What Television Journalism <i>Could</i> Look Like

Now, for the first time, smartphones and particularly iPhones have the capacity to shoot broadcast-quality video. They have the potential to do for television journalism what Leicas did 100 years ago for photojournalism. iPhone video has the possibility of completely changing not only the cost of making television but the way that it looks.
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Leica at 100 Years

One hundred years ago, the Leica company brought about a revolution in photo journalism.

It invented a small, very high-quality handheld camera.

This was a big departure.

Before this, photography had been complicated and expensive. The cameras were big. You had to put them on a tripod. They shot on sheet film -- one shot at a time. They required dragging all kinds of gear into the field to take a photograph.

As a result, the photos that were taken pre-Leica were stiff, stilted, posed. Generally people in their best dress, staring into the camera. You probably have a few in your attic somewhere -- ancient relatives you no longer know the names of.

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Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The Leica revolution meant that for the first time, photographers and photojournalists could take their cameras into the field, into people's homes, into war zones -- anywhere. They could work alone. They could spend time with their stories. They could create a product that was more intimate, realer, more honest and more powerful.

The photographs they took were in fact so powerful that they transformed photography from a craft to an art form in its own right. Today their work hangs in places like the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

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© 1954, 2015, The Heirs of W. Eugene Smith

Up until now television has been made the way those old photographs were made. The equipment is large, expensive and complicated. You have to drag a ton of gear into the field to shoot what is called "broadcast-quality" video. This weight of gear has an impact on what the final product looks like.

Take a look at the evening news. You see people, dressed in suits and ties, formal and lit. It reminds me of nothing so much as those photographs in my attic -- stiff, formal, and, in a way, lifeless.

But now, for the first time, smartphones and particularly iPhones have the capacity to shoot broadcast-quality video. Like the Leicas, they are small, easy to use, relatively inexpensive and lightweight.

They have the potential to do for television journalism what Leicas did 100 years ago for photojournalism: transform it from a craft to a powerful art form in its own right.

Technology has a direct impact on what the final product looks like. It carries a kind of DNA. iPhone video has the possibility of completely changing not only the cost of making television but the way that it looks.

But to do this, we have to start using our iPhone video in a different way.

One hundred years ago, one could have taken their Leica, put it on a tripod and continued to make photographs as they always had. No doubt some did.

But you won't find their work in the MoMA.

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