Michael Rosenblum, the ever present wave maker in the profession of shooting video, has once again proven his point around why the move to the solo video journalist paradigm is inevitable – even more so with this recent announcement from broadcast giant ABC.

Rosenblum posted that ABC News announced major layoffs with 300-400 positions being eliminated.

Most interesting in the announcement  is the decision by David Westin that the network news organization is going to move toward VJ based newsgathering.

Imagine that??? (Sarcasm mine)

In his posting Rosenblum points out the  transformation will have six basic components:

1. 1. In newsgathering, ABC intends to dramatically expand their use of digital journalists. They have proven that this model works at various locations around the world and believe they can take it much further;
2. In production, ABC will take the example set by Nightline of editorial staff who shoot and edit their own material and follow it throughout all of their programs, while recognizing that they will continue to rely upon their ENG crews and editors for most of our work;
3. In structure, ABC will combine their weekday and weekend operations for both Good Morning America and World News;
4. In special events, ABC will rely upon their program staff through the day and night to cover unexpected events and marshal personnel from across the division to cover scheduled events;
5. In newsmagazines and long-form programming, they will move to a more flexible blend of staff and freelancers so that they can respond to varying demand for hours through the year; and
6. Overall, ABC will eliminate redundancies wherever possible.

Many a detractor who comes from the traditional broadcast shooting environment rails against the idea of self contained production – claiming it diminishes the quality of the final product.

Have you seen the quality of what comes from broadcast these days?  It’s stuck in the 90′s in it’s creativity – ie; there isn’t any.

Rosenblum chides the detractors with the following statement:

…one of the questions that I have been asked ad-nauseum for the past 25 years has at last been answered:

“If this is such a good idea, how come no network news operations do this?”

Now, they do.

Hear that???  It’s crickets chirping since the detractors have nothing to say…

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