POINT, SHOOT AND ASK
Does TV hurt coverage by using "one-man bands?"
by Deborah Potter

When Peter Landis of New York One 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 New York One, 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 station's 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 multi-tasking," he says, especially when money is tight.

Going solo is hardly revolutionary, but-with New York One 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, MO, and Quincy, IL-market sizes 199 and 163. Young reporters expect to have to shoot as well as report at their first station, but not their second or third. They might be forgiven for sharing CNN anchor 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, first, the utility/lighting technician and then the sound engineer, 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 than ever, 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 in the right direction 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 where working alone is the only viable option. CNN's own Eason Jordan, for instance, touts his own experience as the first Western journalist admitted to North Korea to report on the drought and famine there. He took a hand-held camera along 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 v/o-sots. 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 Photographer's 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: that 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, NY, 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: the value of that intangible called teamwork. When reporters and photographers work well together, their stories are richer. Two sets of eyes notice more than one. "The collaboration of two heads is better," says Tamara McGregor, most recently news director at KREM-TV in Spokane, WA.

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.

(This article was originally published in the American Journalism Review, April 2001)