Sex and Video

Yeah, do it dirty and fast. I wish this were going to be an entry about sex.

Unfortunately, however, “dirty and fast” refers to the mantra of a particular newspaper’s video department where a friend of mine works. Personally I thought with this “new” breed of online video, that at least one aspect of the news business was going to get video right. I thought we were saying: “finally we can show TV how good video can be”, and more importantly, I thought we were going to help move journalism back into a place in our society where it is respected and embraced. But be prepared; brace yourself for it, because if we are lucky, we will get a sack full of “dirty and fast”. Maybe the sex analogy is more apropos than I thought, because apparently were getting fucked.

A couple people asked me about my blog and why I put personal information in it. Well, for those two people, i.e. 50% of the people who read this, this is why…because it is obvious that people don’t trust journalists. It is something about the industry and what it has become, and the attitudes of the people who work in the business that has created a disconnect with the people we are supposed to be serving.

David Leeson has suggested that maybe a way to reconnect is by publishing as much about yourself as you do other people. Because with a blog you are a publisher. One of the ways that I try and connect with the people I photograph, so that they can trust me and let me into their lives, is by opening up to them. So why not apply that to readers/viewers also? In fact, on my recent trip to Mississippi, I encouraged the people I was photographing to go to my blog and read about who I am and what I am all about. It was awesome.

It is an awesome thing when people “get it,” and “get” what you are trying to do. Some how, by reading my blog, they “got it” faster. They understood and trusted me I think because they no longer felt judged, like I was examining them with the camera, capturing their flaws, because I already shared my own ideas, flaws, and life with them.

Well, depending on a lot of things, maybe sex and video do have a lot in common, and maybe it is more about trust, and less about being fast and dirty, or dirty and fast.