Visual Editors

Colin Mulvaney of The Spokesman-Review was in town to judge the North Carolina Press Photographers Association awards, and he gave a passionate speech on embracing video journalism.

Of course he told us about avoiding common signs of amateurism by panning and zooming in and out excessively. He said to always plan ahead so that you get both actions and reactions on video. Tripods, while cumbersome, provide stability in shots. Voiceover is okay. If you can’t justify the use of the video, it’s not a video story. And so on.

Some had cautioned him once to guard his wisdom, but he said he felt quite the opposite, that this kind of storytelling is something everyone should be embracing and it would be impossible to not share its potential. He has been blogging almost since switching his photojournalist career for one in video journalism a few years ago, but in January he refined his blog (larger video boxes, embedded clips, and letting the videos do the talking) and viewership skyrocketed when the link was posted to other sites. Mulvaney says that the online newspaper’s role is to become a link in the social networking chain of websites: Flickr, Facebok, YouTube, etc. Coveting information is a thing of the past. The time is now to share.