Reporters armed with video cameras

Roger Richards, the Pilot's video guy, recently communicated with Seth Gitner, who leads the multimedia effort at our sister paper, The Roanoke Times.

Seth describes an experiment there putting video cameras in the hands of reporters to see what they come up with. He says it's going well.

From an e-mail:

To start it all we brought in a guy from he Washpost -- Chet Rhodes the deputy multimedia editor for breaking news there -- to do several mini video workshops with our reporters on how to do quick videos for their stories. He then trained them (10 mins) on how to press the record button and how to to take off the lens covers and then off they went.

Today we have posted three short clips all shot by reporters and I have to admit -- they're all really not that bad -- and no they are not supposed to be "documentary" videos -- more like what "mugs" or "locater maps" would be in print - additional INFORMATION for the reader I think we are off to a good start.

John Mayer fans

A snow day in Roanoke

A snow day in Blacksburg

What do Pilot reporters think of this approach? Post your comments!