Maybe you’ve seen it scroll across your Instagram feed. Maybe you’ve heard it on a YouTube clip. But more than likely, if you’re in a field that involves creativity and craft – and journalism is absolutely such a field – you’ve become familiar with Ira Glass’ famous quote about the “taste gap.”
“For the first couple of years you make stuff,” Glass once said, “what you’re making isn’t so good. It’s trying to be good. It has ambition to be good. But it’s not quite that good. … A lot of people never get past that phase. … They quit. … It’s totally normal, and the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work – do a huge volume of work. … It’s gonna take you a while. It’s normal to take a while. And you just have to fight your way through that.”
It’s a critical message for creators, a light beam of faith from those who have clawed through the darkness. Keep working and creating, Glass tells us, and we’ll get to a place where our taste matches our ambition.
There’s a line I sometimes recite when I feel I’ve reached a professional roadblock.
It’s a punchline from an eighth-season episode of Seinfeld, where George Costanza is trying to spin his meager life triumphs amid countless failures into a grand success story.
“You know,” he says, “if you take everything I’ve accomplished in my entire life and condense it down into one day … it looks decent!”
When I watched two decades ago, I laughed with everyone else. We’re supposed to laugh at George. The line is meant to mock him.
But these days, it’s become somewhat of a mantra, a reminder of the power of the big picture. When I feel stagnant in my career, I reflect on what I’ve accomplished and discover a lengthier list than I realized. When I’m shooting a story and don’t feel like I’m capturing what I need, I aim to stay focused and remember I might feel differently by day’s end. In the moment, I often dwell on mistakes and failures. In the aggregate, I see a career that, condensed into a few paragraphs, looks decent.
And in 2020, when limitations and frustrations loomed over every day, I leaned on George’s line – or, at least, the optimism within it – to push through.
When I arrived in the 10th-largest market in the country, I was one of the few who worked as a solo video journalist – or a reporter who shoots and edits my own stories. There were maybe a handful of us, and the newsroom wasn’t geared towards our interests.
More than a decade later, the state of my newsroom – and most others – has been upended.
According to the latest RTDNA survey, more than 90% of local TV newsrooms use solo video journalists – or multimedia journalists, or MMJs. More than half of newsrooms in market 51 or lower use “mostly” MMJs, and four out of five newsrooms in Top 25 markets use them in some way. Soloists are no longer a position of the future; we are present across the board in local news, and we’re finding opportunities beyond broadcast as well.
But for a long time, no book existed that offered a comprehensive overview of the position and gave instructions and advice specifically designed for it.
That’s why I wrote one.
Four years ago, I announced the release of The Solo Video Journalist, which featured interviews with nearly a dozen MMJs and broke down every step of the solo storytelling process, from shooting to interviewing to writing to editing.
Today I’m thrilled to announce The Solo Video Journalist, 2nd Edition, with more interviews, significant updates, and advice tailored to the updated landscape of video journalism.
I think many of us feel unclear about our futures these days: what our jobs, our lives, and the world will look like even six months from now. I know I’ve grappled with my role constantly amid an extremely busy and daunting time in my personal and professional life.
Through it all, I’ve tried to find those windows and opportunities to make an impact – and to realize when those opportunities present themselves. Two months back, I thought I had found one. Journalism and storytelling workshops were getting cancelled or postponed, and I felt like I could use my background with workshops to produce a large-scale virtual one.
In short, I saw a need in our community, I felt confident I could step up and handle the workload, and I did my best to create a memorable experience for all.
Now, two months later, two days after the conclusion of the 2020 NPPA Virtual Video Storytelling Workshop, I’m so thankful I raised my hand. The workshop was a huge hit. It’s largely because of the absurdly talented line-up of presenters who agreed to take part, but it’s also largely because of the journalists, educators, and managers from across America (and one from Denmark!) who registered, asked necessary questions, and engaged with each other and the speakers despite not being in the same room.
It didn’t feel like just a workshop. It felt like a much-needed gathering and celebration of the journalism and storytelling community.
I say all this not to brag but to hopefully offer an example for any of you who feel overwhelmed right now. It’s OK to acknowledge the challenges of this uncertain time. It’s also important, amidst the uncertainty, to continually examine where you fit – and how you can use your voice and platform to make a meaningful impact. Each of us has that voice. Each of us can do great things with it.
It’s funny: when the year began, I hadn’t planned on attending any journalism or storytelling workshops.
This was abnormal for me. I’ve been a fixture on the workshop circuit – both as speaker and attendee – for years. But I knew my 2020 would be extremely busy. I was tabbed to head to Tokyo for 3 1/2 weeks to cover the Olympics. I had braced myself for several major projects during a presidential election year. And, above all, my wife was due in March with our second daughter.
But as the COVID-19 pandemic began to alter all of our lives, I noticed that the workshops I would have typically attended – or that I had attended in the past – were cancelling their 2020 editions.
This deeply saddened me. We are experiencing a pivotal year for our profession, facing challenges and opportunities in how we tell stories, and feeling an even greater burden to inform our communities amidst a swirl of confusion, misinformation, and noise. And we are mostly isolated in doing so – in our homes, removed from our coworkers, and without the usual opportunities for community and connection.
That’s why I decided to plan a storytelling workshop. And this one’s going to be huge.
I am proud to announce the NPPA Virtual Video Storytelling Workshop, taking place online on Friday, August 7 and Saturday, August 8. The speaker list is full of superstars. The subject matter is both relevant and big-thinking.
I click the play button to log an interview I just recorded. I hear a nurse in New York describe a sight from a recent shift.
“I remember I was sitting at my desk,” she tells me, “and the body rolled by on the stretcher to go to the morgue. And I’m thinking, ‘That’s just joining all the other bodies down there.’”
As my fingers type fast to keep up, a voice in the background interrupts.
“SEE YOU SOON, HOPSIEEEEEEEEE!”
That’s my daughter. She’s two years old. She’s in her playpen, one room over from my office. And she’s putting her toy bear, Hopsie, down for a nap.
For the next few minutes, her high-pitched squeals pierce the sentences and sighs of an exhausted nurse: “They have a tent outside the hospital where they take all the dead bodies” – I LOVE YOU, HOPSIEEEEEEE! – “They don’t have enough room in the morgue” – SEE YOU SOOOOOOON! – “It’s not normal for people to be dropping like flies like that.”
It’s certainly not normal. It’s also not normal for me to process upsetting details of a pandemic – and internalize them enough to write a story – while hearing my toddler blissful in the living room. It’s not normal to keep my phone on mute during the morning editorial meetings, so I can cradle my newborn daughter – just seven weeks old – and soothe her cries long enough to pitch a story.
None of this is normal. We are all making sacrifices and adjusting our lives. Many of us know someone who’s caught COVID-19 – or, worse, lost a life from it – if we haven’t faced it ourselves. Many work in fields where they confront the pandemic first-hand every day, from the grocery store cashiers wearing masks and gloves to the nurse I interviewed, witnessing a body get rolled to the morgue.
March 13th, 2020 was our baby girl’s due date. We didn’t realize how fortunate we were when she arrived two weeks early, two weeks before the coronavirus pandemic fully overtook most Americans’ lives.
By the time March 13th arrived, the NCAA had cancelled the Final Four, the NBA, NHL, and MLB had postponed or suspended their seasons, and the stock market had plummeted. A day earlier, my state of Georgia announced the first death related to COVID-19. That afternoon the United States officially entered a national state of emergency.
This was clearly, also, a journalistic emergency – the kind where anyone who can pick up a camera or write a script is expected to report. I didn’t. On March 13th, I fed and swaddled my newborn, then picked up my older daughter from day care with the knowledge she likely wouldn’t return anytime soon.
I wanted to work. But I wouldn’t cut short this critical period to do so.
A storyteller’s instinct is to rush to the biggest stories. We romanticize it. I’ve heard reporters boast about cutting short weekends, vacations, and honeymoons to cover the latest breaking story. To some degree – and depending on where you work – that’s part of the job. I’ve spent snowstorms on windy, whitecapped bridges. I’ve missed friends’ weddings to cover the World Series and Olympics. I struggle with these sacrifices, but I understand why they’re necessary, and I hope my friends and family do too.
But I wouldn’t sacrifice this. Months before my daughter arrived, I informed my bosses I planned to take four weeks off: two for paternity leave, and two as paid time off. I resolved as many commitments as I could beforehand, and I cleared those weeks to focus solely on family. No story, I pledged to myself, would reel me back.
Then a worldwide pandemic struck American cities, and I felt torn.
Whenever I ask my boss for the go-ahead to fly for a story, I shake a little.
I don’t ask often. But when I do, I know I’m requesting an investment. A plane trip requires extra time, at least one additional workday if you combine both flights. It sends me beyond my market, for a story that must remain relevant for a local audience. Above all, it demands money: hundreds of dollars at minimum for travel, lodging, and food.
I know the stakes. So I never go too far with my requests. I research the cheapest flights and try to minimize my nights away, all while ensuring I give myself enough time to make the trip worth it. And “worth it,” in these cases, means gathering enough footage, interviews, and moments to allow me to tell memorable stories.
I got the chance last month, and I turned 23 hours into seven shoots, for a story that demanded each one.
An e-mail popped into WXIA-TV inboxes from a man in New Jersey who claimed to have found a message in a bottle along the Tuckahoe River. The letter, he said, was written by an Atlanta woman named Mary Carter, but he couldn’t track her down because “Mary Carter” is a relatively common name. He had been touched by Mary’s letter of prayer and didn’t want to give up his efforts to find her, so he reached out to us. I asked him to send me a copy of the letter, and within two hours I had located, contacted, and delivered the exciting surprise to Mary herself. I arranged an interview with her, and the man in New Jersey – a high school athletic trainer named Tom Connors – called in via Skype to say hello.
I hadn’t planned on traveling for the story … until I heard Tom and Mary’s conversation.
Mary’s “message in a bottle” wasn’t a frivolous note. It was a letter of prayer, written by a two-time stroke survivor who at the time was watching her elderly father suffer through pneumonia. On a quick trip with friends to Atlantic City, Mary wrote a series of prayers on paper, folded the paper into a pill bottle, and threw the bottle into the Atlantic Ocean.
Tom found the bottle – and its emotional letter – at his own point of prayer. Around the same time Mary wrote her message, one of Tom’s students had wound up on a ventilator with Guillain-Barre Syndrome. He had spent the last six months visiting his student, Amanda, in the hospital and helping her rehab back to full strength.
When they spoke via Skype, Tom and Mary realized how much they had in common. And so did I.
Driving back to the station, I called Tom to learn more, and I discovered a story that went far beyond Atlanta. I mused that I’d love to fly up to New Jersey for a day and shoot his side, but I didn’t know if I’d get the green light.
But I asked my boss. And I got it – by pitching a short, tightly packed trip that would maximize a minimal stay.
I remember, a few winters back, driving by one of Atlanta’s few art house movie theaters and noticing a unique title on the board: “OSCAR NOMINATED SHORTS.”
Now THAT, I thought, is clever. Why not combine ten short films into one movie-going experience ?
Unfortunately I never followed through. These days, as a new parent, I see maybe one film a year in theaters and many more on my laptop in bed after my daughter falls asleep. But last week, when my sister in Manhattan called and raved about seeing this year’s crop of Oscar-nominated shorts, I was inspired.
At least, I was inspired to watch them on my laptop.
My wife and I rented the collection and were further delighted to find several shorts online for free – including the two that wound up winners. “The Neighbors’ Window” is a nimbly executed live-action film that fits extraordinary detail into a seemingly straightforward character piece. “Hair Love,” which won for animated short, left us in tears in less than seven minutes.
For those of us who work in journalism, there’s plenty to learn. Yes, we tell stories without staging, scripted lines from our subjects, and (typically) animation. But we still tell stories.
Here are five lessons from these two Academy Award winners as to how:
(SPOILER ALERT: I will be revealing key details about the plots of both films. My advice: watch each before you read further. They’re short, after all. And they’re worth the look.)
1. Embrace your limitations: “The Neighbors’ Window” is 20 minutes long, set and shot in two New York City apartments, and contains ten distinct scenes about a Brooklyn mother who realizes she can see into the apartment of the hard-partying twenty-somethings who move in across the street.
It was shot in four days. It cost less than $100,000.
Those numbers might seem astronomical for journalists, but they’re minimal for filmmakers. Yet Marshall Curry – who received honors as a documentarian before breaking into fiction – hustled hard and found ways to produce. He convinced the real-life apartment inhabitants to let him shoot for free; he convinced the actors of his vision; and he convinced himself he could cover everything he needed at a five-minute-per-day pace.
Every story in journalism comes with limits: the extra shot we can’t get, the drive we can’t make, the interview we can’t land. Don’t let those limits prevent you from persevering. Find creative – and compact – ways to get your viewers the information they need.
2. Don’t think you have your story figured out before you shoot it. Speaking of creative, Curry said his four-day schedule was almost derailed … by snow.
“On the second day of shooting, New York was hit by an unexpected blizzard,” Curry said on the podcast On the Mic with Tim Drake. They had planned to shoot half of a long scene on the day of the blizzard and half of it the next day. Since the main character’s apartment featured so many windows, Curry risked continuity issues where half the shots showed falling snow and half didn’t. “So that morning,” he said, “we decided to embrace the blizzard. We tweaked the script to include it. We shot all of the set-ups that faced a window the first day when the snow was coming down, and on the second day we shot all the reverse-angle shots where the window is behind the character.”
You’d never know from the final cut, which works seamlessly and sparkles because of the snow. The blizzard enhances the film, but only because Curry adjusted to incorporate it.
Too often we head out on an assignment with a preconceived notion of how it will unfold. That walls us off to the truth of a story – and the wrinkles that make it unique. In my experience, the most memorable moments are often the least expected, and a perceived snag in the shoot can become an essential component in a beautiful story.
3. Remember how good you’ve got it. This lesson comes from the film’s content, not its craft. In “The Neighbors’ Window,” the main character becomes jealous of and wistful for her neighbors’ seemingly carefree existence, but she ultimately learns it’s not so carefree – and that her neighbor similarly envies her through the window across the street.
It’s a great reminder for all of us in journalism, who cannot avoid social media and are continually bombarded with the highlights of our colleagues’ lives. We all possess unique skills and opportunities. Let’s celebrate our peers and appreciate our paths.
4. Set up your moments. “Hair Love” is a sweet, sweet six minutes. And in those six minutes, it delivers a multitude of moments. Some play for laughs, while some elicit tears and “Awwws.” All are richer because of how the filmmaker cultivates them.
Matthew E. Cherry crams so much life into the story of a father learning to do his daughter’s hair. But pay attention to how he does it. Here’s an early example: the film begins as the daughter awakens and jumps out of bed, beaming for the chance to style her hair. She throws on an outfit, pulls out her tablet, and scans an instruction-providing YouTube page until she arrives at the perfect look. When she finally finds it, the moment comes with a symphonic backing track, visions of the girl’s mother styling her hair, and dialogue spoken by Issa Rae. It’s glorious.
But it doesn’t happen without setup.
Beyond the daughter’s excitement, Cherry also builds up the payoff by showing her scan various hair options with her cartoon cat, who comically nixes each idea. You could point to dozens of directorial choices in the first 1:15 of the film that infuse the viewer with anticipation.
Journalists often forget this when producing stories for air. We scream our reveals at the top instead of laying the groundwork for them – or providing necessary context for them. “Hair Love” shows why setup needn’t be a sacrifice.
5. Represent your community. “Hair Love” also demonstrates an overdue lesson for storytellers of all stripes – and the gatekeepers in both Hollywood and newsrooms who decide which stories should be told. “We wanted to see more representation in animation,” Cherry said in his Oscar acceptance speech. “We wanted to normalize black hair.” He even brought to the ceremony DeAndre Arnold, a Texas teenager who became a news story when he was told his dreadlocks violated his high school’s dress code.
Arnold’s story grew because of journalists and news managers who decided it should be amplified. We make choices in every editorial meeting about what to cover – and what not to cover. It is our responsibility to fill our newsrooms with diverse voices, no matter our backgrounds, and then listen to those voices. The vast majority of us don’t make hiring decisions, but we can make conscious efforts to increase our exposure to media, communities, and individuals who bring different experiences and perspectives into our worlds.
Matt Pearl is the author of the Telling the Story blog and podcast. Feel free to comment below or e-mail Matt at matt@tellingthestoryblog.com. You can also follow Matt on Facebook and Twitter.
Before November 8th, 2019, Paige Pauroso had begun to carve a modest reputation as a solo video journalist with little concern for limits.
At her first job in Lubbock she drove eight hours solo to cover an execution. Three months into her second job, at WBTV in Charlotte, she stood among 70-mile-per-hour winds on Myrtle Beach during Hurricane Dorian. Weeks before the November book, when a post in the Storytellers Facebook group asked for suggestions on strong hard news reporters, one commenter replied, “Paige at WBTV is amazing!”
“I used to joke at my old station that I didn’t sense fear,” Pauroso told me. “It didn’t cross my mind easily.”
Since November 8th?
“I think every local journalist in the country now knows me as the journalist who got whacked in the head.”
