Video on the web is an ideal lightning rod for the stormy environment surrounding conventional news outlets, agreed the editors and managers who spoke at the Digital News Affairs conference in Brussels.

Predictably, much was made in Brussels about the stormy climate with which traditional newsgathering operations are faced. But among the 350-odd editors and managers who gathered in the heart of Europe from 3-4 March, nearly all were already taking the prescribed walk in the rain.

“This technological storm is going to wash away everything we believe in now,” Michael Rosenblum said in his keynote address at the Brussels Marriott Hotel near the Grand Place. “There is a giant tidal wave out there. … We are headed for the 500-year storm.”

Rosenblum, a pioneer of video journalism, urged editors to embrace the lessons learned from historical milestones of innovation. Storytellers, he specified, are particularly beholden to (and the products of) available dissemination platforms. The mass availability of new platforms is therefore revolutionary — not evolutionary.

“Technology is irresistible and it is deadly,” he said. “If you don't get the technology you will die. … Technology has no sympathy for you.”

The possibilities for journalism delivered via the Internet, Rosenblum intoned, present as extreme a challenge to traditional journalistic techniques just as Jacob Perkins’ construction of the refrigerator presented to the ice delivery business in the 1830s.

“The moment Jacob Perkins invented the refrigerator, the ice business was over,” he said. “And all the crying about the quality of 'real pond ice’ wasn’t going to change it. … It was over in an instant.”

In the same way, the advent of digital photography tornadoes through the business practices of camera companies. When digital technology became available in the 1980s, The Eastman Kodak Company made a conscious decision not to produce digital cameras. This choice can be seen as a gaffe on the path to innovation, Rosenblum said.

“The power of Kodak collapsed because they forgot what business they were in. They thought they were in the film business.”

Inventions in the field of communications technologies often do not find their most apt purpose until much after they come into existence. Gutenberg, for example, didn’t foresee the democratic implications of his printing press when he created it in 1439; it was just a means to bring more Bibles into existence.

“The inventors of the technology, the people we now call visionaries often don’t even know what their invention is for,” Al Jazeera media critic Richard Gizbert said after Rosenblum’s introduction.

As such, it is left to media managers to read the weathervane and decide how to best weave technological developments into existing patterns of storytelling in a way that serves both readers’ and publishers’ interests.

The best means for production and implementation of video for news websites is a particularly hot topic.

“The problem is you have to understand it’s a different game from doing newspapers, but we don't want to imitate the broadcasters,” said Bas Broekhuizen, the editor of Volkskrant TV. “It's a completely new grammar you're trying to bring to the web.”

The Daily Telegraph is considered a front-runner when it comes to the implementation of video on the web. Edward Roussel, a digital editor for the Telegraph Media Group, outlined several strategies his company has implemented to best benefit from the digital storm.

The Telegraph encourages video by holding editors accountable for the corresponding section of the website – even compensating editors financially for jobs well done.

For each breaking story, a “story owner” is assigned. It is this person’s job to plan, commission and monitor each story across all platforms.

Roussel said his vision of a successful website is one which has it all. He displayed an ideal schedule for how the Telegraph would successfully handle breaking news:

• 11:15: Send out alerts via SMS/e-mail/desktop widgets
• 11:25: Have 150 words online, begin soliciting readers’ help
• 12:15: Update story, add images and audio
• 13:15: Add analysis, topic page
• 15:15: Have multiple angles, analysis, opinion (from readers), multi-media (picture galleries, video, graphics)

“In four hours you want to feel you’ve covered multiple angles of the story,” Roussel said.

The availability of cheap cameras and video-editing software make it increasingly easy for journalists (and other citizens) to supply outlets like the Telegraph with material. But this wide availability of storytelling tools and platforms also means that readers are slammed throughout the day with a hurricane of information.

“The need for filtering and selecting information will consistently increase,” said Reiner Mittelbach, the CEO of IFRA, an international research and consulting agency.

Ernest Bujok, a managing editor at Concentra Media, a Belgian chain of hyper-local TV stations, agreed. More and more often, he said, branded media outlets are relied upon by evermore busy news consumers to act as filters.

“You can’t say to an audience in, say, the province of Limburg, ‘If you want to know something on Limburg on video just go to YouTube.’ You know, our newspaper in Limburg makes the selection and they present it to their audience and that’s what the brand stands for. I think the audience always wants the brand to make a choice. If you’re not happy with that choice you can always look for yourself, and go on YouTube. But I think 80-90 percent of the people, they want the brand to make a choice for them.”

When brands like The Daily Telegraph and Het Belang van Limburg can keep eyes on their digital content, the skies are clear for new advertising or subscription opportunities.

“I’m not afraid of the digital transformation causing the business model to collapse,” said Adriaan Bouten, a senior vice president with McGraw-Hill.”I come back to, ‘We're in the information business,’… As long as we provide information to audiences there are different ways to monetize it.”

Mittlebach envisioned a scenario in which a single news brand follows a consumer throughout his typical day-to-day – via various forms of telephony, Internet and television. In this scenario, he said, advertising will fit seamlessly into content.

Of course, the development of this ‘triple play evolution’ depends on technological and demographic factors. But communication technology has come very far in making computing technology invisible, Mittlebach said.

But all of this is not to say newspapers or magazines will be left up a creek in the wake of Rosenblum’s 500-year storm of technology – print will not die, Mittlebach said, in part because of money-saving developments in the printing process. But print-based companies do need to evolve into multi-pronged content providers. Strategies must be interactive, converged, networked and personalised as consumption moves from push to pull, he noted.

So even if Bob Dylan said you don’t need a weather man to know which way the wind blows, a small report now and again does indeed help chart the course.

Q & A

	In the 1979, a British group called The Buggles sang, “Video killed the radio star.” Will video have the same effect on print?	If money were no object, what digital media projects would you like to see done where you work?	Why should a print media outlet to have its own place for video on the web rather than relying on existing, popular platforms like YouTube?	What’s your favourite book?
Pierre-Francois Chatton Swiss Television	Convergence between video and audio media will be a big story in the future. You can have a part of your life with newspaper, magazine, another part with video and so on. And another part with Internet, where you find all.	Public Swiss TV is not allowed to make advertising on websites. The websites are just to bring the people to TV and radio. In particular, we want to attract young people, even if it's not until they are 40, we want them to know about us.	It's absolutely necessary because today, everybody is on the Internet. You can be on the Internet, myself too...	Les bienveillantes, Jonathan Little. Just 850 pages. Or 1200 in German.
Chantal Olffers Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (NL)	No. The print market will converge. Print media often have more of an effect online, where there is a younger audience. Still, paper is paper. You can sit down with it on Sunday morning. There's market for both.	It would be good if we (Ministry) could use the Internet to communicate with society. We support 40 projects per year. Sometimes with not more then 5.000 euros. That goes a long way.	You can put a video on YouTube but you don't have the opportunity to come inside the European Parliament, the Commission. Institutions have to use modern technologies to reach people.	Istanbul, by Orhan Pamuk
Patrick Leemans TV Limburg	It's just another way of transmitting information. It's very popular right now. I suppose in the future it will become even more important, yes. But it will not wipe out print. I don't think so.	Right now, we have 50 minutes of news every evening and we use the techniques of video journalism - the one-man band, promoted by Mr. Rosenblum. People will always want to read a book or read a newspaper.	This is a question we have to answer in years. Because TVL would be one of the many providers on the Internet. We make a difference by covering news locally, that's our business, things that are not broadcasted by national television.	Anything by Shakespeare, I would say.
Ernest Bujok Concentra Media	No, I don’t think so. I think that it’s an addition. I think if you read an article about something which is hard to believe, you should add some video. That makes the article stronger.	We’re working to release national, digital TV channels over the next 2 years. Make TV for smaller groups. With digital TV we can have unlimited channels. We also want to bring Internet channels to TV. Over IP to the TV. That’s the future.	Print media shouldn't do video just to do video. Every print brand makes a selection for their public. You can’t say to an audience in Limburg, ‘If you want to know something on Limburg on video go to YouTube.’	Read the Kite Runner recently and it was fantastic. In English and in Dutch… Good about the story, was that I for the first time understood -- I’m 54 --, something about Afghanistan. I say to the younger journalists who work for us: read a book.
Roger Cassany Vilaweb	I don’t think it will be as strong as the song says, but some things will change. Video is changing many things. So, we’ll see.	Longer, international video, more breaking news. We are not actually able to make a very effective breaking news service. We’re making just a few videos per day. So five minutes each video so maybe 10 minutes per day. In any case, it’s quite cheap. So it is possible.	Ours are different. They are not the same video you can see in the conventional TV. It’s video for Internet. It can be breaking news, it can be something deeper. But it’s not the same as can see on TV or on YouTube.	On the Road, by Jack Keroac
	In the 1979, a British group called The Buggles sang, “Video killed the radio star.” Will video have the same effect on print?	If money were no object, what digital media projects would you like to see done where you work?	Why should a print media outlet to have its own place for video on the web rather than relying on existing, popular platforms like YouTube?	What’s your favourite book?