The video effort expands at the WSJ

Wall Street Journal deputy managing editor Alan Murray, who also oversees its online efforts, sent out the following announcement to the staff on Monday:

I’d like to alert you to an exciting new news effort launching this month.

As you know, video is becoming an increasingly important part of our journalism.  Our video viewership has more than doubled in the last six months, as WSJ Live programming has spread across new channels – including the WSJ Live iPad app, Apple TV, YouTube, Hulu, Roku and more than twenty others.

 Central to this effort is video shot by our journalists, which has taken viewers to interesting places and provided them unique insights that only our journalists can provide. From Valerie Bauerlein’s coverage of last year’s hurricane, to Charles Forelle’s chronicling of the Euro-crisis, to Greg White’s footage of riots in Moscow, to Jeremy Page’s reporting in China, many of our best reporters are demonstrating the opportunity that technology has given them to capture powerful video images that enhance their great journalism.

 To encourage such work, we are this month launching WSJ WorldStream — a video blog powered entirely by clips from our journalists.  Those of you who’ve been equipped and trained to shoot iPhone video – and there are now hundreds of you – will be able to upload clips of up to 45 seconds directly to the stream. An editor will review the clips before they are posted.  Once in the stream, they can be embedded in stories, used on live shows, used in video packages, or viewed and shared in the blog format.

 Overseeing this new effort will be Shawn Bender and video producer Mark Scheffler. They’ll be reaching out to you in the coming days to talk about how to contribute. Their goal is to make it as simple as possible for reporters to shoot and send compelling video, in a way that doesn’t interfere with their other responsibilities.

 I urge you to embrace this new opportunity.  Please reach out to Shawn and Mark if you have questions.