Point, Shoot and Ask   

Does television hurt its coverage by using "one-man bands"?

WHEN PETER LANDIS of NY1 saw the memo, he remembers thinking, "It's about time." Buried in CNN executive Eason Jordan's explanation of changes afoot at the network was a thinly veiled warning: "Correspondents would do well to learn how to shoot and edit...and smart shooters and editors will learn how to write and track."
That's what they've been doing since day one at NY1, Time Warner's all-news local cable channel in New York. While the station has a few photographers who don't report on air, the staff is largely made up of video-journalists (VJs) who report and shoot their own stories. Landis says they make NY1 more flexible and efficient, and he applauds CNN for moving in that direction. "I have long preached that there is no choice but to allow for multitasking," he says, especially when money is tight.
Going solo is hardly revolutionary, but--with NY1 as a notable exception--it's generally been practiced only in smaller markets. A recent check of online ads at Indiana University's journalism placement site found half a dozen stations seeking to hire a "one-man band." But the openings were in places like Kirksville, Missouri, and Quincy, Illinois--whose market sizes rank 199 and 163 out of 210. Young reporters expect to have to shoot as well as report at their first station, but not the second or third. They might be forgiven for sharing CNN talk-show host Greta Van Susteren's reaction to Jordan's memo. She was "flabbergasted," according to the Wall Street Journal.
Is small-market television newsgathering really coming to the network level? And if it does, so what?
This is hardly the first time, after all, that financial pressures and advances in technology have driven TV newsrooms to downsize their field crews, and each time there were predictions of disastrous consequences that failed to materialize. When videotape and wireless microphones helped stations eliminate the utility/lighting technicians and then sound engineers, there was no significant drop-off in technical quality.
So is the two-person reporter/photographer team similarly endangered? Let's hope not.
Yes, technological improvements have made it more feasible for one person to do it all. Cameras are lighter and more foolproof, so it's not as difficult as it once was to produce acceptable pictures and sound. But the best television photography is the product of good thinking, not just pointing a camera and pushing the button. And getting crisp, clear natural sound often requires a second set of hands to hold the microphone.
Of course, there are situations in which working alone is the only viable option. CNN's Jordan, for instance, touts his experience as the first Western journalist admitted to North Korea to report on the drought and famine there. He took a hand-held camera and filed TV reports for a week. ABC News' "Nightline" has featured the work of documentary photographers who work solo. And plenty of local news photojournalists regularly shoot stories alone--natural sound packages, for instance, or voice-overs. On occasion, some of them also report and write.
"The more skills you have, the more valuable you are," says Manny Sotelo, past president of the National Press Photographers Association, "but it's not something we want to do on a daily basis."
That reluctance isn't based solely on an understandable resistance to having your workload increased without additional compensation. Even advocates like Landis admit that asking one person to shoot the video, capture the sound and ask the questions on a daily basis can sometimes hurt the product. "Technical quality suffers because the reporter is concentrating on the story," he says, "and there is the possibility of missing editorial information" if the reporter is too focused on the technology.
What's really at issue is this: What will be compromised most in the long run is not the pictures or the sound but the journalism. "We cover complicated stories," says Beau Duffy, news director at WRGB-TV in Albany, New York, whose station considered and resisted a shift to one-person bands. "It puts a lot of pressure on reporters to ask them to shoot and run sound when they're trying to unravel a story at the state Capitol."
You lose something else, too, when you send people into the field alone: that intangible called teamwork. When reporters and photographers work well together, their stories are richer. "The collaboration of two heads is better," says Tamara McGregor, most recently news director at KREM-TV in Spokane, Washington.
Yes, it's possible to run a television newsroom where every story is produced by a reporter/photographer, working alone. But just because something can be done doesn't mean it should be.