Comparing Online Video from Newspaper and Television Websites

JOU0010.1177/1464884914568076JournalismBock 568076research-article2015 Article Journalism 1 –18 Showing versus telling: © The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: Comparing online sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1464884914568076 video from newspaper and jou.sagepub.com television websites Mary Angela Bock University of Texas at Austin, USA Abstract Video has become a central part of news on the web. As an emerging form of news, news videos are appearing with varied narrative structures, styles and formats. Narrative structure is one way that journalists establish discursive authority. Because of contrasting traditions regarding visual news, newspaper videos might be expected to employ different narrative strategies. This content analysis compared the narrative structure of videos posted by newspaper websites with those posted by television organizations. It finds that form reflects contrasting traditions, with newspaper videos taking a more mimetic (showing) approach and television websites using a more diegetic (telling) narrative style. Keywords Content analysis, narrative, newspapers, video journalism A new medium is never an addition to an old one, nor does it leave the old one in peace. It never ceases to oppress the older media until it finds new shapes and positions for them. Marshall McLuhan (1964)1 Video news is no longer a novelty for newspaper organizations. The ads that are attached to online videos provide one of the few potential sources of revenue growth for the industry and have become, as Editor and Publisher put it, a newspaper mainstay (Bobolo, Corresponding author: Mary Angela Bock, School of Journalism, University of Texas at Austin, 300 W. Dean Keeton A1000 BMC 3.384, Austin, TX 78702-1073, USA. Email: [email protected] 2 Journalism 2014; Fitzgerald, 2008; Sass, 2010). A recent Pew Foundation recent report on the state of the media found a small uptick in digital jobs at newspapers, a bright spot in an other- wise dismal business climate (Pew, 2013). Even the staid and serious Wall Street Journal announced a video platform in 2012, with its reporters using iPhones to submit stories and stream them live (Yang, 2012). As newsrooms of all types work through the ‘web-first’ convergence process, video journalism presents a number of technical, organizational and creative challenges (Ingram, 2010; Sterling, 2011). Newspapers are hiring video journalists, purchasing equipment and re-training staff, some of whom have never held a camera before, let alone produced a video story (Huang et al., 2006; Robinson, 2011). As a recent project on web video from Columbia University reports, ‘… there seems to be no consensus on how to roll it out’ (Tu, 2014). Television news organizations, no strangers to video production, are also still working through decisions about live streaming, copyright, and formatting software. Mobile video, another growth area, complicates these decisions for everyone. In addition to technical considerations, decisions about video are likely to be influenced by the politics and practices of newsroom culture. Contemporary newsroom ethnographies have captured the tensions cause by multi-media demands and what Ruppel (2009) dubbed ‘mono-media sensibilities’ (Brannon, 2008; Cawley, 2008; Usher, 2012). Print and television news organizations have traditionally worked in competition with one another, but convergent newsrooms have placed them, not always happily, working side by side (Bock, 2012a; Klinenberg, 2005; Robinson, 2011; Silcock and Keith, 2006; Singer, 2003). Tensions between word-people and picture people, long present in the newsroom, are inflamed when economics and deadlines challenge professional identities. Journalism schools might be re-configur- ing curricula to eliminate ‘silos’ of media separatism (Claussen, 2009), but it is one thing to change a syllabus and another thing entirely to change a professional’s sense of who they are and what they do. Journalism scholars have also examined the way digitization is changing news stories in terms of content and style. Barnhurst (2013) identified a long-range shift to longer- form political news over time. Boczkowski (2004) documented the online journalism’s homogenization of coverage. Anderson (2011) has sounded the alarm regarding reporters’ new awareness of online metrics. These studies have focused on journalistic story choices, placement, and gatekeeping practices. Video, however, demands attention to narrative style as well, since a video story is produced, composed, and scripted very differently than a text-based story. Now that web video is freed from the scheduling constraints of broadcasting, narrative choices are myriad: Story length can be more fluid; journalists can appear or disappear, and a story might include interactive graphics, animations and a mix of stills and moving images. How are newsrooms taking advantage of this freedom? To take a turn on Barnhurst and Nerone’s (2001) title, what is the form of online video news? This project is based on an analysis of 200 online video news stories posted by newspaper and television organizations in 2011 and 2013, with particular attention to narrative structure, and the way newspapers and television stations – institutions with separate histories, traditions, and professional cultures – are using video in the con- verged media environment. Examining the way stories are constructed offers a chance Bock 3 to better understand modern newsroom practices and can provide insight about how journalists establish their legitimacy. Narrative, medium and authority News is a specialized form of discourse. Zelizer (1990a, 1993, 1995b) has outlined the way journalists use discourse in their stories, histories and cross-talk to support their authority as society’s storyteller. News stories themselves represent a specialized form of discourse: narratives that situate facts into a particular kind of rhetorical construct that connotes truth, temporal sequence and causality (Bell, 1991; Bird and Dardenne, 1988; Van Dijk, 1988; White, 2005). Filmic news narratives are even more specialized, in that they are presented in a factual context, link images to journalistic discourse (in the form of Barthes’ (1977) anchorage or as a script within) and the story’s ‘characters’ (whether subjects or journalists) are materially present, that is, they are somehow seen or heard. The differences between television and newspaper content are well documented, and television’s special form has long been criticized for its emphasis on visuals, short sound-bites and moving graphics (Allan, 1998; Epstein, 1973; Hallin and Gitlin, 1994; McManus, 1994). The rivalry is more than a matter of competing media forms; it is rooted in a historic elevation of word over image. Newspaper journalists have histori- cally been considered and have considered their work to be the more ‘serious’ form of news (Becker, 2003; Zelizer, 1995a). The rise of television news in the 20th century and its eventual emphasis on fires, car crashes and sex served to crystallize, in the minds of serious journalists, the impression of visual news as cheap entertainment (Kaniss, 1991; Kerbel, 2000; McManus, 1994). TV and newspaper journalists also differ in the way they structure narratives (Ben-Porath, 2007; Epstein, 1973; Schudson, 2003; Zelizer, 1990b, 1995b) and a well-established line of scholarship has examined the way journalists establish their authority through their discursive practices (Fiske and Hartley, 1978; Karlsson, 2011; Van Dijk, 1988; Zelizer, 1990a, 1993). Narrative strategies, such as detached descrip- tion, quoting and references to eye-witnessing, are part of a news-writer’s authority ‘toolkit’ (Allan, 1998; Bell, 1991; Zelizer, 1990a, 2007). The new media environment that invites everyone to ‘be the media’ pressures today’s professional journalists to assert their authority even as they struggle with other challenges, such as declining financial support and expanding job descriptions. Somewhat overlapping with narrative authority is the concept of authorship, that is, the presentation of a story’s teller and how that teller is identified (Chatman, 1990; Herman and Vervaeck, 2005). Printed news stories may use a byline or carry a marker from an established institution (such as the Associated Press). Television stories are presented as part of a network or station’s offerings, and are usually presented by a visible human being: These are markers of authorship. But the narratives themselves, the images and the words within also present authorial markers, and this is often one of the key differences between television and printed news (Bock, 2012a). These differences reflect, in part, the way that newspaper and television journalists have traditionally considered the value of visuals (Carlebach, 1997; Kobre, 2004; Lowrey, 2002). 4 Journalism Studying narrative structure in online video news, therefore, can shed light on the ways that journalists from different traditions work to assert their authority. But first, it helps to review a bit of history to understand how these traditions evolved. A brief history of visual storytelling Photography’s invention inspired enthusiasm in many quarters in the 19th century, but journalism was slow to embrace it, for reasons both technical and organizational (Barnhurst and Nerone, 2001; Carlebach, 1997; Clarke, 1997; Rosenblum, 1973). Illustrated newspapers in the mid-19th century did not print photographs but woodcuts, often very subjectively drawn by skilled

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