Disqus - Latest Comments for rosenblum

Re: Taking the leap: Why I'm leaving TV news after 24 years

rosenblum — Thu, 25 Oct 2018 15:12:09 -0000

When you went into the TV news business, the only people who had video cameras were the people who worked for TV stations or networks (for the most part) - and the only real serious video 'creation' jobs were making news (or maybe wedding videos).
Since then, a LOT has changed. First, everyone and their brother has a 4K camera and editing software (3.2 billion smartphones worldwide); and 'average people' are uploading a mind boggling 400 hours of video to YouTube every minute. And Youtube is but the tip of the iceberg - Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and just about everyone else now run video 24/7 - so you are getting out at a very good time.

That having been said, you have a unique skill set - you can tell a great story in video, and for that skill the market has exploded. Every company, every business, every NGO, every no profit, every pizza parlor is now online, and every one of those businesses needs great video in an extremely competitive world. Your future is not truncating - on the contrary - it is now open to a universe of possibilities that did not even exist when you first started in TV News.

Trust me, you have made the right move. You may not realize it yet, but a year from now, I can guarantee that you will be saying 'I cannot believe I waited so long!'

Re: Are Smartphones the Future of TV News? Part I

rosenblum — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 15:46:53 -0000

Workflow is always the problem with new tech. Old companies try and plug new tech into old ways of working. Does not work. In 1874 William Orton, the President of Western Union was offered the chance to buy Alexander Graham Bell's new invention, the telephone, for $100,000. Orton passed. The only use he could see for a telephone was possible to relay messages from telegraph centers to recipients of said telegrams. But he thought people preferred the telegram boys and the printed messages. Just like having a few iPhones in the newsroom.

Re: What Trump TV Could Look Like

rosenblum — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 14:32:39 -0000

Allow me to piggyback on my old friend Steve Safran's far better credentials and readership
http://www.huffingtonpost.c...

Re: Huffington Post Declares “Donald Trump is Going to Be Elected” – The Polls Only Show Hillary’s Winning Because People Are Too Embarrassed To Openly Support Trump, But When I...

rosenblum — Tue, 23 Aug 2016 13:59:54 -0000

I like being an elite. I believe in elitism. We accept it in sports. Some people are just better at basketball or football or hockey than anyone else. That's how the world is. We don't expect the rabble to rise up and demand that the too get to play in the Super Bowl just because. The world of thought and intellect is the same. There are some people who are just smarter than others. That's life. But you are not allowed to say that anymore. That is the ultimate PC. The rise of the unwashed masses, the illiterates, the semi literate, The Fox News watchers. The Trump people. Here they come. They are angry, Life has not been fair. Now they will take what is rightfully theirs. God help us. The Founding Fathers in this country were the ultimate elitists- extremely well educated and generally brighter than everyone else. Thank God Trump and his TV pals were not around in 1776, but here they are now. Have a good time.

Re: Huffington Post Declares “Donald Trump is Going to Be Elected” – The Polls Only Show Hillary’s Winning Because People Are Too Embarrassed To Openly Support Trump, But When I...

rosenblum — Tue, 23 Aug 2016 13:44:18 -0000

Actually, it is all about entertainment. It is about amusing and holding the attention of the masses. It is Bill Clinton talking about his underwear or playing the sax on Arsenio. It is an entertainment culture. Trump is but one more slide down into the morass.

Re: Huffington Post Declares “Donald Trump is Going to Be Elected” – The Polls Only Show Hillary’s Winning Because People Are Too Embarrassed To Openly Support Trump, But When I...

rosenblum — Tue, 23 Aug 2016 13:34:41 -0000

Hi Mark. I believe I am on the wrong side of history, unfortunately. History no doubt belongs to the unwashed and illiterate masses. (Is that politically incorrect to say? Sorry. Well, they do exist and they are now taking power). This is the way of the world. This was the basis of the Russian Revolution, The Chinese Revolution and lots of other rather unpleasant trends in recent history. Now it comes to America. The great, illiterate, semi-literate, generally uneducated masses are rising with Mr. Trump as their cheerleader. This is the fate of the west, sorry to say. Oh well, I am old, and now I am spending more and more time in the UK. This is the way of the world, and there is not much you can do to hold back the tide. Such is life.

Re: Huffington Post Declares “Donald Trump is Going to Be Elected” – The Polls Only Show Hillary’s Winning Because People Are Too Embarrassed To Openly Support Trump, But When I...

rosenblum — Tue, 23 Aug 2016 06:33:42 -0000

As I wrote the HuffPo piece, I am intrigued by what you have done with it. In any event, your note (there are many, but I like this one the best) "2. Trump is FUNNY; People Like Funny. And, Hillary is Anything But—Who would you rather listen to? Follow? Someone funny or someone shrill? I know my answer. - more than proves my point. We ARE an entertainment culture. That is all we are. That is what 40 years of TV has done to us.

I doubt Washington was a million laughs (he wasn't), and Lincoln actually had a pretty high pitched voice. But that is in the past. Today it's all about who is the most entertaining. Terrible, actually, but that's the way it is.

Re: Hillary’s Plan To Target Trump Will Fail. Trump’s Plan To Target Hillary Will Work. Here's Why.

rosenblum — Wed, 18 May 2016 18:14:37 -0000

all this is pointless. Trump is going to get elected because he is great TV. Hillary is going to lose because she is crap TV. This is the nexus of American society. Nothing else matters to the average voter. It's all about entertainment now.

Re: Can photographers restore their devastated business?

rosenblum — Tue, 10 May 2016 12:44:16 -0000

Photography as a business is finished.
Sorry, but this is the rather unpleasant truth.
It was a victim of technology.
Today, everyone in the world has a camera in their phone and they take pictures and share them all day long. More photos are uploaded to Instagram every two minutes than were taken in the entire 19th Century. Now there is a sobering statistic.
Who is going to pay for a photograph?

That having been said, the technology that destroyed photography as a profession has also created an entirely new profession for photographers who can make the transition.

Where there were once three television networks with a total demand of 64,000 hours of content a year, there are now hundreds of cable channels (with a demand of 4.5 million hours of content a year), plus an Internet that consumes video endlessly.

No one is buying photographs any longer, but there is an exploding market for video content (not videographers!), but rather finished and delivered professional content.

The same skills that made for a great photographer can be translated to video and the creation of video content - FINISHED video content.

I have trained hundreds (perhaps thousands) of photographers to do this. A great eye is still a great eye and you can't teach that to someone, but you can apply it to a new medium that pays.

Re: WATCH: So you want to become a video journalist?

rosenblum — Sat, 13 Feb 2016 13:05:06 -0000

Sorry Matt, Most of what is on the Internet is, to be blunt, crap. There is some good, but a whole lot terrible. The different between just picking up a camera and starting to shoot and really learning the craft is like the difference between typing and writing.

I also wonder where you will find yourself in 5 years or so. The ability to move from a simple short video to actually producing content that people (i.e. networks) will pay for (and I mean real money) is night and day.

I have taught more than 40,000 people to be VJs, one way or the other. In my experience, you get what you pay for and in the end, a superficial understanding of how to make video may indeed be a blast, but it is no pathway to a stable lifetime career

Re: WATCH: So you want to become a video journalist?

rosenblum — Fri, 15 Jan 2016 10:53:30 -0000

This is all great to read with the exception of his advice that you can learn all you need to know about VJ on Youtube. Hardly. Most of the 'teaching' on Youtube is both wrong and terrible! And I don't think you can learn much about good journalism from Youtube either. There are other, better but equally faster ways. Trust me.

Re: New York Times to re-tool video operation, with buyouts and new hires | POLITICO

rosenblum — Tue, 08 Dec 2015 10:14:06 -0000

National Geographic, for starters

Re: One journalist’s journey from ESPN to shining shoes

rosenblum — Sun, 22 Nov 2015 15:46:50 -0000

Many print journalists (and photo) have made a successful transition to video. That is a field that is at least growing.

http://www.thevj.com/vjworl...

Re: Trump’s press

rosenblum — Wed, 26 Aug 2015 09:33:24 -0000

You take a country, have them watch Reality TV 4.5 hours a day, every day for 20 years, and this is what you get. Neil Postman, whoever you are, you called it right.

Re: Are There Too Few Analysts In The Field Of Journalism?

rosenblum — Wed, 12 Aug 2015 11:27:09 -0000

Rich, call me when you find someone who can 'make it happen', financially, that is. There are plenty of people who deliver very high quality journalism already, and most of them are going broke. Trust me. I know. I was the President of NY Times Television, and that company's founder. I took the Times into video (along with a lot of other magazines and newspapers). Multi media or print, the market just is not there for journalism. No one will pay for it - at least not enough people to make it the viable business it once was. And without real revenue, you have nothing but hot air.

Re: Are There Too Few Analysts In The Field Of Journalism?

rosenblum — Tue, 11 Aug 2015 16:39:42 -0000

Yes, well this began as a discussion about news and journalism, and I don't see Netflix or anyone else running to license news - and they won't, because there is no money in it. Unlike House of Cards, News has no long tail. In fact, it has no tail - besides the fact that no one under the age of 50 even watches it or reads a newspaper.

So, as I said in the beginning, all these ideas about 'journalism' - analysts, or whatever, are worthless unless you solve the revenue issue. If there is no revenue, there is no journalism - and Amazon and Netflix and the rest aren't going to pony up the money to pay for journalism that no one really wants to pay for - and you can't rerun or monetize

And call me when a news app makes a profit.

Re: Are There Too Few Analysts In The Field Of Journalism?

rosenblum — Tue, 11 Aug 2015 03:21:58 -0000

and to where, exactly, do you think the revenue is moving?

Re: Are There Too Few Analysts In The Field Of Journalism?

rosenblum — Mon, 10 Aug 2015 16:28:08 -0000

Multi Media, twitter, etc are all very interesting, but at the end of the day if there is no revenue, there is no journalism. And for the most part, in Twitter and Social media and multi media etc.. there is no revenue. Pretty though they are. The only place that there is any money to be made is in television, and that now is beginning to go the way of newspapers- note the30% drop in TV stock prices last week following Disney's announcement of sub payments for ESPN. If ESPN can't hold an audience, who can?

The whole media world is being turned upside down because of the Internet and very very cheap digital technologies and conventional media companies, and journalists, are amongst the first victims. There is no easy solution.

Re: Are There Too Few Analysts In The Field Of Journalism?

rosenblum — Mon, 10 Aug 2015 12:39:04 -0000

Stewart and Colbert at TV shows. That's entertainment. You can make a lot of money in TV. Tons. Huffington Post has yet to turn a profit. Print is dying. Bloggers making money? Are you kidding? Maybe .0001% Likewise Youtube. This idea of making a living from social media is a myth. I write for HuffPo for free. If I had to live on my revenues from Social media I would be living in a cardboard box. Most newspapers and magazines are on the ropes. Business Week (which had some pretty good content) was sold for $1. Newsweek is gone and Time Magazine was cut loose by Time/Warner because it is dead as a dodo. The staple is thicker than the magazine these days. Nope. The revenue model of journalism is kaput.

Re: Are There Too Few Analysts In The Field Of Journalism?

rosenblum — Mon, 10 Aug 2015 11:13:45 -0000

This is all very interesting but it fails to address the basic problem, which is not content, nor even quality of content, but rather revenue. That is what is killing journalism. No revenue.

Re: Is Mobile Advertising Dead?

rosenblum — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 12:30:14 -0000

If you're gonna do this, at least you should put in the link to the original article.

http://www.huffingtonpost.c...

Re: AFP: All journalists need to be able to shoot and edit video

rosenblum — Thu, 04 Jun 2015 09:08:28 -0000

And i you want to learn, here is the very best place to do it this summer: At The Guardian!

http://www.theguardian.com/...

Re: Judy Woodruff to PBS ombud: ‘What you wrote was unfair’

rosenblum — Fri, 22 May 2015 18:19:18 -0000

Bravo Judy Woodruff

Re: How AJ+ reported from Baltimore using only mobile phones

rosenblum — Thu, 07 May 2015 11:12:43 -0000

While this is admirable, I fear that you are still using iPhones as an 'adjunct' to 'conventional' reporting. i.e. you are getting clips and bits here and there. The iPhone is a camera. A professional video camera. Period. It is, in fact, far superior to the giant 'professional' Umatic cameras that we used when I started at CBS News. Far superior. The fact that it is small is no more surprising (or intimidating) than the fact that a Mac Air is smaller than an IBM Mainframe - yet VASTLY more powerful.

So take this remarkable piece of technology and start to produce complete reports - edited. Polished. Professional. Complete. You can do it. The machine is already in your hands.

Also, i can't understand why you are sending out "two-person" reporting teams. What does the 'other' person do? The camera is but a digital pencil in the hands of a journalist. Do newspapers send out 'two person teams? Do photo journalists?" Two people -> Two iPhones.

Will iPhone replace 'legacy journalism"? Will iPhones replace dial up telephones? Hopefully. But only if you have the courage to ditch your dial up Bell Telephone.

PS -as for the audio issue, the audio on DSLRs is about as crap as the audio on iPhones. Both can be quickly solved by aux. mics. This is not a big deal.

Re: Dear journalism student, the world needs you

rosenblum — Sat, 18 Apr 2015 12:37:24 -0000

Haircuts are not, as a rule, (though I could be wrong) subject to mass production. Journalism is. One is a personal service, the other is a mass media. You could, I suppose, craft every news story for one person - and one at a time. But I don't think you would have much of a future, though you would doubtless make some very beautiful work.