A Fading Profession...

Today I'm taking a bit of a departure from my normal topics and I want to talk about something that is rather close to my heart. For anyone who cares little to nothing about television news, you might want to click away now.

Full disclosure up front. I'm a video editor for television news, so I'm not an objective observer in this, I'm right in the middle of it. That being said, I'll try to present my case as objectively as I can.

Video editors are a dying breed and it's something that's happening at an alarming rate. There's several reasons for this but I think the big reasons are ignorance, arrogance, indifference, and corporate attrition. I'll try to take each of these in turn, but first let me lay out for those who don't know, what an editor does.
For good stories to be told you need three distinct professions. You need a reporter, someone who can get the information necessary to the story. You also need a cameraman, for the obvious reasons. These two are people who are usually thought of when you think of news. But there is, (and I stress, needs to be) a third, and that's the editor, the person who can put together the pictures of the cameraman and the words of the reporter to tell a compelling story.

But for those reasons I mentioned above, editors are more and more being seen not as a vital component of news story telling. Editing is being seen now as a sub-skill set that either a cameraman or reporter should pick up, thus eliminating the need for the editor altogether.
I feel this is a grave mistake, and I liken it to building a house. You need several different professions to come together to build a house. Sure you could have the plumber doing electrical as well, but in order to get the best possible product you want each profession doing what they do best, and not spreading their time and attention across several disciplines.

Now on to some of the causes.

Ignorance and arrogance go together because one really does follow the other.
I feel there is a really lack of understanding as to what an editor really does. There seems to me to be a feeling that all an editor does is put pictures together to match the words of the reporter.
There really is much more to it than that though. An editor should have the skill to tell a story through the pictures alone, the pictures in a news story shouldn't just illustrate what the reporter is saying, but rather bring more information to the viewer than what is being said. If all a story is is a reporter describing what your seeing on the screen you might as well be listening to a radio report. The pictures are there to add to the story, to provide more context and texture. That is what an editor brings to the story, that ability. Also the editor is there to provide another perspective to the story, a fresh set of eyes and ears. They should work in cooperation with the journalist to craft the story, to come up together with the most compelling way to tell it. Without an editor you lose that additional insight.
It's because of this lack of understanding, coupled with editing software become more and more accessible that more people think they can do it themselves. That along with the arrogance that it's nothing special to edit, anyone can do it, you just match up pictures to the script, how hard could it really be?

Another big problem facing editors these days is indifference. Indifference from within the news industry as well as without. As far as editing goes in the news business, it's not glamorous, it's not sexy. Editors usually work in small, windowless rooms. It's not the public face of news, nor should it be, but if you say to someone that you work in news, usually an editor has to explain what it is they do, cameramen don't have that problem. Because of that, not many people are too interested in becoming an editor.
There's also little recognition for editors. Rarely does an editor get praised for a good story, and as far as I know, there are few awards out there for exceptional editing in news. (Now I'm not saying that there aren't people within the industry that do appreciate the art of editing, there is! it's just that number seems to be dwindling.)

These last three problems have been around for a long time, but when you combine them with the last issue, Corporate Attrition, this is where the most real and urgent threat to the editing profession is coming from.
As I stated earlier, computers have put the ability to edit in the hands of more people. It no longer costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to outfit one edit bay, and with more people learning the mechanics of editing software, there has been a really push from news corporations to have multi-tasking individuals working in newsrooms, for example cameramen who can shoot report and edit. And while there are some who are able to multitask effectively, most cannot, and even with the best I would argue the end product suffers. It's like that old saying, a Jack of all trades and Master of none.
The news business is fast become like the film industry. Where once you had people who understood television news, and what it took in order to produce the best newscast. Now you have the news being run by lawyers and accountants answering to multinational corporation who are more concerned with the bottom line rather than the news itself.

What can be done to stop all this? I don't know, but I hope that this brings a little more attention to what i consider to be a really problem for the future of television news.

And thus ends my rant, thanks for your indulgence.