NPPA is reporting that in TV news departments around the country there are layoffs, or rumors of layoffs, taking place in cities like Minneapolis, Miami, Cleveland, and Denver.

The answer is something I and others who ascribe to the backpack or Solo Video Journalist paradigm have been extolling quite a bit over the course of the past year.

According to the posting on the NPPA’s website,

“…there’s a slow but noticeably steady influx of “backpack photojournalists,” the “one-man-band” (solo video journalists) that’s been talked about for so long. And in a reverse of tradition, at least two newspapers have hired veteran broadcast television photojournalists to leave television news behind to come over to “the other side” to shoot video for the newspaper’s Web sites…”

Michael Rosenblum has been at the very forefront of what he likes to term “Burning down all the tv stations” and replace the archaic staffing with agile, mobile solo vj’s. As much as I hate to see anyone laid off – especially if they are award winners in their craft, the realities of the profession that I and others of similar world view have been talking about for the past year are beginning to come to pass.

Detractors lament that the small compact cameras and their operators are diminishing the craft of video journalism. It isn’t the equipment, it’s the operator. The newly emerging profession of web video journalism is going to make changes in how news, short and long form video projects are produced and distributed.

Adapt or perish – either way, the changes to this profession are happening.

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