Newspapers and newscasts: part II

Following up from Rich's 6/11 post on newspapers getting into the online video biz. I checked in with my Maynard classmate Jack Sheard, who's the presentation editor at the Grand Island (Neb.) Independent. It's a pretty small Morris paper, but they're having some success in changing the way they do things. Some of that, Jack attributes to having a publisher who's willing and ready to jump in. They've been doing a lot with multimedia and video casting lately. Jack tells me they've just recently unveiled some revamped pages and ramped up video casts. Check 'em out at www.theindependent.com/video/

"We built a studio in our basement, spent some money getting the right equipment and hired the right people.

We moved to two newscasts each day. Each news cast has the top current headlines, the top events we're covering and sports and weather. They normally last 3 to 5 minutes or so. The first cast is recorded at 9 a.m. And is online by 11 a.m. The second is recorded at 4 and is online by 7. There is a lot of carry over from cast to cast, each cast containing about half new and half carry over.

Immediately after we film the news, we record a 60 second radio version that a local pop station runs. It runs the casts at noon and 6 p.m. Each cast on the radio is followed by a 30 second newspaper promotion."

They've hired a couple young video journalists from a local college, and they're also getting into the video advertising (think like the ads you'll see if you watch tv over your computer).