A Cameraman's Demise...? ( Updated )
An account of a Twitter conversation that i had yesterday with a number of other TV types, concerning CNN's decision to cut jobs. Here's my thoughts...
- Me...
- It all started yesterday when i came across a tweet by @heycameraman in the US about the loss of cameramen's jobs at CNN. After a little searching, i found a few of my Twitter contacts had also seen it and were chatting about it...
- So i retweeted... As did others.
- The link takes you to the website of Rosenblum TV....
CNN Cuts Its Cameramen | Rosenblum TVIn a nod to the obvious, CNN announced yesterday that it was cutting its corps of cameramen. Photographers, editors and other staffers in...- Having read the article, which started with the words... ' In a nod to the obvious...' It describes the way CNN is letting go of around 50 staff of camera operators, editors and the like. Mr Rosenblum seems to think that this is the way that newsrooms should be. Devoid of staff and operators occupying individual jobs, and demonstrating their individual craft of camera work and editing of news and features. Instead, he favours the so called VJ driven model of newsgathering... One person doing the whole job of filming, writing, producing and editing the news packages. Some conversation between us followed, with others joining in...
- I don't think that the BBC has dumped his ideas completely. Many good journalists i know are still writing, filming and editing their own packages. But over the last year, i personally have noticed an upswing in the return of filming news packages using a camera operator.
- To be honest, i don't know the internal politics and fiscal planning of the BBC, especially in the regions where the VJ model was embraced with a little too much vigour for my liking as a freelance cameraman...! I did lose a lot of work to the VJ model, but i have now noticed that this is slowly changing. For how long and for what reasons i don't know, but when speaking to journalists i know, at various local and national channels, It would appear that there is a slow realisation that the VJ model is not the be all and end all to news broadcasters....
- But for me, the reason i joined in this conversation is the way CNN described what its future pictures and stories were relying upon...
“We looked at the impact of user-generated content and social media, CNN iReporters and of course our affiliate contributions in breaking news. Consumer and pro-sumer technologies are simpler and more accessible. Small cameras are now high broadcast quality.”
Taken from http://www.rosenblumtv.com/2011/11/cnn-cuts-its-cameramen/
Basically, this tells me that CNN are going for the cheapest way possible to report and film the news, and this quote got me and others thinking...
