Practice of the craft: Hockey writer Dave Stubbs stows his video camera

Some interesting observations on Twitter this morning from Dave Stubbs, a columnist and feature writer for The Montreal Gazette whose main preoccupation is covering the Montreal Canadiens. He tweets under the handle habsinsideout1. As you'll see below, he thought about turning these observations into column, then discarded the idea. (Been there, done that, about every 20 minutes) But I think they're interesting enough observations for all those interested in journalism and the practice of the craft to package them up for posterity here. Twitter, for all that I like about it, tends to be a lousy service when it comes to search and archiving. Blogs, like this, do a better job on that score.

So here's Stubbs/habsinsideout1 at about 10 am this morning, with the tweets in sequence:

  • Storytelling in sportswriting is a rapidly fading art. Now it's mostly about providing multimedia content before the next guy
  • Shooting video in #Habs room totally undermines establishing rapport w/ players for good conversation
  • Can't make eye contact, observe body language or subtleties if you're worried about framing/lighting interview subject
  • Video clips have their place in multimedia world. But camera stays in my knapsack when I'm interviewing for a feature or column
  • Multimedia horse has left barn & he's not coming back. But it's a tightrope between creative work & content in bulk…
  • And I've learned web is very much like me: needs to be fed 24 hours a day. Too much junk food in us both
  • This rant might have been a decent column. But I've knocked it out on Twitter instead. Typical…
  • Used to go to #Habs morning skate/practice for stories. Now: tweeting water-bottle #s to determine who's practising. My fault, yes…
  • Readers/viewers' “need” to know everything 10 mins ago has put boots to much storytelling in shrinking newsrooms

 

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