Introducing The Solo Video Journalist, 2nd Edition, an updated how-to guide for aspiring MMJs

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I used to be an anomaly.

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.

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Two days, two dozen speakers, roughly 200 journalists: a look back at the 2020 NPPA Virtual Video Storytelling Workshop

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We’re staring into uncertainty.

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.

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PODCAST EPISODE #77: Kainaz Amaria, visuals editor, Vox

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I think many of us are reckoning with our roles as journalists – and questioning some of the supposed set-in-stone practices of the profession.

We’re thinking more about representation, and we’re examining where we fall short as both individuals and outlets in covering the communities we serve.

I like to think I’ve been on a constant path of reckoning in this area for many years. I continue to evolve, and so does the world – and the world of journalism. I try to use this space – the blog and podcast – to bring discussion and conversation where it might not always exist.

I found a thoughtful conversation partner in Kainaz Amaria. She’s the visuals editor at Vox, and she’s the 2020 recipient of the NPPA’s John Long Ethics Award, given to “an individual who has, through his or her efforts, upheld, shaped, and promoted ethical behavior in all forms of visual journalism.” She works diligently to promote representation in both the stories she oversees and the journalism circles in which she runs.

Amaria is my guest on Episode 77 of the Telling the Story podcast.

She is also a speaker at the upcoming NPPA Virtual Video Storytelling Workshop, taking place August 7 & 8 online. I’m directing the workshop and am thrilled to bring on two dozen talented journalists to present about topics from COVID-19 to digital dominance. Amaria is one of three panelists speaking about representation in storytelling. Sign up now, and get ready to be inspired.

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PODCAST EPISODE #76: Chris Hansen, senior photojournalist, KUSA-TV

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For five months, the Telling the Story podcast has been delayed by current events – both external in the world (COVID-19) and internal in my life (the arrival of my second daughter!).

But it returns now – and with an all-star guest.

Chris Hansen is a senior photojournalist at KUSA-TV. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, he was a standard-setter in finding beautiful, innovative, and thoughtful ways of shooting and editing stories. Since the pandemic – with numerous restrictions on where he can shoot video and how he can conduct interviews – Hansen has found new ways to persevere. Take this story, where he interviewed neighborhood residents on their front lawns with the help of their cell phones. Or this one, where he used the drone to capture and illustrate the emptiness of Denver’s streets during a stay-at-home order:

Hansen is my guest on Episode 76 of the Telling the Story podcast.

He is also a speaker at the upcoming NPPA Virtual Video Storytelling Workshop, taking place August 7 & 8 online. I’m directing the workshop and am thrilled to bring on two dozen talented journalists to present about topics from COVID-19 to digital dominance. Sign up now, and get ready to be inspired.

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It’s been an extraordinary, isolating year for journalists and storytellers. Here’s a chance to get together

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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.

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It’s like emotional whiplash: my juggle as a reporter and father during the COVID-19 pandemic

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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.

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The COVID-19 pandemic struck as my daughter arrived. I knew I needed to stay on the sidelines.

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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.

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I haven’t written in a month. Here’s why.

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No long post. Just an overdue announcement.

Earlier this month, before all of our worlds became unlike we’ve ever experienced, my family welcomed a baby girl. She is my second daughter, my fragile warrior, my source of unbridled smiles and marbly eyes.

I plan to write more about this new chapter of my life, and particularly how it has fused with my career at this time of global uncertainty. For now, here is a snapshot of a glowing daughter and an overjoyed dada, thankful for every blessing this world provides.

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23 hours in New Jersey: How I crammed seven shoots into one trip for a powerful story

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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.

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PODCAST EPISODE #75: Lindsey Seavert & Ben Garvin, “Love Them First”

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Best Documentary. Best National Feature Documentary. Best Minnesota Made Documentary. Audience Award. Audience Choice. Best Production Design. Best Director.

Film festivals nationwide last year piled accolades on “Love Them First: Lessons From Lucy Laney Elementary,” a feature-length documentary produced primarily by two journalists from one Twin Cities TV station.

Lindsey Seavert and Ben Garvin had each worked at KARE-TV in Minneapolis/St. Paul for several years when they embarked on a series of stories about a local elementary school. That series quickly became the foundation for a documentary, and that documentary has since left an extraordinary mark on the education world. Its main character, Lucy Laney principal Mauri Melander Friestleben, has even appeared on the Today Show.

You can watch it right here:

Seavert and Garvin are my guests on Episode 75 of the Telling the Story podcast.

“With a flicker and another flicker, you can set the world on fire and create systemic change,” Seavert told me. “That’s really my hope: that we’ve sparked a national conversation about how we measure children.”

They’ve sparked it. And last month, Seavert and Garvin were honored at Columbia University with a duPont Award – or, as one colleague of mine called it, “the Pulitzer of video.”

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