similar question with regard to radio and making TV programmes.

One informs the other, the other nurses the former, was my reply in a round about way.

Good TV draws on an understanding of sound production and good radio is like seeing pictures.

Which is why some of the best radio reporters of all time e.g. Alistair Cook, Mike Wallace, and Richard Dimbleby possessed a poeticism, brevity and craft of language which would see them equally take charge of and colonise this new medium (back then) called Television.

Frankly I have never quite understood the brouhaha over bi-media.

Now into this swirling media cauldron comes graphics in illustrator and photoshop, mash-up programmes or APis, editing on Final Cut, posting on After Effects, animating on Flash and the rest.

For many it's all a bit daunting really. There were good times, easier to understand times when we knew how to trade information.

Now many of us watch glazed over by the blinding array of things we're asked to do.

To a new generation born into it, it's water off a ducks back. Truth it's all one and zeros.

Learn it, don't learn it. It's about choice.

I remember the telling-offs from my father when I attempted to have the TV and wireless on at the same time, whilst browsing a comic.

"One thing at a time", he'd throw his voice across the room,"and turn those off".

Today the phone's ringing, I'm blogging skyping at the same time, TV's on. . .

This from the late Douglas Adams for The Sunday Times on August
29th 1999 called How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet. It's a weight piece. Here's a snippet.

Everything that's already in the world when you¹re born is just normal;

Anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is
incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out
of it.

Thanks to Christine Fox - a fellow video journalism trainer for sending this through.