This week, I’d like to talk about the Miami Herald-produced news videos, which are posted as website exclusive content. They can be found below the main news feeds, and are stationed in two main feeds: “Most Recent” and “Our Faves,” next to a much less prominent AP video feed.
For review, I stuck to the “Most Recent” file. “Our Faves” is a depressing subject mix. I find most functions on websites that tabulate the most viewed items to be a little bit depressing. It is sometimes a little galling to see what people are really interested in (Wrestlemania, Charlie Sheen, Fitness tips).
So, what of it?
I found the videos to be simple, but a nice addition. They all utilize fairly rudimentary camera work, graphics and editing skills, but something like the video of the launch of the new space shuttle makes for a nice addition (I would like to re-assert here though that these videos usually don’t run with the stories they are tied to). They don’t try to reinvent the wheel, the video of the burger competition at the food festival, and the Miami Heat sports talk, are about as complicated as the videos get. But these don’t really do that much, they just put a few stock tricks into play and exemplify the thought of the moment for me that a print journalist with a little knowledge of a range of multimedia tools can put something together that can add value. The food festival video really employs only a (slightly obnoxious) soundtrack, some basic cuts between video shots, an idea of when to pull the sound back to bring in crowd noise, speeches, and how to make an audio slide show. The Miami Heat video has a presenter, sports blogger Israel Guttierez, and makes use of photos that cut their way across the screen like an old-school Microsoft Office Powerpoint presentation.
I like the idea of videotaping and running interviews with people featured on the site. Both of the stories on sex columnist Dan Savage, and Real Housewife of Miami Cristy Rice were written up elsewhere on the Miami Herald, but being able to see these interviews in action adds a nice layer of transparency that I feel uses the new media format well. Although (how do I put this delicately?), Cristy Rice seems… interesting?
I really wanted to like the video on Miami Circle Park, and I liked that they had taken the community angle from the print end and carried it into their multimedia content. I just felt there was not enough context to this video and I didn’t know what was going on.
Heralding Miami 