I must say, this is very disquieting. I'm glad i got out of TV news when I could:

Walter Biscardi: For now, editing is a commodity and less a craft (http://www.biscardicreative.com/blog/2011/12/for-now-editing-is-a-commodity-not-a-craft/)

I saw this coming a decade ago. Broadcast television is doomed. Nobody likes watching ads, buying hundreds of cable channels when they only watch a few shows, and having to pay to archive the shows so that they can watch them at a decent hour.

We are now in a decentralized Internet age. The Internet is the greatest equalizer our society has seen since the invention of the firearm.

Anyone can start their own news agency with basic equipment and compelling stories. CNN is just trying to recruit and centralize that cheap talent to benefit them. I've been thinking about recording some news-type stories myself.

Yep folk will do it just to see their name on TV (present company excepted :) The upside, if there is one, might be it'll give young talent a start they may never get otherwise .. that is if the unions don't step in.

Hands up those who want to be a TV news editor .. some spots coming up me thinks.

Cheers.

News has always the area where new people came through and quite a few moved onto different areas of production. It's easy to do it as a hobby, the hard bit is earning your living at it and the White House isn't going to allow crews in without credentials.

In news the video journalist has been replacing the traditional crews on local news, which tends to be softer and it keeps the costs down. On hard news the person on the spot can capture footage, which adds to the overall story, but the demand for up to date 24 hour news still needs the crews to tie this material together in extremely tight deadlines.

It really depends on the areas that CNN wants to use this new material and if the traditional staff are now going to be replaced by new jobs that involve filtering and selecting this material.

Every news agency that does this leaves themselves wide open to spoofs, doctored footage, one-sided reportage, etc. and will soon be regarded as only a source of entertainment.

Every news agency that does this leaves themselves wide open to spoofs, doctored footage, one-sided reportage, etc. and will soon be regarded as only a source of entertainment.

This is different from what we already have how?

This is different from what we already have how?

Your question is open to multiple interpretations, or is maybe rhetorical? But for instance, these days if I go to a protest or rally to photograph I usually see coverage by paid journalists who have something to lose, a job, if their reportage is faked or biased.

But there have been documented instances of people being photoshopped in to make crowds at events look larger, so humanity is already doomed I suppose.

The only happy news production crews i've met are ones that have gotten out of the news business

Sad, I wanted to get into the news videographer business, but when I looked into it I was told that only young free interns willing to write, shoot, edit, and get coffee will have work, (sorry I'm 34 to old to work for free).