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Jim Brady: We saw back in the late 90’s that or suspected that
video, once connection speeds really improved and people had high speed at home
and at work and that the art form was a little better forum that people would
watch a video on the Web. And so we
started throwing resources at this back in ’99. I think we hired our first video journalist.
And we just kept refining the craft over time. It got enough traffic that we felt like we
could continue on. It wasn’t getting
huge amounts of traffic, but again, we felt like this was something we were
preparing for that day in which suddenly people were willing to watch a video.
And I think over the last three years, a combination of
YouTube, a combination of video iPod and just better connection speeds –
suddenly one day, people will seem to be willing to watch a lot of video. And it was odd for a lot of us who have been
doing this for a while that it seemed to happen so quickly that it went from some
people watch video to everybody’s willing to watch some video.
Andy Plesser: Tell
us about the scope of the video that you’re producing.
Jim Brady: We do some that’s purely news video. A Bush press conference, just something we
think enhances a news story and gives somebody some depth. We obviously do some documentary video where
we send one of the six or seven video journalists we have somewhere in the
city, somewhere in the country, somewhere in the world to chase a story on our
own; sometimes with a post reporter.
Reporter video is kind of a third category where we give the
reporters themselves cameras and ask them to shoot video that helps to kind of
enhance a story or add another dimension.
Andy Plesser: We’ve
heard a lot about the changes in the world of journalism and newspapers and the
imperative for journalists to change, to learn new multimedia skills. What are your thoughts on that?
Jim Brady: To answer the question about journalists and
transitioning into the world, there are two answers. One, it’s hard. And two, they have to figure out how to do
it; that the world is changing, how people consume media is changing by the day
and we can’t, as journalists, sit back and say this is how we’ve done it. This is how we’ve done it for the last 10,
20, 30 years and that’s the way we’re going to keep doing it because our
consumers are completely changing how they get to what we produce. And getting yourself out there in as many
places as you can and making sure people understand what you’re doing is
important. So if you’re out covering a
story and you go on MSNBC for two or three minutes; you do a spot on Washington
Post Radio, come on here and answer questions from readers for an hour. That does all cut into your schedule in
figuring out how to juggle that is complicated.
But we, like every other major media company in the world
now are fighting for the attention of every reader. And how are we going to make sure that they
know what we’re doing and in some cases, getting on and talking about what
you’re doing is more important now that it’s ever been; especially as we try to
attract a national and international audience. So I think the challenge is definitely there but I don’t think we have
any choice but to figure out how to juggle our schedules and help them produce
better journalism.
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Washington Post, 
Public Relations
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