Close Down The Newsroom

Lisa reviews Nathasha’s piece without leaving home, and talks to her face-to-face.

Among other things, we run three hyperlocal TV operations: one in DC, one on Long Island and one in New Jersey.  

Each one puts out original programming all day long.

And we run them without leaving home.

We are able to do this because of the combination of Final Cut Pro 7 and iChat. It is possible to mount Final Cut Pro 7 (which sits on the VJ’s laptops) through iChat so that we can screen their pieces in rough cut version on FCP while the pieces are being cut, in real time.

What does this mean?

We long ago did away with the office or the bureau. We find that we have absolutely no need for it. It is an expense that puts nothing on the screen, and in fact takes away from the quality of the reporting. Why should journalists have to schlep from their homes to the office before they head out to cover stories. This eats up valuable reporting time and in fact serves no purpose at all.

Our reporters work from their homes.  They can get up in the morning and go directly to the stories they need to cover, shoot what they need, cut the pieces on their laptops either in the field or back home, and then FTP the finished version to our NY offices on 54th and Park, where the editors assemble them and the EP reviews them.  

But before they even FTP the final versions, we can now see them and talk to them face to face over the computers, and at the same time screen their pieces as they are being cut.

It is just like walking into the edit room, except there is no edit room.

You don’t need one. In fact, you don’t want one.

And you don’t need or want a newsroom, or a building, or carpeting, or a coffee maker or a receptionist or aluminum desks or flourescent lights or any of that stuff.  Those are all costs that do not appear on screen.  And they are in fact distractions from the VJ doing their work.

Our reporters, we have found, are far happier working from home.

And, by the way, so are we.