Is the TV package outdated?
by
Deborah Potter www.newslab.org
Consider this: at many local television stations, reporters cover
two or more stories a day and never turn a package. Former news director
Geoff Roth, who now teaches at Hofstra University, says the trend
toward covering the news with live shots and v/o’s or v/o-sots
is not going away. At his last station in Fresno, Calif., reporters
were expected to go live at 4 p.m. with a preview and tell the story
three more times at 5, 6 and 6:30 using sound and video. No package
required. And the network evening newscasts also use fewer traditional
packages these days, relying instead on debriefs.
The
TV package is definitely not the standard for online video at newspapers,
said Hofstra’s Gregg Smith at last week’s Broadcast Education
Association conference. A survey he conducted found that 75% of videos
on newspaper sites are not narrated and most of those that were came
from the AP.
So is there any good reason for young journalists to even learn how
to produce a package? “We have to teach beyond it,” Roth
said. “We can’t stop teaching the basics, how to write,
how to be good storytellers but do it on the fly.” News directors
less interested in whether applicants have a finely honed package
on their resume reel, he said, and more at whether they can handle
a breaking news live shot. ”Thinking on the fly, organizing quickly.
That’s what will be expected of them.”
Perhaps he’s right. But Peg Achterman of Northwest University,
a former television photojournalist, argues that the package has not
outlived its usefulness. “We encourage great story thinking when
we encourage package production,” she says. “We don’t
know where TV will be in 10 years. TV may go back to longer form because
shorter form is on the Web. We have to teach them to write visually,
communicate visually.”
I’d have to agree with Peg. Even if you work for a newsroom
that doesn’t let you write packages, you still have to think
about the elements you’d need for a finished product in order
to collect the visuals and sound required to tell the story well in
some other form. “Package-thinking” teaches shot selection
and sequencing. It teaches listening skills and organization. And
those are the fundamentals for visual journalists, like footwork and
passing for a basketball player.
