Video Essay: Teaching and Learning with Alternative News Presentations

Abstract

In television journalism, the video serves as an alternative to the traditional narrative, or voice-over, mode of presentation. The term photo essay or photo traditionally refers to a story or article that features or comprises photographs (Weiner, 1990). Its counterpart in broadcasting, the video essay, features picture and sound combinations in which the two elements reinforce each other, or what Zettl (1990) calls an audiovisual montage. Video essays follow an underlying story line and present information entirely by video, accompanied by natural sound recorded on videotape, including sound bites or music. In this type of story format, both auditory and visual channels may emerge as carriers of story line information, causing viewers to attend closely to the story's due to lack of narration. Television professionals recognize the use of the video in television news as a valid method of presenting the and of an event. Video essays exemplify Mayeux's (1996) sentiment: Pictures provide details, illustrations, and visual information that may be too complex to put words or too emotional to capture effectively in news copy only (p. 247). Consequently, the video also serves as a way to get viewers involved with a story, especially if a videographer uses the subjective camera approach, which transforms viewers from event-spectators to event-participants (Zettl, 1990). Video essays allow videographers to use sights and sounds of an event to bring the viewer into a story. In other forms of news, such as the anchor voice-over or reporter package, someone else tells the story to the viewer, leaving the viewer to play the passive role of mere bystander. Teaching this alternative form of news to future news professionals serves as a first step to universal acceptance of this new mode in the profession. In addition, we assert that in the TV news industry, the treatment of the video as a form of news presentation also increases the amount and variety of reporting techniques broadcast journalists can use. To date, published research concerning the video as a teaching tool and its effects on viewers' recall of news information is virtually non-existent. Here we address this by examining the merits of the video as a conveyer of audio and visual information, as a vehicle to relate both hard and soft news stories, and as a way broadcast educators can teach students journalistic as well as aesthetic skills. To this end, we will define the video as a genre, offer suggestions for using it as a teaching tool, and discuss its merits as an alternative means of news presentation. Video as genre As Rucker (1991) asserts, videotape gives photojournalists, or videographers, more breathing space (p. 51), and allows them to express thoughts and feelings in their visuals (p. 52). News videographers usually reserve the video for light stories, such as human interest features, humorous items, or unusual happenings. Photo essays commonly deal with a day in the life of an entertainer, children making a snow man, a kite-flying contest, or a St. Patrick's Day parade, for example. Occasionally, video essays cover hard news (a nuclear protest march or a presidential inauguration), and intensely emotional stories and images (such as CNN's video on the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which presented video of the bombing's aftermath accompanied by a musical score). Whether the video covers a feature story or hard news, the same standards of journalistic ethics are uniformly employed. Rules against staging shots and events apply to all forms of journalism, regardless of the form of presentation. When producing a video essay, videographers take over the roles of story producer, reporter, and videotape editor. Because of this increased responsibility, videographers must pay close attention to their own actions in the field to assure a realistic and objective portrayal of an event. …