7 of 10

In the January issue of the NPPA’s magazine News Photographer, Stewart Pittman is a journalist at WGHP-TV in Greensboro, N.C. provided a perspective column on the Top 10 things to teach a television reporter. Stewart, who writes a blog that is apparently moving soon, provides some good insights that are valuable to all digital journalists in his magazine piece.

1. Write to your video (multimedia).
2. Have a plan.
3. The Story is not you.
4. Try not to over explain things.
7. Mind the natural sound (shut up).
8. Man-on-the-street interviews are the curse of the weak.
10. Know when to blend (in).

It sounds like the list for TV news photographers is similar to print photographers and is good advice for still photographers moving into soundslides. There are times that a digital journalist might want to use video, might want to use stills or combine both and add audio recorded separately.

In the same issue there is a story about TV going tapeless, more on the implications of that in a later blog entry.