The multimedia journalist

It wasn’t long ago that a local reporter could head out on an assignment with nothing more than a notebook and a pen. Maybe a camera, but only if there were no photographers available. But those days are rapidly drawing to a close.

Take, for instance, Cathryn Keefe O’Hare, a longtime print and radio reporter who’s been editor of the Danvers Herald since 2000. The Herald is part of the GateHouse Media chain, which is pushing its journalists to supplement their stories with videos for its Wicked Local sites. O’Hare shot video for the first time last Memorial Day. Now she does it regularly.

For a Flickr slideshow of O’Hare shooting and editing her story, click on the photo above.

Last Monday I met her at the Danversport Yacht Club for the eighth annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Awards Dinner. It was a routine assignment — take some notes, write it up. It was also a good opportunity for her to put together a video package. And for me to tag along and watch how she does it.

O’Hare wielded a Casio Exilim ex5600, a tiny, relatively inexpensive piece of technology that shoots still photos, video and audio. She had a simple goal: to ask some of the 450 people who were on hand why they had chosen to attend and what King’s message meant to them. She shot in ambient light, which, as you’ll see, was good enough, if not perfect. Audio is recorded through a microphone in the front of the camera.

O’Hare still finds being a multimedia journalist a challenge. She stands on her tip-toes when interviewing people taller than she. A couple of interviews proved to be unusable. “It’s more stressful than just taking notes,” she says. But she got sufficient material to put together a nice video supplement to her print story.

Three days later I met her in the local GateHouse newsroom in Beverly, where she was editing her clips into a news video. She used Microsoft’s Windows Movie Maker, a free program that lets you cut extraneous material out of the clips, piece them together in any order you like, and add transitions, titles and an extra soundtrack. (The Macintosh equivalent is iMovie.) O’Hare spliced in music from the Follow Hymn Interfaith Choir, which had performed on Monday, to supplement the interviews.

To read O’Hare’s story and watch her video, click on the YouTube graphic above.

Finished videos are uploaded to YouTube and then embedded on the Danvers Herald site. O’Hare still hasn’t figured out how to do that, so she leaves it to one of the regional managing editors, Peter Chianca.

“The thing that remains true, whether it’s in print journalism or the Internet or video, you have to tell a story,” says O’Hare. “And you have to tell it as true as you can make it. And you have to try to speak for those people who can’t tell their story.”

To listen to an audio interview with O’Hare, click here.

To watch other videos from the Danvers Herald, click here.

– By Dan Kennedy

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Having made my way as photographer and film cameraman there are several important differences between reporters and people who do visuals. One being things like speech impediments looking for a story and a story line and knowing what is really happening in front of the camera as well as what is really going on.
Most camera preople are trained over years to look for angles, lighting, action all physical things.
Reporters look for the truth in what is being said if they are worthwhile. A one
man band is not equipped to deal with a lying pol a environmental disaster. A planning commission bought off by profiting interests. As well as muling photo gear batteries and a note book to make sense out of raw footage. What happens when your super woman gets tired close to deadline?
Looks like another way of totally stressing the news person out of the ability to think. I have attempted things like this and found I was dropping the level of coverage.
Sounds like the suits looking to pinch their pennies again. Of course there are many people who can do a superficial facade of coverage so much video work is talking heads and so dull, so very dull.