Yawning at the Renaissance

With newspapers rotting unread in our nation’s driveways, legions of print people are taking up the videocamera. But it looks like a few of them are gonna drop the damn things, if they don’t stop wringing their hands over how NOT to be like TV. Oh, I get it. Newspaper folk have long held my kind in the lowest regard. Our winking hyperbole and flashing graphics and pretty figureheads offend their sensibilities. So they openly dismiss us as clowns with spray paint and wave off even our finest efforts as graffiti that‘s beneath them. Now, however - their tune has changed slightly. No longer able to merely marginalize my craft, they’re tricking out their brightest with slimmed-down gear while boasting how their new-age toys and old school intellect will soon render the old TV News breed obsolete. So, how’s that going for ya?

Certainly there are talented staffers doing exciting things with video. The newspaper industry’s many gifted photographers could bring a new dimension to moving pictures and feather their own threadbare nests in the process. But the ink-stained wretches seem to have a blot on their soul. They detest the trappings of television. Booming clichés and overexposed hosts run countercurrent to the type of thoughtful video analysis they wish to initiate. Some have already succeeded in their quest, but many more have simply replaced overly-punchy pacing and plastic voicework with meandering storylines and monotone narration. Not all of their end results will put you to sleep, but neither will it make you lean into your laptop in breathless anticipation of what will come next. You know, the way you feel when something really fascinating comes on TV. Oh that’s right - you don’t watch television. Y-e-a-h....

I don’t mean to denigrate ALL newspaper video folk - even if they do line up to disparage me. Angela Grant, Colin Mulvany and Cindy Green are just a few of the content producers that regularly put their mojo where their multimedia is. But countless others - especially the all-knowing pundits who rarely leave their desks - are so full of shit their eyes are brown. Their various sites tout video fundamentals as new truths they’ve just wrestled from the primordial news. Jump cuts, white-balancing, sequences - I never knew how misinformed I was until some dude in a sweater vest wrote six hundred words on a concept my ’tween daughter figured out ten minutes after powering up a Sony of her owny. Believe me, nobody wants a new video paradigm more than yours truly. TV News has long ago stagnated, it’s true. But until the pointy-headed set unveils this new passel of tactics, their line claims of superiority will continue to read like the deathbead delusions of a once vibrant industry.

So please, prove me wrong. Until then, put a sock in it, would ya? I’m trying to watch television...