I’ve worked in offices that provided photo and video services for a few years now, and I can’t count the number of times where unrealistic requests have been brought to us with unreasonable deadlines. Or the number of times when videos and photos are returned to us and asked to be changed because they think there’s a better way to do it. Or even the number of meetings where I’ve had to justify why my office needed to exist in the first place.
“Why will it take so long? It’s just a group photo”
“Can’t you just make this video by tomorrow?”
“This video needs more explosions”
“Can you just green-screen this in?”
“Do we really need three photographers? I’ve got a camera in my phone right here”
Working in a creative field can be frustrating.
For a lot of reasons, but primarily because there is no singular way to be creative. It’s all subjective. What works for one person doesn’t work for another. Some like elegant prose, some want their stories short and succinct. Someone may love the use of jump cuts in their videos, others see it as a mark of poor videography.
Regardless of how you do something in a creative industry, there will be people who disagree with your methods or style. 100% of people will never 100% like your work.
However, it’s okay to disagree! I feel should clarify this point. Disagreement is part of what makes creative fields so great. All the different creative perspectives constantly drives people to create and design new methods and styles. People have perspective that will allow them to create in ways that others could never have dreamed of, and it’s only through open discussion that these different spheres of influence can meet and mingle. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with creative and constructive criticism.
My frustration however, comes from the fact that EVERYBODY has an opinion, and everybody has a “better” way of doing things. And when everybody thinks they can do something, suddenly that thing doesn’t seem so special anymore.
The problem with these critiques is the sense of entitlement that usually comes along with it. The “must haves” and “ASAPs” that often only come from someone who thinks that they have an equal hand in the knowledge base. With it being so easy to pick up a phone and shoot a video and upload it to Facebook or YouTube, why should people have to pay for a similar service?
This is a problem that a lot of people in the journalism industry are facing these days. This is the cursed side of the double-edged sword of the internet and digital communication.
The internet has brought along a golden opportunity for the journalism industry. Never before have journalists had such easy and open access to their public and their audiences. Opinion polls are easier than ever with platforms like Twitter. Interviews can be done across the globe thanks to Skype, Facetime or Google Duo.
Stories are no longer fire-and-forget pieces, oftentimes the hardest work now comes after the content is posted. People from around the world can see posted content in seconds, and share their personal and professional opinions just as quickly. Journalists can now engage in the discussion and maybe even come across a few new stories in the process.
These advancements in technology aren’t just limited to an elite cult of “journalists” either. Almost anybody can use these tools these days. Camera and video technology is more accessible than ever, and the amount of online resources and websites that allow people to share content is ever-expanding.
Here’s the downside.
While all these advancements bring about a golden age of communication, it also brings about a misconception as to what journalism actually is.
Anyone can go out and record something with their phone and put it online. Anyone can conduct an online poll, and almost anyone can get an interview from someone via Twitter or Facebook. But is that actually journalism?
The communications industry has actually helped exacerbate the problem in my opinion, by legitimizing and spreading the term of “citizen journalism” around. Journalists are no longer competing with fellow peers to break the latest story, they’re now competing with almost everybody in the world.
One could argue that journalists will always have the advantage because they represent credible news organizations and come from big-names like CNN or BBC. But what about those small-town agencies? And with how easy and casual practice it is to share links and content, do people really care about credibility anymore?
If a fire breaks out downtown, do you care if the footage comes from your local news station or do you care that you can see it on the Facebook live-stream of your buddy who happened to be eating a burger across the street?
This is the biggest problem facing journalism these days
CREDIBILITY
Journalists are struggling to find a way to maintain their journalistic integrity while avoiding succumbing to the same level of quality as every amateur v/b logger out there (myself included in that crowd).
Journalism isn’t dying, it’s evolving. But is it evolving fast enough? This creative industry is racing against the entire world to prove itself as a professional occupation and to prove that journalists are still needed.
There’s nothing wrong with “citizen journalists”, and when used correctly, they can be an amazing weapon in the news industry’s arsenal. But unlike news stations, nobody is fact-checking these news mercenaries. And like any good weapon, these resources needs to be inspected, checked and reviewed for quality on a regular basis.
As for the fact that anyone can do it? Maybe they can (with a few stipulations), but first I think journalists need to do a better job reporting on themselves.
I think that the reason these misconceptions exist and these unreasonable requests for creative services exist is because people don’t understand the “behind the scenes” work. They’ve been so exposed to the flashy marketing of web developers and phone companies that want you to buy the latest GoPro or design your own website. They don’t know what goes on behind the curtain. They’ve waded into the creative kiddie pool but don’t know what goes on in the deep end.
Maybe if journalists can show people what they do in a way that’s engaging and appealing, people will begin to understand why the world will still need professional journalists.
Or maybe they’ll just want more explosions in their news stories.
This is Kip. See Kip Blog. 