The march of technology and the shrinking economy are beginning to take a toll on the traditional means of television news-gathering: the TV news crew. Under a new agreement reached this week with its labor unions, Gannett-owned Washington (DC) CBS affiliate WUSA (Channel 9) will become the first station in Washington to replace its crews with one-person "multimedia journalists" who will shoot and edit news stories single-handedly. The change will blur the distinctions between the station's reporters and its camera and production people. Reporters will soon be shooting and editing their own stories, and camera people will be doing the work of reporters, occasionally appearing on the air or on in video clips. For decades, TV journalists have worked in teams, with the lines of responsibility regulated by union rules or simple tradition. Stories were covered by a crew consisting of a camera operator and a correspondent (and further back, by a sound or lighting technician); their work was overseen by a producer and their footage assembled into a finished story by an editor. But technology -- handheld or tripod-mounted cameras, laptop editing programs and the Internet -- have made it possible for one person to handle all those assignments, station managers say.
Journalists will be asked to do more and be paid less. How close are we to just airing user-generated clips and calling it a newscast?