The relevant role that videos have in the digital world has forced journalists to learn the techniques for recording and editing live images, thus incorporating a new category to the templates of the integrated newsrooms.
They’re known as videographers, whose role in the digital platform is as important as that of the reporters who discern news in voice or text, because they’re the definitive architects of those visual compositions that users of today prefer.
The old photographers, called graphic reporters, are the ones who integrate the quickest into the learning of video recording and editing techniques, thus amplifying the invaluable skills and experience they had acquired when their work was only for the written or graphic press.
Videography has become part of the subjects taught in today’s journalism schools. It’s like a subcategory of cinematography, the most innovative genre that the faculties of social communications have integrated into their curricula.
Students of journalism or social communications must learn cinema, become familiar with the preparation of documentaries, commercial announcements, scripts and audio techniques, all applicable to the general world of news.
They also have new learning options, such as the monitoring of digital audiences, becoming a new species that we could call “audiometers” until a more exact definition is achieved.
But other professionals who aren’t necessarily graduates of the journalism faculties are also joining the newsrooms. These are engineers, specialists in the programming of technological applications, big data analysists, marketers and IT, all of which are very necessary in the preparation of the novel formats that characterize the digital journals of today.
It’s a new litter that comes from the schools of digital communications. This is their training priority because with the rise and reach of the digital platforms, the media see themselves forced to hire qualified personnel to handle these technological tools and the multiple ways of disseminating the news.
– Translated from Spanish by Randy Rodriguez.
Director's Thoughts 