ONLINE JOURNALISM
INTERVIEWS
Jaron Lanier
Video comes
Quietly, without much fanfare, online news sites have begun making good
use of a revolutionary new information tool. It's called video. Until now, anyone seeking to capture the flavor and
texture of a news event was limited to surfing the old-fashioned way: with
a TV set and remote control. News sites on the Web have offered the occasional
QuickTime video, but that required long download times, typically several
minutes for just a 30-second clip — hardly worth the trouble. But a fairly new technology called streaming video allows
users to watch news clips instantly, at the click of a mouse, though the
quality is a bit herky-jerky if you have anything less than an ISDN line. The New York Times
on the Web began offering streaming video during its coverage of Princess
Diana's death in August. Now it offers video with one or two stories roughly
four days a week. "We're still in a learning curve," says Bernard
Gwertzman, the site's editor, "but it's evident there are people who
think a news operation on the Internet should have components beyond the
printed word — video, animation, multimedia. At this point, it's a
minority of people who like the bells and whistles, but we'll go the extra
length for them." For the most part, the Times offers video from APTV,
a division of the Associated Press that employs video journalists around
the world. But there have been other occasions when a Times reporter has
used a digital camcorder to record a news event, such as the hackers convention
last year in the Netherlands. "In a year or two we'll be seeing newspaper
reporters doing that routinely," Gwertzman says, "just as they
now put up sound bites on an audio clip." Jim Kennedy, director of multimedia services for the
Associated Press, notes that 150 newspaper and broadcast Web sites have
access to APTV streaming video through The
Wire, though few of them are taking full advantage of it yet. "The beauty of the Web is that it gives us the
ability to cover a story through print, photos, graphics, sound and video,"
Kennedy says. "Streaming video will become much more prevalent, especially
as these online news sites move to the TV screen. It's tough to read a story
from across the room, but with products like Web TV, it works just fine
if the story is mostly visual and audio."
"We believe that, going forward, you have to be
a player in video to be a player in news on the Web," says Scott Woelfel,
editor in chief of CNN Interactive. "People always ask us how they can see something
that relates to what they're reading. This takes a big step in that direction.
Video rounds out the story. Within a year or two, when people hear of a
news event, they're going to start thinking, 'I want to watch that on the
Web.' '' CNN VideoSelect lets users browse through dozens of
options: individual stories with two-minute video reports; business news;
weather news; archival footage of major stories; and raw background footage
of unaired news reports, such as the complete tape of a news conference.
Woelfel rightly observes: "Just because an editor decided not to air
part of a press conference doesn't mean it's not newsworthy to somebody.
It comes down to user choice, which is so important on the Web." The site also allows users to call up recently aired
CNN shows such as "Larry King Live," "Crossfire," "Burden
of Proof" and "Computer Connection," providing users with
complete footage of the shows they missed, bios of the guests, links to
background information and bulletin boards, and complete transcripts of
the show. Two or three times a day, CNN Interactive provides live video
of a breaking news event. "The network-based Web sites like ABC and MSNBC
have an advantage over the big print publications because they've got the
video," Woelfel says. "They just have to figure out what to do
with it." Says the Times' Gwertzman: "Just as the cable and
TV companies have gotten into the written word on their Web sites, we in
the print business are now getting into their traditional turf." It's going to be a extraordinary rivalry to watch.
to the Web
CNN, the New York Times and APTV have begun experimenting
with streaming video to present news clips on the Net
This column appeared in the January-February 1998 issue of The American
Journalism Review.
By J.D. Lasica
THAT IS ALSO THE VISION of CNN Interactive, which has gone online print publications
one step better. Until now, a video clip on the Web has been a small adjunct
to a mostly text-based story, with an image about the size of a matchbook.
But any day now, the network will begin offering a streaming video service
called CNN VideoSelect in which the video (150 percent the size of the typical
video image) and audio are the main focus while the text and links are the
supplements.
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