YouTube had 1.4 billion users in 2016, and MLive did not have a video team. That was a notable gap because when MLive Media Group launched in 2012 we pledged we’d follow our audience anywhere in our mission to deliver meaningful journalism.
Flash forward to this past weekend, when MLive claimed four more Emmy statuettes in a ceremony in Detroit that was attended by a lot of television journalists. I say “more” because that haul makes 13 Emmy awards in three years for our small but mighty video team.
We are doing video storytelling on issues that matter. Video is a part of our story offerings every single day, whether that be a high school sports highlights, a Facebook live from a press conference or an informative documentary.
And as obvious as it is that we should be using video in our daily mix, it can still feel a bit odd at times. Like on the red carpet at an Emmy ceremony.
“It's traditionally a television-dominated award, so there are a few categories that don't work for us in our medium – say for (TV) anchors or for newscasts,” said Gillian Van Stratt, who heads video for MLive as its director of audience development.
“It almost felt territorial, like we didn't belong. … But we've slowly been creeping into long–form categories – like a 10-minute documentary-style video. And this year, we made it a ‘three-peat.’”
Van Stratt is referring to our amazing video on “environmental justice” – about the residents of a largely minority southwest Detroit neighborhood who live in the worst ZIP code in Michigan for pollution and legacy contamination: 48127. You can watch it here.
That video won the Emmy for “societal concerns,” and that marks the third year in a row that MLive has won that category in the awards hosted by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Michigan Chapter.
We are not winning because we are historically great at video. We are winning because our newspapers have 180 years at being great at journalism in Michigan and we learned how to translate that into a popular platform for storytelling.
I’ll admit that, back in 2016, my desire to get MLive into video was stronger than my knowledge of the medium. So, I did what made sense – I hired people who came from video backgrounds.
I am grateful for what they did: Bring in people with videography and production skills; buy equipment and software we didn’t have; begin to instill a standard of consistent quality around our video offerings.
Something was missing, however: A journalists’ sensibility. We have high standards, but we also work to deliver news, context and meaning at a breakneck speed. It’s not for the faint-hearted and even more to the point, it has to be second nature on deadline.
So, in 2019 I put Van Stratt in charge of video. She started with MLive as a reporter and had worked her way up to heading our social offerings, a fast-moving media. When she took over video, she decided to shift emphasis away from video technical skills and toward journalistic sensibilities.
“It's really hard to explain and teach what we mean by dropping everything and revving up to the pace of breaking news – and then having stuff on the backburner that is going to be your longer-term projects,” Van Stratt said.
“They were already here. They were already journalists. But their video skills were on the back shelf because they were (involved) in other things.”
For example, Lori Chapman was working as a social media producer for MLive but had a background as a video producer for CNN. She’s now the heart of our video team, and just won an Emmy for scriptwriting. Neil Blake, who had been a news photographer for MLive, now is an extremely skilled and versatile videographer.
“Now we have journalists who are a top video team,” Van Stratt said. “If you start with only purely video, it's really hard to make them journalists. I like to start with the core of a journalist and then see what sort of skills we can add.”
That approach has been paying off in gold-plated hardware for MLive, and fantastic moving pictures for MLive readers and viewers.
The three Emmy-winning documentaries are “The Fight for Environmental Justice in Michigan; “Factory Odors Plaque Asthma-Stricken Black Neighborhood;” and “Michigan’s Bottle Bill: Sorting through a Sticky Situation.” Click here to watch them all.
🎧 In this episode of Behind the Headlines, it is Emmy season and MLive took another 4 home this past weekend. Gillian Van Stratt joins John Hiner and Eric Hultgren to talk about what goes into creating a winning documentary. Listen here.
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John Hiner is the vice president of content for MLive Media Group. If you have questions you’d like him to answer, or topics to explore, share your thoughts at editor@mlive.com.
