Vlogs Come to the Newsroom

 
By Stacy July 21, 2006




With all the recent news about Rocketboom, vloggers have gained a lot of attention. The video blog is a rather recent form but it is becoming a popular way for people to get noticed on YouTube or other sites. Vlogging’s popularity has also been noticed by the mainstream media.

MSNBC started “Early Nightly” this week. “Early Nightly” is the new video blog component to Brian Williams’ “Daily Nightly” news blog. The “Daily Nightly” started in 2005 and follows the editorial process that leads up to NBC “Nightly News”. The “Early Nightly” follows a similar format and will be live from Williams’ desk or the field. For the premiere week, all the pieces are live from Israel. The video blogs will be quite short, from one to two minutes. There is some talk that this could be added to the YouTube/NBC deal that was made in June. The only real dreawback about the new vlog is that MSNBC requires Internet Explorer for viewing.

ABC News, CBS News, and Fox News, all have some manner of online presence. NBC already rebroadcasts both the “Today Show” and “Nightly News” online after they air on regular TV. CBS is presently working on some kind of webcast that features their new anchor Katie Couric. ABC is an old hand at the webcast, having offered a daily webcast since December with a reported two million views per week.

I feel this is great, not just for digital media but for transparency in the news. Of course, I don’t think that the webcast aren’t scripted but perhaps they will give us a small window into what is going on behind the scenes.

Related:
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