Friday, November 11, 2005

Online video a must for newspapers

A number of news organizations are expanding their online video offerings, showing the growing importance of online multimedia for newspapers.

The Washington Post has launched video podcasting for use with the recently released video i-Pods. Users will have access to news and documentary video from Washingtonpost.com and can subscribe to a "News and Documentary Video" RSS feed.

The BBC has built on its RSS service for text content and the BBC News Player by offering feeds to audio and video reports, including breaking news pictures, interviews, and analysis. The service will also enable website owners to integrate BBC News video and audio into their own sites via RSS.

AP will be joining forces with Microsoft to launch an online video service to be used by its members. The original announcement in July did not involve MSN. When the service is launched in the first quarter of 2006, AP members will be able to webcast AP video through a branded MSN Video player.

News agencies using video also demonstrates the trend towards their increasing influence over newspapers. Although the Washington Post is including video podcasts on its website, most newspapers do not have the resources to actually produce such material.

But with rising consumer demand for online video and other digital innovations, newspapers will have to include multimedia on their websites in order to furnish their readers with the whole online news experience. Since they generally don't have the capacity to produce their own video content, partnerships are likely.

Fairfax produces some original video content, mainly around lifestyle topics (cars, cooking, tecchnology etc). For the time being Sky News provides most of the news clips for non-broadcast news sites cut directly from a TV feed.

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