TeahePrint The one-stop multimedia destination for news and views. Since its inception in 2017, it has set out to provide a true multimedia experience of news, however inconsistent it may seem for a website that calls itself ‘ThePrint!
Today, that virtual reality is a reality. ThePrint has more than two million YouTube subscribers, and although podcasts are still playing catch-up, listeners are downloading more and more audio – about four lakh downloads a month. ThePrint publishes over 30 original video programs every week, apart from news and clips from agencies such as Asian News International (ANI).
This month, I decided it was time to recognize ThePrint’s video section, at least partly because the team huddle behind their cameras, bury their heads in their Macs, and never even notice . I am thinking of Upendra Yadav, who sits quietly at his desk, clicking and clicking for hours.
Therefore, it’s time to pay a little attention to them.
Read also: How Shekhar Gupta clears the clutter and what people tell ThePrint about it
look at the scenery
This is the era of seeing and believing. The reader has now become the ‘viewer-reader’.
Think about how we spend our days and nights on YouTube and OTT platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. See how is Shahrukh Khan’s film Pathan Earned over Rs 400 crore worldwide in four days – a record opening for Bollywood.
And then there’s the ubiquitous social media – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. The last of the three is a pure visual treat; Twitter has a word limit, and Facebook is as much about photos and videos as it is about written posts. Finally for the podcast – According To forbesThere are over 400 million podcast listeners globally, and the number is growing each day.
Prince Harry’s memoir ExcessiveFastest Selling Non-Fiction book World history on its first day of publication cannot match these figures, nor, I imagine, can Harry Potter.
time for illusory crime, As a loyal and dedicated reader, I spend almost as much time on television/OTT as I spend on reading.
And so it is with journalism.
All self-respecting online news websites and web editions of newspapers or magazines are multimedia organizations that combine print with video and podcasts.
Janaki Dave, news editor overseeing ThePrint’s video team, says, “What Gen-Z would like to see or hear, this is the reality.” It is in recognition of this shift from print to audio-visuals that ThePrint is expanding its video section.
Read also: Are you happy with our headlines? we apply this rule
View Beyond CTC
Prompt readers to remember what they have seen on ThePrint And the quick answer would be: ‘CTC’ and ‘Shekhar Gupta’. Cut the clutter with ThePrint’s editor-in-chief has been the engine and fuel driving the video section of the website. The series is interpretive journalism by Gupta, a talking head show, conversational and homely which makes it inclusive.
However, the continued success of CTC tends to overshadow the other good work done in the video. Apart from Gupta’s Weekly National interestVideo column by National Security Editor Praveen Swamy (security code), political editor of DK Singh politically correct, political base, PoliticsYesrap, to the point with Vir Shanghvi, and ThePrint Debates With Jyoti Malhotra garnering critical attention. not to mention interactive off the cuff Interview by Gupta, #not cut who provides critical and unedited speech, and pure science with Sandhya Ramesh
There’s more to capture your imagination: acrosshairs, northeastparnazar, mind over matter (with Tina Das), macroformula (with Radhika Pandey) world360, mumbai case (with Purva Chitnis), #defense sector, dashboard, soft coverand in-house ground reports.
Why am I listing all these? Because I suspect many of you do not look beyond CTC or realize that there is much more to video programming on ThePrint.
read this also, How ThePrint courageously covered the Covid battleground and won an IPI award
2018 is coming far
The progress of ThePrint’s video section has been steady, not spectacular. It requires patient persistence and organization. A random set of videos being streamed in 2018 has made way for a tighter, daily schedule of 8 to 15 shows. “It’s not hunky-dory, but it’s not a mess either,” says Sajid Ali, senior multimedia editor.
Today, the video production team consists of eight professionals and a regular stream of young trainee journalists and interns. Interestingly, the core team led by Sajid Ali and Manas Gurung, comprising Upendra K Yadav and Urjita Bhardwaj, have been together since 2019. This is unusual in the revolving door of online journalism.
They’ll all tell you they’ve come a long way. In the early days of ThePrint, the video section barely produced very few videos a week. was there otc and an interview show called bookmark, Instead of being quick and careful, Sajid Ali recalls, perhaps an attempt was made to put out one or two ‘high-end quality’ videos.
But 2019 changed all that. News coverage in the Lok Sabha elections was sought and priority was given to campaign video clips. Then came two major political events that were game changers for the video section – the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government abrogating Article 370 and the Supreme Court delivering its verdict on the Ayodhya dispute in November. Ali explains, “We understood that we needed to be quick in our response to the news.” ,[In] 2019, we saw our numbers grow.
“We had 19 video stories on the verdict,” recalls Jyoti Malhotra, who was overseeing the video department at the time, “with live reports from Ayodhya. This was a turning point. We were really moving towards becoming multimedia.”
Journalists traveling to Kashmir were accompanied by photo-cum-videographers: ThePrint’s photojournalists learned to shoot video and acted as video camerapersons. Praveen Jain, Manisha Mondal and Suraj Singh Bisht bowed down.
However, the long-term objective was to convert all journalists at ThePrint into multimedia journalists – young journalists were being trained in the video section. Today, all journalists are expected to shoot their own footage on mobile phones, and in some cases even edit them into stories. “Teaching them is a challenge, but the need is to increase viewership and our visibility. So, journalists have to contribute. The ground report works well with the audience, especially the tall ones,” says Manas Gurung.
“When I joined in 2019, there were very few ground reports, now we have a lot more,” says Upendra Yadav, multimedia editor. “We are doing more on politics too.”
exceptional year
Things got even busier for the young journalists and video team in 2020 – the COVID pandemic ensured.
last year i wrote About ThePrint’s Covid coverage, which saw seven of its journalists win the prestigious International Press Institute (IPI) award. These journalists, along with many others, traveled across the country to track the pandemic between 2020 and 2022. It was an extraordinary effort, with videos playing a vital role as they allowed the public to see the situation on the ground. , It is one thing to read about an ambulance full of patients and quite another to see it.
Throughout COVID, photo-video journalists will accompany reporters on shoots, and their ground-zero reports will be accompanied by videos embedded in the story. It was bound to resonate with the viewer-reader. The number grew from around 30,000 viewers in 2018 to 1 million in 2020 and has since grown steadily to 2 million.
“I have a better understanding of news now,” says Urjita Bhardwaj, who has been shooting her own stories apart from editing others’ videos. “I love working on longer videos.”
lucky him. The numbers show that videos longer than 10 minutes tend to do better than shorter ones. And longer videos are now more frequent as feature writers have also begun to contribute: indeed, it has become the norm for any reporter filing a news or feature story to report on video as well.
testing the new waters
Meanwhile, viewers prioritize the report’s analysis. Opinion video columns by ThePrint editors continue to garner a large viewership. Now attempting to diversify into more in-depth expert opinion videos. one such attempt medieval thinking With historian Anirudh Kanisetty – A video version of his column. Videos on history, on news websites, is still something new, so let’s see how it goes.
Everyone agrees that we need to do a lot more with video. The quality of footage remains variable – some young journalists have started shooting video, but skills need to be stepped up. Videos could also work with better graphic support and more animations.
Janaki Dave says, “Our endeavor is to improve the quality of treatment and packaging, and to make graphics better.” “We have a long way to go. We also need more ground reporting.”
Live streaming of ground reports/events is another frontier for ThePrint to cross – which could bring in more viewers – and we will have to figure out how to make this possible as we head into the Lok Sabha elections next year.
Shailaja Bajpai is Reader’s Editor at ThePrint. Please write with your views, complaints readers.editor@theprint.in
(Edited by Hamra Like)