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A curious juxtaposition of two news stories today:
- NPR Reports that even though the stock market is up 50% unemployment is also 10.2%
- USA Today reports that small businesses will have to use video in the future
OK, what do these two stories have to do with one another?
First, the NPR Report.
The economy indeed has recovered. It has recovered, that is, if you work for Goldman Sachs or Citibank. Â There, bonuses are up a breathtaking 30% over last year. Â Indeed, it seems that part of the economy has bounded back with a vengeance. How do we reconcile this with 10.2% unemployment and 17% underemployment.
In the journalism business, at least, the jobs are not coming back.
They are not coming back because they were not lost due to a dip in the business cycle. They were lost because the new technologies of small HD digital camera, cheap laptop editing software and a web that handles video has simply obviated a lot of jobs that no longer need to exist.
Hard to swallow, but true.
Craigslist, which has a net worth of $5 billion and pretty much obliterated the whole field of classified ads in newspapers (along with all the folks who used to sell them and place them – not to mention to the revenue to the papers), employs (Craigslist that is), 22 people.
That’s it. 22 people. And it seems to work quite fine.
Our own small digital hyperlocal TV news operations (3 functioning so far) employ only 6 people per node. They pretty much replace (to some extent) a local TV news operation that might have employed far more. Â
The digital online world creates enormous efficiencies and employs far fewer people. Â
It’s sobering but it’s true.
Where are the thousands who used to work in the world of journalism going to find employment in this new online digital future?
Fortunately, USA Today provided a glimpse into the future.
“Whether you’re a hot-dog vendor in Boston or design firm in Santa Fe, you will be producing video for the Web,” says Forrester Researchanalyst James McQuivey. “Video is how your customers will find you.”
We are going to see an explosive growth in the demand for online video, produced cheaply and quickly and on a regular basis.
There is a part of the small business community that will want to learn how to do this on their own – which we have pretty well covered. Â
But there will be another part of that community – and I would guess a larger percentage – who will want to farm out that video work.
We aren’t talking about producing TV shows for broadcast, so the numbers are far smaller, but there are far more local businesses in need of video than there are cable channels in need of TV shows. And that’s a future for those who know how to make the product.
8 Comments
Michael Rosenblum November 12, 2009
Now that was funny! (16)
steve November 12, 2009
nino,
if you are indeed “on the forefront of technology”, would you mind keeping your slicing and dicing of michael to something like a 140 characters or less?
Nino November 12, 2009
I’ll try my best, always willing to accommodate those with limited comprehension.
steve November 12, 2009
speaking of “limited comprehension”…
please see the (growing number of)corrections to the “official story” the military sold you guys about the fort hood shooter.
greg mitchell has a nice little ditty over at the huffington post.
and you went to such (long winded) lengths to say how EVERYTHING was verified by big media who covered the story… “hook, line and sinker” is how mr. mitchell terms it.
Nino November 12, 2009
I was just joking about the comprehension thing, but maybe I wasn’t really off target.
This thread is about jobs and money, you are about 3 threads out of topic.
Michael Rosenblum November 12, 2009
Nino
It does my heart good to hear that you are dipping your toe in the world of online video. As I recall, for many years you were convinced that there was no business here at all. Of course, there is. I am surprised that you are willing to cut your costs to meet the demands of the online video world. Welcome. Seriously.
Nino November 12, 2009
I haven’t “been dipping my toes” in the internet, the internet is coming to my toes. Most of the times I have no clues where my work will end up, the only reason that I know because sometime I ask. As I said most of the time it goes to multiple platforms. The bottom line is that we are putting into each assignments the very same effort as we always did, web or not. Nothing has changed for us, except that the web had noticeably increased our volume of work as companies can now better justify the expenditures as the cost of our work is now shared by multiple platforms all generating revenues.
There was never any reason to make a big deal out of it, it was just another venue for our services and it did not required any adjustments whatsoever. Our clients are those who needed to make adjustments not us.
I never reduced my rates, you read that wrong, I added an intermediate service just in case there would be clients asking for those, and those service are distinctively different from our standard services. Very few clients used the new service but it’s there is case someone is not interested in top quality.
I’m a firm believer in the say of: “those who fail to be prepared should be prepared to fail”.
Somehow you must have this vision that we are sitting in a cave with a roaring fire next to our camera and waiting for dinosaurs to come around. You have to understand that we are on the forefront of technology, whatever you use we have already used long before you even knew it existed. Manufacturers make every new piece of equipment available to us to test and evaluate before they even hit the market. Sometime we can buy it at a nominal price, sometime we get to keep it or just give it back.
Nino November 12, 2009
Michael, I’m continuing from your last thread “Follow The Money†right into this one.
You said:
“And my point is that the opportunities, as you yourself well know, are generally not in the news business.â€
How true.
This is something that I’ve been saying for years, yet, right after you made this statement you follow up with this thread that is basically talking about the news business.
As I’ve been also saying for years, news is only less than ten percent of television business and probably less than one percent of video business in general. Is also the area that that is having major problem.
Although there is some ups and downs because of the current economy the rest of the video business is fairly well and in most cases is business as usual.
You were right about one thing, there’s an explosion of business for the web, you just tried to get in from the wrong direction.
Fifty percent of the work I do today is exclusively for the web and the rest is used in combination with other media. The point is either for the web or wherever the programs will be used for, for us is business as usual. The demand for cheap work like you have been predicting never materialized, and trust me, your predictions did not go wasted, just in case you were right we were ready to meet any demand for more economically priced video services with cheaper cameras, faster and less involved set up times, faster workflow and less gears; a great deal of preparation went into this but it was mostly wasted. I actually offer an intermediate service that uses less costly HD cameras like the Sony EX1 and EX3 and we are even experimenting with the Canon Mark II still/video camera, but very few takers even thou there’s a 30% saving on the daily rate. As I always said to you, the cost of the crew is only a fraction of the total cost of a production but is also the most important investment that can make or break the program.
Companies that had money to spend for quality work before the web became popular still have money and they will not step down in quality just because now there’s a new venue to market their products or services. Those that had no money before to afford quality videos still have no money, quality or not.
The reason that VJs or TCs or CJs will never get a chunk of this action is because no matter what your claims of potential are, in the real world they have no marketable skills. VJs have only a fraction of the skill necessary to diversify and follow what you have said:
“And my point is that the opportunities, as you yourself well know, are generally not in the news business.â€
The problem is that what VJ or TJ that learn from you can only have some limited benefits in the news area, that’s also the area that is having all the problems, it pays the least and is oversaturated with people with cameras.
By you being very convincing with these kids, telling them that what established photographer do for a living (and get paid well for doing it) is outdated, unnecessary and antiquated, you are actually doing a disservice to your own student and not getting them ready both mentally and with skills for diversification where the real demand and the real money is in this business. On the other hand you are doing us “the outdated photographers†as you call us, a great service by sending potential competition in the opposite direction and away from us.