Coming soon to a screen near you: Web video

I could write an entirely separate blog focused on web video. That's how big it is. The growth in web video interest has been astronomical. For example YouTube claims 10 billion views of its videos for the month of September alone. If you know anything about web traffic and metrics, those kinds of numbers boggle the mind. To put it in perspective, we here at kjonline.com and onlinesentinel.com log about 2.5 million page views per month. I haven't done the research, but I'm not sure that too many newspapers, except maybe the largest dozen or so metro-sized newspapers, do a billion views per month. What does the surging interest in online video have to do with newspapers? It depends on who you ask. If you ask me and many other newspaper webmasters, video is a must. It's something audiences clearly want if you look at the numbers. And it's not going away. I read an excellent article in the New York Times magazine by Kevin Kelly on the shift in culture that has been created by the huge and continuing advances in video technology. I've been to a couple of conferences on newspaper Web site development and convergence, a newspaper industry buzzword for bringing print and electronic media together. Video has dominated conversations and seminars. Most online papers I've looked at are doing it now with mixed results. Contrarily, I've also heard complaints about web video from readers. They say we're wasting our time. They say quality is poor. They say we should concentrate on getting the entire print version of the newspaper and more actual news online. I agree with some of that criticism -- poor quality and more news (but not necessarily what's in the print edition). The critics have some valid points about video, but they appear to be in the minority. Some of the videos we've published have been among our most popular online features, according to our web traffic statistics. We've produced about 50 web videos in the last year. My goal was to try to do one a week. We've done that and I think we will continue to do so. For us, video is clearly a work in progress. It's completely new to those of us who've dealt only with the printed word and still images for most our careers. Learning how to shoot, record audio and edit video well is quite time-consuming and challenging for those with limited technical skills. I will write more about our techniques and experiences with video in later blog entries. If you'd like to look at some of our work, check out our video archives.