Listen to Deep Throat…
Yesterday I got an email from Thomas Loudon, one of the co-founders of vjmovement.com.
VJmovement.com is a new website, just launched yesterday, which presents the work of more than 100 VJs around the world. They are based in The Netherlands.
I have been down this road many times since 1988 from VNI to Current TV to Citizen News.
So here is my advice to Mr. Loudon and his partner Arend Jan van den Beld.
In fact, it is my advice to any journalists starting a new venture. It is the same advice that Deep Throat gave to Woodward and Bernstein during the Watergate investigation: Â
FOLLOW THE MONEY
The problem with journalists is that they are far too pre-occupied with following the story. Â
When I sold VNI to The New York Times, I used to meet with the Board of the New York Times once a month. Â Well, I rattled off all the great stories we were doing from India or Egypt or China. A chemical company polluting a well in India is one I remember. Â Breaking the story.
The nice folks from The Times would listen quietly and then ask to see the bottom line numbers.
They were terrible. Â No one, it turned out, was really all that interested in our stories from India or China or Africa. Â Even if they were very important.
We were doing God’s work out there.
We didn’t care.
Fortunately, a man named Len Forman, who would later go on to become the CFO for The New York Times Company took me aside and taught me a few things about the journalism business. The first thing he taught me was that it was a business, and if you didn’t have an income, you didn’t have any journalism either.
We had 100+ VJs all over the world, just like vjmovement does. Â But Len Forman taught me to listen to the market. Â Instead of reporting on what I believed people should hear for their own ‘betterment’, Len showed me how to respond to what it was that they wanted.
And what did they want?
The New Yorker had run an article entitled The Hot Zone  by Richard Preston. It was about an outbreak of Ebola virus in Zaire.  Your insides liquified and you bled out through your mouth, eyes and anus.  And it was highly contagious.
John Ford, who had just taken over The Learning Channel asked if we could turn a fast hour-long documentary about ebola. Â After all, we had journalists with cameras all over the world, including Africa.
The very brave NPR reporter with a camcorder Alan Tomlinson went to Kikwit, ground zero for the outbreak. Â Others reported from all over the world – China, Australia, Brazil, New Mexico. Â In 6 weeks we turned out an hour-long doc. Killer Virus.Â
TLC paid us $350,000 for the doc and it went on to win the national Emmy for News and Documentaries that year. Â
TLC liked us so much that they commissioned us to go into hospital emergency rooms and produce real-life Trauma. Â 13 shows at $200,000 per show.
More series and more money followed. Â Much more.
Was this the ‘journalism’ that we set out to do?Â
Hardly.
But it sure was what the public wanted to see.
And it kept all of the journalists employed and happy and working.
And every once in a while we could slip in a story about poisoned wells in India that no one really cared about. Â But it made the reporters feel better.
And it sure beats another failed noble mission.
11 Comments
Michael Rosenblum November 11, 2009
And my point is that the opportunities, as you yourself well know, are generally not in the news business. As for the Trauma issue, my ex wife (and let’s please emphasize the ex) was indeed the EP for the series, but I spent a year with lawyers and a lot of money proving my ownership – which I won. Divorce is nasty and I hope you never have the experience, but this is no longer even a question, thankfully.
Michael Rosenblum November 11, 2009
Nino, please.
I produced Trauma. We are talking about Trauma, Life in the ER. Not the one you watch on NBC. What are you talking about ‘the footage was taken to a big production company?’ I even shot some of the shows, along with all the VJs who worked for me at NY Times TV. We even shot some in Tampa. They were edited in my offices.
Nino November 11, 2009
Michael, you have to start thinking what you say, people remember, what’s convenient to say now might backfire years from now. The information came from you, you are the one that said that six years ago. It was your former wife production company that managed and edited that show, this is what you told us back then. All I’m doing is repeating what you said.
Anyway, on a more civilized tone.
What make you think that videographers are ignoring potential to own their shows. I can’t think of any that at least once in their careers did not dream to make it big. Most of the time after a few attempts it had to remain a dream because to get into the door this is truly an industry of who you know and not what you know. Very few shows ever come from videograpers. New shows are created and produced by producers with a long list of successful credits for shows the public are interested to see. Before even approaching a network they approach the public because the public is the ultimate judge. If they are interested so are the advertisers and without the advertising dollars everything comes to a halt.
I’m not saying of stop trying but when you have a sure gig that pays you good money and is here and now, the need to support a family is by far more important than chasing a dream, especially when you know the the odds for that dream to come true are a million to one.
Even those who make it, and those are usually thru a barter system, very few are even able recover their out of pocket expenses, never mind making a profit.
There’s a shooter on B-Roll with a screen name Newsman, he was always one of your supporter. He made an admirable job creating a web site about the war and spent a lot of his money and time traveling to the war, the last I’ve heard was that he was trying to find a local job to make ends meet.
And what about your friend Gentile, we haven’t heard about him for awhile. He created a documentary on the war, outstanding job, he wasn’t even able to recover his own expenses.
The point is that this business is over saturated with people with cameras all chasing after opportunities that are not there and they have never been there.
digger November 11, 2009
Exactly!
The basic “how to make a professional looking video” stuff you teach does not constitute a marketable skill. In the days of the trains an experienced “driver” could make a living. Running a point and shoot camera is not a marketable skill any more than driving a car. It doen’t matter that the car can travel faster than a train or that a $200 cam can produce broadcast quality footage.
Anyone who is aware of “market conditions” will confirm this.
The Travel Channel is a red herring. They have to hire a certain number of their graduates or they will face significant legal reprucussions, viz: Brooks Institute of Photography. A few cunning video producers, realizing that the Travel Channel is not likely to hire inexperienced idiots, sign up to do the course, set themselves up as ringers.
Nino November 11, 2009
I gotta hand it to your Michael, coming up with new topics every day or two isn’t easy, I know I wouldn’t never had the patience to do it.
So I can fault you for recycling old topics. I had to double check the date because this is the same thing word by word that you’ve started preaching six years ago.
Trauma wasn’t created by VJ,TJ or CJ, it was done like a regular production where the footage was taken to a production company and handled just like those expensive productions that you so much detest. The only difference was that they used small cameras instead of larger ones.
I imagine that after almost ten years you could at least find a more recent success story done VJ style. The problem is that there aren’t any.
BTW, the last statistic that I’ve seen about the chances of being a non established producers and being able to even present new ideas to broadcasters are about 1 in 100,000. And the odds or statistics of getting a show produced or even a pilot VJ style are non existent.
When times were good ideas were a dime a dozen. These days you can get considerably more ideas for much less.
Dreaming is good therapy but not good to put food on the table.
Michael Rosenblum November 11, 2009
Like most of the stuff on TV news, a mix of crap and good. But without the power of distribution or Oprah as a lead-in, no one goes there because no one cares to. To test my theory, put your TV news show on a DVD and try selling it at Blockbuster one evening. How many do you think you would sell? Zero? One?
digger November 10, 2009
“be responsive to what there is a market for” is very different to “follow the money”.
But from what I have seen most of the citizen tv ventures fail because the videos are crap, not because the producers are elitist.
pencilgod November 10, 2009
Give a hungry man a fish and he has food for a day.
Teach a hungry man to fish and he’ll screw up the whole ecosystem by over fishing trying to make a quick buck selling fish to other hungry men.
Michael Rosenblum November 10, 2009
The vast majority of videographers I meet who are trying to build businesses have the skills to make content but they are lost in their going to Afghanistan to make their documentary film. Is there a client for this? Nope. Are they the 1,000th person I have met who is going this? yep! Is there a real market for content (whether you are a shooter or producer, it’s the same issue). yes there is real work. But they don’t pursue it. They want to set the agenda. They want to re-invent what people want to see. It’s a nice idea, but it is no basis for a business.
And to Digger’s point, I am not talking politics. I am talking about being responsive to what there is a market for. I am on the board of an organization that gives cameras and edits to people in India and teaches them to make TV. The rich folks on the board want them to make ‘documentaries’ about how crap their lives are. Once they get the cameras, they want to use them to make wedding videos for the village and actually earn a living. This is very upsetting to the rich people. Go figure.
pencilgod November 10, 2009
I’m not certain where you are going with this Michael. For me following the money is to stick to camera work. I have Producers and Directors that have to worry about getting cash from broadcasters. They chase the money I get paid for my craft.
Why would I want to step onto their money-go-round when I can just stand my ground and clip their ticket as they go past?
digger November 10, 2009
But the NYTimes is going to follow the money all the way to bankruptcy. Rather than risking upsetting readers/advertisers by admitting that there was scant evidence for WMDs in Iraq they followed the money, and lost public trust in the process, boosting the stock of Huffington Post, BBC, Guardian etc., immeasurably. Arriana Huffington and Bill Moyers seem to be the only major media figures willing to shine a light on this shameful episode, and recognize the pivotal role it has played in the accelerating decline of the US media conglomerates.
NO-ONE TRUSTS THEM
because
THEY FOLLOW THE MONEY