Can Dow, WSJ reporters make transition to video?

Erick Schonfeld at Business 2.0 wonders whether the reporters at Marketwatch, The Wall Street Journal and Barron’s can make the conversion to video as its parent company begins video streaming on its web sites.

Schonfeld wrote, “All three are powered by Brightcove on the backend, and show exactly the same video content—print journalists on camera talking about their stories or studio interviews with corporate execs flogging new products. Everyone in the media biz is trying to get their hands on some of that Web video advertising. And this effort in particular appears to have the ad sales people’s hands all over it.

“You are forced to watch an intrusive video ad from the very beginning which disables all the controls before you even know what news clips are available. When you do finally get to watch the clips, they are informative but a little bit boring.”

Later, he added, “All of this raises a serious question that my boss Josh Quittner made to me recently: ‘Print people are meant to be read, not seen.’ So far, no one has proven him wrong. But I think someone will soon. This is like the early days of cable. And what was formerly known as the print media—whether that is Dow Jones, the New York Times, or my employer Time Inc.—is coming to grips with the fact that once you start publishing on the Web, you need more than just words and pretty pictures. We are going to see a lot of experimentation, and we are going to find out if print people can learn to be seen.”

Read more here.