Watching the Newspaper, on the Web

By: Jesse Oxfeld Never mind the plain old written words you find in plain old dead-tree newspapers. On newspapers' Web sites, the next big thing will likely be TV-style video news reports.

Online editors at newspapers across the country are looking to add video clips, video reports, and even online TV newscasts to their sites, taking advantage of the recently exploding popularity of broadband Internet access.

Kinsey Wilson, editor in chief of USAToday.com, calls "continued, expanded use of video, and real experimentation around how video is best deployed on the Internet" the top trend to watch on newspaper Web sites in 2005. In late November, The Wall Street Journal Online introduced "The Wall Street Journal Video Center," a central location for video clips on the site, which include both breaking news and information from partners like CNBC as well as analysis from Journal reporters.

Video usage will also be expanded in a forthcoming redesign at The New York Times on the Web. "When I came here two years ago from the newsroom," says Leonard Apcar, the site's editor in chief, "I remember going back to the newsroom and telling my friends and colleagues there, 'You know, video on the Web is interesting, but its time really hasn't come, in terms of using it as a news device or storytelling device.' That's changed. I think video quality has improved dramatically on the Web, and we're doing some really interesting, innovative things on the Web site."

The front-running newspaper in terms of video on the Web is likely The News Journal in Wilmington, Del., which runs a new, three-minute newscast, produced by the newspaper and featuring an anchorwoman on the paper's staff, twice each day.

"We've been doing video on the site for almost three years now," says Michael Maness, vice president of new media at the paper. At first they'd run what Maness calls "featurey stuff" -- they'd send a photographer to record a few minutes of footage at a breaking-news event or they'd buy footage from a news service, and they'd include the video clips alongside a news story on the site. Delaware has no local broadcast stations of its own, so area residents soon learned to come to the News Journal site for breaking news, with traffic growing about tenfold from February 2003 to February 2004.

The new webcast launched in October of this year. "I wanted to do something that combined the immediacy of TV with the depth of the newspaper and the interactivity of the Internet," Maness says. "That's what we tried to come up with: News from the future, what would it look like? Let's do it now."

News from the future, apparently, looks a bit like local news in Lynchburg, Va. -- Maness hired Patti Pettite, an anchor and reporter for WEST-TV there, for his newscast. Using original video shot by News Journal photographers, Pettite puts together an original three-minute newscast each morning and afternoon, available for viewing as a Flash animation on the News Journal's site.

Traffic has been growing by about 20 percent each week, Maness reports, though the rate of growth is slowing. And he's already thinking about expansion, examining the possibility of producing more than two webcasts a day, adding sports coverage, and perhaps moving to a live video stream. "But that's down the road," he says.

Other papers, meanwhile, are just trying to get to where the News Journal already is.

At California's Ventura County Star, which just won the top Online Journalism Award among small sites, a redesigned building is in the works for the whole newspaper, and part of the overhaul will include a video studio in the online department, reports Howard Owens, the paper's director of new media. There are currently a few staffers who shoot and edit video, and Owens is hoping to add inexpensive digital video cameras for the paper's reporters and photographers to take out on stories with them.

"I used to be a reporter," he says, "and that doesn't seem too onerous to me." The site has been doing what Owens calls "feature-like productions," but with new equipment he wants to move to doing more "quick-hit video." And, given that Ventura County, like Wilmington, Del., has no local television station, Owens would love to follow Maness's model. "I don't want to call it a dream, as much as a goal," he says, noting that he can't add staff. "It's near the center of the radar."

The feeling is that as much video as possible is beneficial. "With very high broadband penetration both at home and at work, people like to see moving images," says Chris Jennewein, director of Internet operations at The San Diego Union-Tribune. And the win-win is that there's also a lot to like about those moving images for a newspaper's business side.

"It hasn't hurt that advertising dollars are staring to flow, and that advertisers are more interested in using video and migrating some of what they've developed for television over to the Web," says Kinsey Wilson at USAToday.com. Video clips give the opportunity for so-called pre-rolls and post-rolls -- video ads that run before or after the clip.

The Wall Street Journal's new online video center, for example, is sponsored by an advertiser.

And News Journal-style Web newscasts give the opportunity for TV-type commercials. In each three-minute News Journal newscast, there are two 15-second ad spots and one 30-second spot. The initiative is only two months old, and already 85 percent of the inventory is sold. When a final advertiser come on board in January, ad space in the webcast well be essentially sold out, reports News Journal new-media chief Michael Maness. "It's something advertisers have really responded to," he says. "We have car dealers that say, 'I spend $2 million for ads in Philadelphia, which reach only 15 percent of the Delaware market, and instead I could put it on this and reach a highly targeted Delaware market.'"

Maness is taking advantage of his unique market situation to do what newspapers elsewhere are very interested in doing. Which means that once again Delaware is living up to its nickname, The First State.