Video journalism

Video journalism or videojournalism is a form of journalism, where the journalist shoots, edits and often presents his or her own video material.

A predecessor to video journalism first appeared in the 1960s in the USA, when reporters had to write and shoot their own stories.Michael Rosenblum compared the introduction of video cameras to the invention of the portable camera in the 1930s: film spools of plastic made photography independent from heavy plates and tripods, and digital video technology liberates TV from heavy electronic news gathering (ENG) equipment, artificial light and television studios in much the same manner. Video journalism makes it possible for videographers to document any event while it is still occurring.

The concept of the Videojournalist using a small camera was invented by Michael Rosenblum in 1988. The first TV station in the world to use only VJs was TV Bergen, in Bergen, Norway. Rosenblum later built VJ-only TV stations for TV 3 Norway, TV3 Sweden and TV3 Denmark.

In the early 1990s, the news channel New York 1 was the first TV station in the US to hire only video journalists and have them trained by Rosenblum. In the mid-1990s, the first German private stations followed the example of NY1, and in 1994, the regional channel Bayerischer Rundfunk became the first public broadcasting station to follow suit and hire a number of video journalists.

In 2001 the BBC started to switch to video journalism in all its regional offices. As of June 2005 the BBC has more than 600 of its staff trained as video journalists. Other broadcasting entities who now use video journalism include Voice of America and Video News International. It also seems to be becoming more widespread among newspapers, with the New York Times alone employing twelve video journalists.

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