Live shots now being done VJ style

An item this morning in the Mercury News' political column "Internal Affairs" illustrates how much local TV stations have cut back their budgets. Used to be that it took two or three people to do a live shot. KNTV NBC 11 now has that down to one person.

Santa Clara County Assessor Larry Stone likes to rise with the sun — about 5 a.m. most days. But Thursday morning, he found himself up an hour earlier than usual so he could go live on KNTV to talk about the county's historic drop in property values. 

And boy, was it lonely. Channel 11 didn't even bother to send a reporter out for Stone's live appearance on the 5 a.m. news in front of the shuttered Mervyn's on Hamilton Avenue in Campbell. It was just Larry, with an earpiece, a bleary-eyed cameraman and, for a brief spell, a passing police officer who wondered what the heck was going on.

The Internal Affairs item noted what many South Bay reporters already know — that Stone is the most accessible official in Santa Clara County.

[A link to other stories we've posted on the VJ trend.]

'Eyewitness News' goes VJ on Saturdays

Columnist Bill Mann reports that KPIX CBS5 has begun having reporters shoot, report and edit their own stories on Saturdays as a cost-saving measure. KRON was the first to switch to VJs for all of its newscasts a few years ago.

Mann reports that the Channel 5 newsroom is in an uproar over the VJ switch.

Mann quoted one longtime "Eyewitness News" staffer as saying the training for the switch hasn't gone well:

"Even before they started, one of the VJs came back with a 'negative roll' tape (she thought the camera was on when it was off, and vice versa).

"Another was caught using her husband to help her shoot in the field.

"PIX's first reporter proponent of VJs now says it's a bad idea. The whole newsroom is in an uproar as reporters are rushed through VJ training, while editors and videographers are essentially ignored and left to worry about their jobs.

"Management here wanted money from CBS to pay for a computer server for digital video but was turned down — a corporate vote of 'no confidence' that put it into a tailspin and has staffers speculating on how long the boss (Dan Rosenheim) will last.

"Meantime, Rosenheim just hired a 28-year old female MMR (multi-media reporter) just as the age and sex-discrimination lawsuit by two veteran laid-off staffers (Bill Schechner and John Lobertini) goes up to federal court. It's a mess."

Rosenheim did not reply to an e-mail from the Press Club for comment.

Channel 4's owner to cut work force by 11%

Young Broadcasting, owner of 10 stations nationwide including KRON Channel 4, announced Thursday that it is reducing its work force by 11 percent company wide. Also to cut costs, Young put KRON 4 up for sale last month and it hopes to select a buyer by the end of March. A press release on the budget cuts did not say how many jobs would be eliminated in San Francisco, but the company plans to increase its use of the VJ or video journalist concept where reporters also operate cameras.

KRON merges reporting, photography jobs

Two articles describe how Channel 4 has turned all of its reporters and photographers into one-person news crews. The change was first reported by TVWeek.com on Nov. 14. The journalism blog site gradethenews.com posted its own version Dec. 13.