Judges from the
National Press Photographers Association are spending the week in darkened rooms at The Poynter Institute plowing through 910 entries in the annual
Best of Television Photojournalism contest.
The NPPA judges watch videos 12 hours a day and argue well into the night. After only one day, the judges have endured three stories involving tornadoes, 15 with fires and an assortment of stories involving people with life-threatening injuries and illnesses. After only one day, they have already seen six stories involving cats. By week's end, they will have witnessed countless calamities and odd characters of every description.
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Al Tompkins
Judges spent the day choosing the NPPA photographer of the year. Results will be posted Friday to Poynter Online. |
This year, for the first time, the contest includes awards for online video photojournalism and editing. But those categories produced some surprises.
Since the first 24 hours of judging have been devoted just to the online video categories, I thought it might be a good opportunity to allow the judges to teach us what makes great online video. Later in the week, we'll talk more specifically about television video.
Online Video, Lessons Learned
While newsrooms around the world are pushing video as a new Web-based storytelling tool, judges for the NPPA national contest were unwilling to award a first-place prize this year in two online storytelling categories. And even though this contest is called "Best of Television Photojournalism," no television station was a finalist in the online video or editing categories. To win, the video entry must have been published online before it was broadcast. Judges said they believe the entry pool is a signal that TV stations still are not thinking of online as a primary delivery media, but as an afterthought after the story airs on TV.
"The category itself is in its infancy, and it showed," judge Erica Simpson, a photojournalist from
KGTV San Diego, said
. "It is obvious these were people who came mostly from newspapers and were trying to learn a craft. They were making basic mistakes in telling stories with pictures. Since we have no bar set, since this is the first year NPPA has offered these categories, we didn't want to set the bar too low and say this is what national award-winning online video looks like. We chose the best of the lot, but this is not where the bar of excellence should be."
The judges said the most common mistakes they saw were backlit interviews, sound bites that lasted far too long, jump cuts that were jarring to the eye and stories that were overwritten. The judges also said some stories used too many special effects. The best surprises were sometimes buried deep in the story, and while many of the entries were heavy on useful facts and information, they lacked memorable central characters. The judges also are put off by natural sound "pops" that constantly and unnecessarily interrupt the storytelling.
Judges' Comments
While the judges were critical of the photographic quality of the online entries, they found a lot to praise in the online video editing category. The judges chose The Washington Post's Travis Fox feature, "A Day Among the Cherry Blossoms," as the winner of the 48 Hour Feature Web Editing category.
I talked to some of
the judges to get a better sense of what they saw:
Stephanie Ottjepka, chief editor at WTVT (Tampa):
The stories breathed a lot more than the stories we typically see on TV. The duration of the shots is longer, silence is used as natural sound, and the photographers compose a shot and let the story unfold in front of it. You seldom see camera movement like pans and zooms. You don't see special effects and quick edits in the winning entries. It is like the still photographer setting up a still shot and letting the action happen. These stories were like still photographs with moving subjects. The winning story was like a living postcard.
I would say that there was not a story that I saw that was journalism that I needed to know. They were slice-of-life stories, and they seem to work well for the Web.
Michael Humphries, news photographer at KENS-5 (San Antonio):
While I liked how they breathed more than a traditional TV story, some stories breathed too much. The pacing was a little slow for what the story was. Travis Fox's story had no narration, but it was a slice-of-life story that presents a video postcard. It is probably safe to say that no TV station would run a piece like this, but it is perfect for the Web. The one criticism I would offer is that these online stories just do not end well. These editors have not gotten the feeling of closing the stories well -- leaving the viewer with a feeling.
Mike Harrity, editor at KUSA-9 (Denver) and co-chair of the NPPA video-editing portion of the
contest:
I see the obvious influence of the tools we use on TV to tell these stories. They have the advantage of a less-specific deadline and a longer format. It is the documentary style meets the news kind of storytelling. This kind of storytelling online will influence what we do on TV quite a bit.
Unemotional Storytelling
While this is a photojournalism contest, the judges commented about how so many of the online stories were narrated by reporters whose delivery was flat and unemotional, and often dragged the story down.
"It's hard not to hold the writing against one of these pieces," said Regina McCombs, a veteran TV photographer and now multimedia producer/photographer at StarTribune.com, the online division of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Veteran photojournalist Mark Morache, KING-TV (Seattle), said:
We saw some good journalism -- journalism with a big 'J.' We saw a lot of work that was not fluffy and not a filler. But what caught me was that so many of these stories had an emotional disconnect.
When you are watching a great story, you see it, you know it, you feel it in your gut. It sticks with you, and when it is over, you say, 'Re-rack it and play it again.'
With the amount of time and space these stories are being given online, these online photojournalists could be doing stories that make us drool and make us want to leave our TV jobs.
"The
Post's story displayed a visual and journalistic maturity worthy of national recognition," Jay Korff, reporter for
ABC-7/WJLA-TV in Arlington, Va., said. "Each story was technically vivid, candid and emotional."
Throughout the week, Poynter Online will constantly update the contest results. Click here to see videos of the winning entries as they come in. NPPA judges will choose winners for both photography and editing in categories ranging from spot-news stories to documentaries.
While you are awaiting this year's winners, click through the winners from previous years, all posted on Poynter Online. These make fantastic teaching tools for newsrooms and classrooms. All told, the links below represent more than 14 hours of video:
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Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends upon the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.
