Amy Vitale on Shooting Video

The Poynter Institute’s Al Tompkins talked with photojournalist Amy Vitale on her new work in video. Vitale, whose still credits include National Geographic, Newsweek and Geo, has this comment towards the end:

This is the best time to be a photo journalist. We have more tools available than ever before and we also have an audience bigger than anytime in the history of mankind. It’s powerful, and I’d like to harness these tools and use them to communicate and create understanding in a complex world where messages are so easily misunderstood. I see this as a wonderful time to exploit all these tools for the power of good!

We’ve had a couple of guest speakers on campus over the last two weeks, including Justin Gillis from the New York Times and Martin Kaiser from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Both sit high up the food chain, both were brimming with excitement over the possibilities they now have with online storytelling. Their general theme – the industry may be in trouble, but the ability to execute journalism is stronger now than it has ever been.