In a great example of why I have no time management skills I’m going to interrupt the current series of post on regional newspaper video for a weeks holiday. So posting will be slow to no for a week.

The series will continue on my return

Your feed reader can have some peace and I will try and get some sun on my legs. Seem fair?

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Apparently I’m being too rough with Delicious…

Be gentle with delicious

WTF!

I tried again in a ‘gentler fashion’ and it seems to work. Didn’t realise the web was that fragile.

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Yesterday I looked at how the Express&Star and the Liverpool Echo use video as part of a series of posts looking at the way regional newspapers use video on their website. In this post I’m going to be looking at the Manchester Evening News.

The MEN is part of the Guardian Media Groups Regional Media arm and sits in a portfolio that includes ‘local TV station’ Channel M. The close relationship with Channel M and the GMG interest in a number of radio stations has resulted in the MEN becoming the regions first fully converged newsroom. It isn’t the only first the paper can claim. In 2006 the decision was made to make the paper away free in central Manchester. A decision that caused a bit of a kerfuffle at the time.

The site itself got a redesign in 2007 and I have to say I am a fan. The layout is clean and even though the ads get pride of place they feel a lot more integrated than some of the other regional news sites. But what about the video.

The MEN video index

The platform.
The video on the MEN website is easy to find. A navigation item in the left-hand-column, a video feature block and little icons on stories with video where all present on the front page when I looked.

The player feature box also appears on section pages with related content. So the Sports section carries a nice mix of sport content which is lost in weight of news content the video section

Clicking on the video link you get a video index page based on a brightcove player. The player size is good but it could perhaps be a little bigger to play against the large ad.  A clear search box could be better balanced by a larger headline and even though there is a little summary of the video they are often too short to offer any decent context on the article.

The pop-out related article link in the video player

Instead of the Jukebox style favored by many the MEN follows other regional papers and has a kind of grid index display. Nice sized thumbnails work well and the organisation by month is nice. Again the headline could do with a bit of work. For example a story headlined wheelie bin fire doesn’t thrill does it. I found myself thinking that it was the very definition of local tv. But it’s actually a story about an arson attack where two people had to be rescued. What’s more newsworthy? A couple rescued or the senseless slaughter of a wheelie bin…

But my favorite part of the page is the way they add related articles. A click on the related articles link opens a pop-up with links to the stories. A really nice touch and one that carries through to the article page.

When you do click through the video appears in a right-justified block in the article along with any pictures and an ad.  Again, the page design works well here (although I think the headline is too small) but the way the brightcove player overlays content on the thumbnail frame makes the video block look heavy and dull compared to the nice bright picture and white space. It’s like a grey hole on the page which is a shame.

The article layout makes good use of video

The presentation
The video on the MEN site is predominately Channel M content so it’s accurate, rather than a criticism, to say that this is just like TV.   The predominant style of presentation is packaged content with interview and vox-pop wrapped with GV’s (b-roll) .

There are exceptions. CCTV footage that isn’t packaged () and the occasional piece, like the fridge magnet police message does come without the obligatory VO and piece to camera.    This clip is also one of a few packages that creep in with a ‘MEN Read more’ graphic rather than the ChannelM branding. Another is Nicola Dowlings piece on community service.

It’s a  nice package in a video diary style but the diary style piece to camera was lost in wind and tree noise and too wide a framing. Given the size of the player a tighter head shot would have read better, made for better sound and made the thing more personal, emphasising that personal diary feel.

But despite these little flashes of clip content or something that shows a little more MEN personality the editorial approach is pretty much consistent with standard TV packaging. So it’s lots of scripted intros, pieces to camera and plenty of GV’s. This is okay for TV but does it work on the web?

Every so often a piece creeps in that opens with a snippet of interview or interview sound under GV’s setting the scene before the VO or presenter adds context. This dropped intro style (similar to the stuff on the Express&Star site) is well suited to the web especially when it’s embedded.  The story about the dad arrested for slapping his daughter is case in point. You read the story, check the picture out and play the video. The first thing you see and hear is the Dad talking about the ‘ordeal’.  For me, that works better on the web. In fact I think that’s exactly how it should work.  Any set-up from voice over is redundant.

Take a look at the lightening strike article for another example of how strong leading pictures work. The rest of the package is typical TV but I see what I need to - the burn marks etc - right up front. Remember, Best pictures first

As you would expect the technical production values are good although the shooting can be patchy in places. But I’m not reviewing ChannelM’s output.

One thing I would say is that the quality of production means that the odd howler really stands out. The video of X factor hopeful Emma Chawner is a case in point. It’s just crap and it makes me wonder if this is the wrong clip?

Overall
The MEN is an odd one when you consider some of the other papers on the list. Its the only one that has a direct connection to a TV station (the Belfast Telegraph has a tie in with a production company but nothing like the MEN) and that makes it difficult to judge against the others in the list. But this is meant to be a review rather than a comparison. So is it any good?

The short answer would have to be a qualified yes. The amount of video and the solid integration in the presentation really adds to the website experience. Some of the viewing figures on video show that there are people clicking. They have also resisted the temptation to take the shows that ChannelM produce and move them wholsale on to the site. That would be an easy way to build the themed video that some of the broadsheets have adopted but I’m not sure it would sit well with the MEN.

The qualification would be in asking whether the video itself, rather than the presentation, stands up online. And on that point I would have to say it’s a qualified no.

The way the video is constructed could be much more online friendly. Loading good soundbite and pictures at the start makes it work more effectively in an embedded. The pieces that do that work in stark contrast for me to the standard TV fair. The reliance on pieces to camera and onscreen graphics - all of which are tropes to the production pressures of the TV channel - loose their effectiveness online.  Perhaps there needs to be some intermediate approach. Some form of video subbing that filters out the TV bits would make for more usable clip content embedded on the page.  But I know I’m asking a lot there.

The truth is that the steady flow of solid local stories that channel M provides is a rich vein of content that the MEN is lucky to have. Combined with (what I think is) a good template for article display the video implementation feels solid, professional and sets it apart from much of the stuff you see out there.

Do you produce video at the MEN and want a post to tell people about what you are doing? I’m offering an open post to al of the papers I’m reviewing. Let me know

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This made me smile. Not saying I agree. Just made me smile.

A definition of citizen journalist by Seth Finkelstein in response to a post by Dan Gillmor about defining the loaded term

“person who wants to have things both ways, by claiming all the privileges which attach to the role of “journalist”, while disclaiming all the responsibilities and rules which constrain that role, saying they are a “citizen””.

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After a look at the way the tabloids and the broadsheets use video I’m looking at the UK regional evening market and next on my list is the Liverpool Echo.

The Liverpool Echo, owned by Trinity Mirror, is the daily evening paper for Liverpool and Mersyside along side it’s sister paper The Daily Post, a daily morning paper. (The post has recently been making a name for itself with a live blog and video of its editorial meetings) The paper has had video on the site for a few years and at one point the company also ran a cable TV channel , Channel One. Channel One is no more and after a few brushes with joint ventures (The occasional Echo TV branding is a legacy of this) the paper is producing its own video in house.

The platform.

The front page video feature box

The video on the Echo website is combined with stills in a Pictures&videos section where pictures get first billing (nothing wrong with that). But the front page does have a sizable video feature box just below the scroll. In keeping with the whole site design the video feature is big, bold and clear. It displays the latest video with a clear headline and tease. It offers a list of the most current videos along with the latest video.

The video is served from youtube via a flash player and does suffer the occasional mix-up in aspect ratio. The video is shot widescreen but the 4×3 youtube player won’t handle it unless it’s letterboxed before upload. The stories I spotted this on had an air of user submitted about them so perhaps it’s pre-existing.

Another problem with the widescreen video is some tearing at the bottom of the screen. This is usually caused by problems with digitising from tape and seeing ‘more’ picture than you normally would. A little masking would help here but it doesn’t happen on some videos

The video player itself is useable but there is no obvious backlink to related articles so linking through to video from the frontpage feature takes you away from the articles. I say obvious because the tags do work as functional navigation to related content but I’m not sure how intuitive that is.

Video is often presented in a sidebar as well as embedded

Video is embedded in articles and also presented as a related video sidebar. Given the general lack of images on a lot of stories perhaps embedding video and using it as an image as well would kill two birds. But the option to embed or go in the sidebar is nice to have but the same from the video player, given its front page prominence, would be a bonus.

The presentation.

The majority of the content on the site is self-produced packaged video with the occasional user or third party submitted video. Subject wise it could be best described as feature based. Local events, interviews and interesting stories with the odd video showing the scene of a shooting. The format is pretty standard with voice over, general views and a smattering of interview and vox-pop but the quality of the video is variable.

Being the paper of record in Liverpool it’s no surprise that sport plays a big part in the video. Divided in to three sections - Sports, Liverpool and Everton, the content comes in much the same style as the news stuff and some of the same problems surface. Mike Torpey’s preview piece Open Championship at Royal Birkdale is okay but it contains an almost textbook example of how not to shoot an interview and proof of just how valuable a shotgun mic can be.

How not to shoot and record an interview

And there in lies the biggest problem with the Echos video. The shooting is generally good and whilst the video is clunky in places it holds together but the audio is very patchy.

The video of the threatened closure of local brewery Cains is a good example. The voice over quality is poor, some of which could be youtube’s notorious audio mangling but it sounds distorted from the start. The interview sound is worse with the voice lost in background noise. I think some of this is likely to a problem with stripping out audio tracks but lack of a decent mic could also be to blame. Lack of mixed audio also kills a piece on the annual Brouhaha parade.  Great pictures but none of the fantastic location sound. Its squashed in the background,

The Cains piece also highlights a problem that all newspapers face with journalists making the change from print style interviews to ones that work on video. If you listen through the Cains piece you can here the problem. Questions that suit reported speech and a constant ‘yes’. This often makes the video longer than it needs to be as the question, which can often seem labored on video, needs to be left in. Some more open questioning and maybe (ethical police look away now) a little more direction of subjects would tighten things up.

Overall
The range of video on the Echo website feels slightly limited. Light features and lots of vox pop seems to be the order of the day. That’s not a problem in itself, given the amount of work they are doing with live blogging and other initiatives to better cover breaking news stuff. But there is an opportunity there to stamp more of an identity on that style. A move away from the package to more clipped stuff for vox pops and interviews with better embedding/linking in stories would put more of Liverpool in the story and could cut down on production pressures. That way the heavy packaging could be left to more evergreen features.

Unlike a lot of papers where video is the visible nod to digital the Echo has a huge amount of digital content to play with - Maps, blogs, liveblogs and widgets - fitting video in to this portfolio is a challenge.  It seems that video at the Echo, as it has been in the industry, has had a varied history. Joint ventures and TV channels have given way to a in-house team working hard to establish an identity. How they develop that identity and integrate video in to that rich mix will be a challenge. But a bit more work on tightening things up and working out better integration with articles could see them in an even stronger position.

Note: In writing this I made a mistake which must be a regular bug bear for the Post and Echo people in confusing some of the stuff the post are doing - live blogs etc - with the Echo output. There is obviously  a lot of good stuff happening in Liverpool full stop.  But credit where credit is due to the Post staff.  Sorry for the confusion.

Also, in the same vein as the Express&Star review. In return for letting me waffle about your efforts I’m happy to offer an open post for anyone at the Echo (or post) to tell readers about anything they like. Let me know.

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This week I’m looking at what the UK regional evening newspapers are doing with video. I’ve selected (using a highly scientific method) seven papers to look at and I’m starting with the Express&Star

The Express&Star is the daily evening paper for the West Midlands in the UK. It’s owned by The Midland News Association Ltd and is generally acknowledged as the biggest selling regional evening paper in England.

The website got a re-design a few years ago and I have to put my hand up and say I’m not a fan. It’s cramped and the contrast of text sizes is wrong for me. But its usable and they have certainly thrown a lot at it over that time.

The platform.

When it comes to video the Express&Star is nothing if not obvious. There is a clear navigation tab at the top, a horizontal feature bar just above the fold and an occasional image teaser on the left-hand-side of the page. Go through to the news section and you get another menu item.

Confusingly the tabbed navigation and the vertical navigation on the news index takes you to two different places. The tab links to a standard Brightcove powered jukebox - chunky and functional. But the menu takes you to a video index. Given the choice I would link to the video index exclusively. It’s more usable, feels richer and sits better ‘in’ the site.

The Express&Star video index page is full of video stuff

The video index offers a great range of content that links directly to article pages with embedded video content which is fantastic. The downside is that the video player is too small, cramped in to the corner of what is already too narrow a column for content. I would cut back on the graphics and controls around the player. Double the size and run it at the top of a page rather than right-justified. It also works as a picture that way.

The page design swamps the text and squashes the video

Back in the video index, there is a nice archive and you can page back through previous video articles. It’s a shame that the thumbnail disappears after the first page. The headlines need the image to help sell the story. The other problem with the video index is that you don’t need to go back very far before most of the video is unavailable (a problem that cropped up every now and again on newer content too). I’m guessing that this is due to a shift in player at some point or perhaps technical problems full stop. That’s a shame would have liked to have done a comparison between old and new video.

The presentation
The video is a mix of self-produced packages and third-party content, commonly user-generated but there is the occasional agency stuff. There is also a healthy smattering of youtube content on the site which appears in the Your Video section of the video index. This tends to be in the entertainment area. This is worrying in the sense that a copyright crackdown on youtube would effectively remove half the content on the site. The Kasabian article is a good example of this .

But stepping away from that particular minefield its safe to say that it’s the self-produced packaged content that makes up the majority of the content and there is loads of it. It tends to be 2-3 minute packaged content mixing talking heads, GV’s(b-roll) and voice over. The occasional piece to camera does creep in which sometimes works but more often than not doesn’t.

Overall the production values are good and generally the packaged stuff is shot well. The sound suffers from occasional wind noise and mic handling problems but the ever present shotgun mic generally produces good results.

The journalists seem to have settled on a workable format for their video. It tends to lead with interesting video or a snippet of interview and then a voice over comes in. Some of the packages go on a little too long with one too many vox-pops the most common reason. Take the Disney Cars feature (above). The kids are cute and well done to the reporter for getting something usable out of them. But there is too much. This package also highlights an issue with sequencing. There are a lot of cut-aways here. A shot of a wheel etc. But they are cut one after the other. It’s quite disorientating. Shooting enough cut-aways is always something to remember but they have to tie together. Get a wide shot that will make sense of the cut-away. I don’t think I saw more than one wide shot of the cars through the whole package.

If remembering cut-aways is good mantra when shooting then cutting ‘best pictures first’ is one of for the edit. It’s a concept that the journos at the Express & Star seem to gave taken to heart and it works for them. It fits the print story construction well and you can almost read the text of an accompanying article and follow the voice over. As well as trying to grab you in the first few seconds of the vid , this must cut down the turn around times for the production.

But this tie in between article and video isn’t always consistent. Take the story about people using pawnbrokers. Instead of the people featured in the article there was a video of a jeweler talking about the value of gold. I really missed seeing the people in the article who had some real human stories to tell. Where was the guy selling his wedding ring. A definite case of a story that didn’t need video.

Elsewhere the content shifts from packaged to interview based stuff shot in the newsroom. It’s been a while since the E&S has had a video news bulletin on the site but much of the content takes its cue from that format. I’ve always been an advocate of the bulletin approach as I think it is as much about building capacity as it is content. It’s nice to see the E&S have developed. But where a bulletin is easy win video, much of this stuff feels like visual podcast. The video of Peter Rhodes and Internet News Editor Tim Walters is a great example of video that should be a podcast. But it’s really the sport that takes this format to the limit - Fan forums and weekend round-ups. I’d love to see some stats on the this stuff to see what the take up is.

I suppose that the use of video in this way says more about the uptake of technology like podcasts by the audience than the appropriateness of the delivery platform. And it’s clear that there is some clear evidence of developing style there. This development also manifests itself in experimentation with live football reporting.

Last year the E&S announced Sportingstar.co.uk a live football site. Not that you would know it on the site. Following the URL takes you to a subsection of the site with no obvious difference from the rest of the content. I will have to check back on Saturday to see the full action. But the little snippet of Qik video from reporter Tim Nash after the recent Plymouth game is good and it will be nice to see what other content appears alongside it.

Overall
I could write a lot more about the Express & Stars video offering. There is a lot of it and the content is generally technically well-produced. That said, some of it feels stretched editorially -it’s too long - and some of the content just doesn’t need video. I get the feeling that there is some kind of quota for video that someone has in the back of their mind - x number of videos a day please. But rather than push video too hard it may be better to let photographs carry the story.

The TGI fire story was a case in point. The video was okay but the pictures in the Gallery where better. They could even have run both. I don’t think the layout of the page helps with presentation, it isn’t multimedia friendly. I wonder if a bit more space to play with might encourage more of a useful presence.

That aside this is a strong start for the regional press. Let’s see what The Liverpool Echo can offer up tomorrow.

Do you work on video at the Express&Star? If you want to reply to any of the points in this review, talk about what you do or call me an idiot then feel free to leave a comment but I’d also like to offer you (and anyone from any of the other papers I review) an open post response.  A post on the blog to say what you want.  Interested? Let me know

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Bill Dunphy thinks he has some answers to that question.

Bill is a Senior reporter for a Canadian newspaper called the Hamilton Spectator. and he’s been looking at the way the media reacted to an explosion at a propane plant in Toronto, His blog post - Propane depot explosions expose shortcomings in breaking news coverage by newspapers living in a Web 2.0 world - has some really useful stuff to say about the problems of covering live events.His take?

Bottom line - in aggregate, citizens journalists out-performed their professional counterparts getting news out faster, offering more details, and better images and videos. They also made more mistakes and had a high noise to signal ratio. Mainstream media were slow off the mark and while they depended on the citizen journalists, they failed to make the most of the possibilities that material offered.

So how do you make the best of the material. In summing up, Bill has some useful advice.

When breaking news happens, start live-blogging it, relying on readers and fellow citizens to provide us with hot, local, first-person information (text, images, video - maybe even audio). Solicit it and use it — highlighting contributions while inviting more. Search the web for the contributions of others and link to the best.

At the same time let slip the hounds. Deploy  professionals to do what they do best, use their skills and tools and access to bring back hard facts and colour, great images and video, to craft analysis.

Then have skilled web editors blend the best of them all into one magnificent package. Make sure you eliminate the inevitable errors of fact that appear during the rush of breaking news commentary and reporting. Use archives and the web to add context and a deeper, richer experience. Offer readers relevant resources and a space to share thoughts, stories, and comments.

It’s a great post, well illustrated, so go an take a look

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