Egypt: Video Journalism

A well-trained video journalist is a reporter, camera operator, video editor and voice artist all rolled into one. He or she knows how to handle a DV camera and laptop complete with professional editing software and has the technical and editorial expertise required to put together a television report.

One of the hallmarks of good video journalism is the ability to tell a story from a personal perspective. The latest DV technology is especially suited to portraits, offering the journalist a wide range of interesting angles and approaches. The small, relatively unobtrusive DV cameras allow the reporter to get up closer to their subject. This closeness makes the story more emotional and more direct. The production techniques that go into video journalism can also help to make political or business reports for TV more appealing to people who might never have taken an interest in the subject before.

The Egyptian state broadcaster, the ERTU, aims to add this interesting facet of TV reporting to its programming and is having twelve employees trained in video journalism. It has chosen mainly young journalists with novel ideas for new broadcasting formats to take part in this DW-AKADEMIE training.