When I left television news 11 years ago to do multimedia at a Web site based at a newspaper, I didn't know anyone else who had made such a change.
In October, Brett Akagi, the director of photography at one of the best TV photojournalism shops in the country,
took the job I recently left at StarTribune.com. These days, he's not alone in switching between mother ships. More and more journalists are finding opportunities just by crossing the street.
On the Web, news organizations are directly competing in ways they never quite did when they were simply newspapers and television stations. As newsrooms grow their Web sites, they are discovering gaps in skills within their own staffs and searching for ways to fill those gaps.
Recently, they've started looking where they have rarely looked before -- at the competing TV stations and newspapers in town. Newspapers are finding video skills at television stations, and stations are finding interactive thinking at newspapers.
"TV and newspapers are going to be a lot alike in how they produce content, so why not move people from place to place?" Akagi asked.
The lure of another platform Journalists with certain skills suddenly have options they haven't had, and they are taking chances on jobs in a new medium as a way to grow their careers and maintain passion for their work.
Akagi was lured away from TV by the chance to learn Web skills and share his video skills with new people.
"Since I've been here at
KARE over 10 years, I've grown so much as a journalist and as a manager," he said. "For me, it's time to push in a different direction where there's going to be continued and future growth, which is the digital side of journalism."
Others are moving in the other direction, from newspaper sites to television sites. John Cutter, former deputy online editor at
orlandosentinel.com, took the job as digital media manager at
WESH.com in August because "I was interested in being the manager of a Web site day-to-day, the senior manager who dealt with other people in the building."
After trying to piece together live online video solutions at a newspaper, Cutter was attracted to having equipment already in place at a television station -- "having access to live trucks (and a helicopter, he joked) instead of trying to use a sling box that only worked some of the time."
Some of Akagi's friends suggested that leaving the Gannett-owned station was crazy, especially given
the Star Tribune's financial problems. But he thinks he will have better long-term prospects by moving online.
That's why Pete Soby left
KETV in Omaha, Neb., 10 months ago to become the first video photographer at the
Omaha World-Herald. "I definitely saw growth in the Internet," he said, "and I thought newspapers would be in the best position to serve that audience."
Scott Utterback also switched from TV to a newspaper-based Web site, moving from
WAVE-TV in Louisville, Ky., to
The Courier-Journal just over a year ago. For him, it was a way to broaden his skills.
"I was a television news photographer for 17 years before I realized I was playing for the wrong team," Utterback said. "I still shoot video almost every day, but I do it online. I am not sure what the future holds anymore, but I do know I trust the newspapers to forge a better future for the Internet than my former brothers. The greatest thing about my transition, however, is I am now learning the greatest craft of all time: still photography."
Keith Jenkins and John Poole each left different divisions of
The Washington Post to head another direction entirely -- to
National Public Radio. Jenkins took a buyout from the
Post in May, where he was multimedia director, and assumed the same role at NPR. Poole left washingtonpost.com a year ago to be NPR's first video producer.
"I had been looking at NPR, storytelling-wise, for a long time," Poole said, "and kind of thought in the back of my mind that if NPR ever figured out how to do video, wouldn't that be fantastic?" For him, combining NPR's top-of-the line storytellers with news photography "felt like the Holy Grail."
Poole said one of the big differences at NPR is that his colleagues will turn off the pictures and just listen to the audio, which he never would have considered doing before. "I think it's been really good," he said, "in filling in that second half of the equation for me."
Unlike the others, Jenkins has made the switch before. He worked at washingtonpost.com and AOL before the
Post Magazine.
"I really wanted to work on a Web site, rather than working on the side of the legacy media," he said. "Looking around at organizations, a lot were tied to newspapers, and that wasn't appealing. A lot of newspapers are looking at the Web sites to save them, and that doesn't make for a good environment -- it makes for a desperate environment."
Most of these journalists don't think of these moves as transitions between newspapers, TV and radio. Instead, Cutter said, "It's going from being a digital journalist to a digital journalist."
The appealTom Dolan, president of the recruiting firm
Dolan Media Management, recruited Cutter to WESH.com from orlandosentinel.com. Dolan said he's been scoping out people who work at newspaper Web sites as he tries to fill similar positions at television sites.
"Some skills can be taught and quickly mastered, but the Web is a culture unto itself. What we're talking about is immersing yourself in the Web culture," Dolan said. "It's more interactive and immersive, which is very different from TV, which has traditionally been a one-way street."
For instance, one can't underestimate the value in understanding interactivity, he said. "Time on the page is an important metric, and user interactivity is good for time on the page, and that's good for advertising. The early adopters on the newspaper side seem to understand this much more quickly than the TV side, although TV people are coming around to it."
Newspaper Web sites have also been quicker to adapt multimedia storytelling in ways that Dolan calls "building out the story," with interactive maps, databases and time lines. "We think some of these advanced Web editors," he said, "will help TV with that kind of content."
Meanwhile, newspaper sites are discovering that it can take awhile to develop video skills. "If you want to get good at video quickly," Dolan said, "you can hire a TV video person until your print staff gets caught up."
Cutter said it was obvious during his job interviews at WESH.com that the people there liked his background. “I had managed a staff and increased their participation in breaking news and in user participation, and they want to do that here.”
As journalism organizations change (and with that, the jobs within those organizations), how we think about what we do is changing as well. The photographers in the group, not unexpectedly, see visuals as increasingly important for everyone in the industry. But they also see the importance of a broad range of skills. Soby, for instance, said he knows he must work on his writing because the paper sometimes needs a story to refer to the online video, and he's often the only representative of the
World-Herald at a news event.
"Journalists have to have a wider range of skills, period. Those skills need to include writing and audio skills, but visual skills as well," Jenkins said. "There will always be the need for professional photographers and professional videographers, but there needs to be a greater level of visual literacy among all journalists because that's the world we live in now, thanks to the Web."
It may be that this is actually the bright spot in the industry today: that those willing to expand their knowledge have many more places to find work.
"Why not add a copy editor to a TV newsroom? That would be awesome," Akagi said. "Why not add a TV reporter, a producer, to a newspaper newsroom? You'd be stupid not to think about using people from television. And for TV stations ... if we want to do better interactive graphics and better copy, why not hire people from the newspaper?"
It made sense to me 11 years ago, and it makes even more sense today.
