A little while ago, an old college classmate of mine told me that the local newspaper was looking for an online video guy, and they had a very clear vision of what kind of video they wanted to feature content. I think that this is very much inline with what they were looking for.
Now, I don’t know anything about the Rocky Mountain News, but I think that this is video journalism par excellence. Why? Because it is not objective. It is completely subjective, told from the perspective of these city journalists who are now out of a job. But this kind of journalism is important because it puts things into a human perspective. In other words. It gives it context. As Hunter S. Thompson put it, “With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.”
The sad irony, though, is that this is the video obit for the Rocky Mountain News, whose last day in operation is today. It’s so sad because, as one of their columnists put it, the “paper won four Pulitzers since 2000, but couldn’t weather economic storm.” The watchdog of journalism is going the way of the dodo.
Of course, bloggers are just as equipped to be subjective as any other blathering demagogue is, but there’s something to be said of the value of a media outlet who (at least endeavors to) serve its own pompous glory, but the good of a community, its people, and their democracy.
Final Edition from Matthew Roberts.