Erik Olsen, video journalist with The New York Times, speaks with Latin American journalists during a Digital Reporting workshop at the Institute of the Americas.

LA JOLLA, CAL.– As newspaper readership declines and viewers tune out nightly news broadcasts, people are increasingly turning to digital reports on news web sites for their information.
Video journalism is capturing the attention of audiences throughout the Americas.
“This is a new genre,” said Erik Olsen, video journalist for The New York Times. “To explain what’s going on in the world it’s important to have a visual element.”
Olsen met with journalists during a professional workshop organized by the Institute of the Americas entitled, “On the Cutting Edge: Digital Reporting in the 21st Century.”
Journalists from 10 countries in the Western Hemisphere attended the five-day workshop held on the Institute’s La Jolla campus. The workshop focused on video journalism, on building audio-visual slide shows and on analyzing new business models for delivering news via the internet.
The New York Times began placing news videos on its web site nine years ago.  Olsen, who worked as a producer at ABC News, was one of the first hired.
“The real joy and beauty of this opportunity is there is no format, so you can do what you want,” Olsen said. “You’re not constricted by the time limits of the networks. It doesn’t have to be exactly three minutes long. You have this incredible new flexibility.”
As the news industry moves to a new way of delivering news, Olsen said it is imperative that journalists learn new skills to meet the demand.
“At the Times, we’re training our print journalists to tell narrative stories with video. It’s not easy.  It takes a lot of practice and a lot of attention to detail,” he said. “But everybody is going to this digital format on the web so it benefits journalists to have a wide variety of skills. All news will eventually make in into the digital realm.”
With growing demand for digital reporting, the equipment and the technology are now less expensive that ever before, Olsen said. High-definition cameras cost less than $500 or less and are so small and lightweight that, “you can put them in your pocket.”
Olsen offered the journalists attending the Institute workshop a host of tips for reporting and preparing video news reports: Find the beautiful details that tell the story, wait for the right moment, help the moment happen.  Find someone who is charismatic, whose journey takes you into the bigger picture.
Robert Hernandez, professor of professional practice at the USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, offered his own set of tips during a media boot camp he prepared for the journalists at Los Angeles Pierce College.
Hernandez, who worked for seven years as the director of development at the Seattle Times and as a web consultant for La Prensa Grafica, a leading newspaper in El Salvador, taught the journalists how to build an audio-visual slide show.
He told the journalists that audio-visual slide shows are “the cheapest, easiest way to deliver a news presentation.”
Hernandez said that reporters have just seven seconds to capture the attention of the audience, so “every image, every sound must have a purpose.” He added that an audio slide show is more effective when it is paired with a news story.
The journalists also heard from the editors of two San Diego on-line news sites which are viewed as models for upstart web publications across the country.
Andrew Donohue, editor of Voice of San Diego.org, said the focus of his news organization is public service.  Voice of San Diego, founded four years ago is funded by private donors.
Voice of San Diego, which has garnered national awards for its investigative reports, emphasizes deep, analytical stories rather than breaking news, Donohue said. “If SDNN.com or The San Diego Union-Tribune does a good story, we don’t spend our time rewriting it. And we try to leave multimedia to those who do it best.  Really, we are writers.”
Chris Jennewein, president of San Diego News Network, or SDNN.com., launched his on-line news site a year ago in San Diego.  Jennewein’s new organization is a for-profit operation which strives to stand out in an increasingly crowded on-line market.
 “There is a lot of discussion that on-line news can’t be paid for. I don’t believe that,” Jennewein said. “Years from now we will all look back at this time and shake our heads.  I think this is a model that will increasingly work around the world.”
The journalists took a field trip to the offices of SDNN.com, where they met with 30-year-old Managing Editor Eric Yates.
Yates, who describes himself as a “child of the internet,” said he has “a passion for the news and for writing and for being in this emerging technology. It’s exciting and scary at the same time.”
He said readers are still looking for compelling stories based on accurate, analytical reporting.
 “I think newspapers will still be relevant 10 years from now, but they’re going to have to be packaged in a different way,” Yates said.  “They can’t be full of information that people can find somewhere else with the click of a mouse.”