KRON-TV: everyone in the newsroom is a one-man-band.

San Francisco's KRON recently became the first major-market TV station in the US to supply much of its newsoom staff with laptops and digital video cameras, then train them to shoot, write, and produce stories on their own. KRON calls them VJs. Others in the biz sometimes refer to the combo role as "sojo" (solo journalist) or "one-man-band," while a producer + editor mashup is a "preditor."

Here is the blog of one of KRON's VJs, Charley Bill: Link. Image above: Charley's VJ gear, in his office.

Snip from a critical analysis on Grade The News blog:

KRON hopes that low-cost techniques perfected on reality shows will bring the once high-flying station back to both journalistic excellence and competitiveness in Nielsen ratings. But critics say forcing journalists to become "one-man bands" who report, shoot and edit at the same time will lead to shoddier journalism, and eventually leaner news staffs.

The collapse of three distinct jobs into one delights the station's tech-savvy consultants for the same reasons it alarms some union officials and veteran journalists. KRON reporters, who rarely used to touch a camera, now are shooting their own video every day. Many photographers are reporting for the first time, which is sometimes apparent in video that ignores obvious story angles.

Cameraman Charles Clifford described himself in a blog entry about his retraining as "a guy who hasn't done any real writing since college." The reorganization has eliminated most editors. While a producer is supposed to review every story, outside observers worry about the loss of quality control.

Link to full text of post.

Media Orchard blog interviewed KRON's online news manager Brian Shields about the initiative, and he says:

Television is the ultimate 1.0, 'We talk, you shut up and watch' industry. That means the business model of local television news is fundamentally out of date. It's based on the concept that you're going to wait until 6:00, then we'll show you some things you may or may not care about, show you some commercials, show some more stuff you may or may not care about, show you some more commercials by which time it's quarter after the hour and lucky you, Scott, now we'll tell you the weather. Of course, now you get the weather when you want it online or on the Weather Channel or by RSS or…

So now we have a choice as an industry. We can sit around like many of the people quoted in this article, break open the scrapbooks, and pine for the good ole days of local TV news' mythical golden era. Or we can try to create something new that makes sense within today's economics and that at the same time fixes many of the existing problems with the genre.

Ask anyone outside our industry and they'll tell you, local television news SUCKS. It's the same stories, told in the same way and the only things different from one station to another are the blonde and the graphics package. Despite all of the money they used to have, television news executives never really changed the format from "the guy at the desk with the box over his shoulder." Despite the extravagances of the old system, it was still just six crews covering the market on any given day… never taking risks… just getting the easy stuff… the crime and the regurgitated newspaper story from that morning.

The VJ concept is, to me, a good try at fixing that.

Link.