"I do not believe in the so called multi skilled journalist"

Could you just explain what Volkskrant TV is and why this famous, 90 year old Dutch newspaper now does television?

Just like most broadsheet newspapers around the world, de Volkskrant has lost a lot of readers over the last decade, especially younger ones. We expect this trend to continue. The only way to remain one of the important news sources in The Netherlands is to make up for the loss of reach of the print edition by introducing new products.

Instead of reading newspapers, young people watch television and browse the internet. Three years ago we decided to reach them by using their media of choice. So we've started to produce video reports to accompany print stories. At first these reports only were published on the web. Now people can also watch them on their iPod or in their living room, when they have access to digital television. Furthermore de Volkskrant partners with several local, national and even international broadcasters. Volkskrant TV provides them with reports, editorial help and even complete concepts for shows.

Did you train your reporters to produce video? And do they just produce video or do they write as well?

We started out with three reporters from the print edition and retrained them as video journalists. After a couple of months, one of them decided to go back to just writing, the other two went on. After that two more print colleagues were retrained. But we hired some journalists with experience in television as well. Now the team is a good mix of retrained newspaper reporters and television professionals. In my opinion every journalist can learn to be a video journalist, as long as he or she is not afraid of the technical aspects (camera, computer, et cetera). Journalism is about telling good stories and in that regard there's no difference between writing and filming. But to become a real good video journalist, you need talent and time. A lot of time. Only by spending long hours behind the camera and the edit set, telling your stories in video becomes like a second nature. That's why I do not believe in the so called multi skilled journalist, or in ‘convergence by hardware’. Just handing out cameras to newspaper reporters will – in my opinion – not bring you video reports with the quality you want. People can have multiple talents, but they can't develop them all at the same time. At the start of the project, the reporters had to write and film at the same time. They really got frustrated because they felt they couldn't give both stories - the one in print and the video report - the best they could offer. Of course there's also a difference in workflow: a video report requires a lot more preparation than a written one. Eventually we created a separate desk for video reporting. And unless there's a good reason (a real big scoop, a very expensive journey or a unique chance to visit a certain place) video journalists don't write for the newspaper.

Who do you view as your competitors these days – NOS, CNN?

No, we don't consider the big news stations as our competitors. We don't pretend we can cover all the news with a talented, but small team of VJ's. We buy our news videos from the press agencies. Our own reports a more like features, the stories behind the news. On the web, we compete with other (news)sites that offer video, ranging from the websites of other newspapers to YouTube and the likes. To distinguish our clips from the competition, we often use a reporter to tell the story in front of the camera, but only when he or she really can do something more than just talking into a microphone. And we do a lot of what I call ‘the expert clips’: a well known expert from the print edition (film critic, car expert, travel reporter et cetera) talks on camera about his or her own subject. My advice is: put your best journalists in front of the camera instead of behind it!

How have digital technologies impacted the quality and the cost of the stories you produce?

That’s easy: The price drop for camera’s and computers that are able to edit video on, was one of the main drivers to start with video in the first place – next to the growth of bandwidth of course. We can only produce moving images because of the digital revolution. A revolution that– just like the development of video journalism as a discipline in its own right - has only just begun!

 

Biography

Bas Broekhuizen (1975) studied History in Amsterdam. He joined de Volkskrant – one of the leading broadsheets in The Netherlands – in 2000. As a web editor and a project manager he helped build the online strategy of the paper.

In 2005 he headed an experiment on multi skilled journalism. Three newspaper reporters were trained as video journalists so they could create video reports to accompany their print stories. The main conclusion of the project: writing an article for the newspaper and producing a video report on the same subject is not a good combination when you want both stories to be the best you can offer. To get quality, you need a dedicated team of talented video journalists.

Since 2006 Bas has been the editor and producer of Volkskrant TV, a department of the newspaper that creates video clips for the web, IPTV and broadcast television. His team is a mix of retrained newspaper reporters and television professionals. They operate on their own, in small teams or together with their colleagues from the print edition.

Their efforts can be seen at www.vk.tv