Best of Photojournalism 2009: Video News Photography: Winners

Clips from the Video News Photography and Editing winners in the Best of Photojournalism 2009 are now viewable at Poynter Online.

Chat with Al Tompkins and the BOP TV judges — live each day at 12:00 EST. Ask the judges questions and hear what they love and have learned from the entries they have seen each day.

Medium Market Station of the Year Finalists

(In Alphabetical Order)

Medium Market Station of the Year Runner Up

WLEX/Lexington, KY

Medium Market Station of the Year

WHTM/Harrisburg, PA

Judges’ Comments

Terry Bulger

WHTM-This one started strong in the spot news category with “Another Day On The Job”….great video of the bear, if not at times too daring and too close for his own safety. This entry definitely had an animal portion of the program with chickens and a raccoon, but both were full of good active moments….and I really liked “Lucy’s Cafe” and the way the photog was smart enough to back away from the owners as their restaurant is torn down before their eyes.

The consistency in these stories made it our first choice.

WLEX- “Clark Fire” was well done and a good spot story….the rest of the tape had some memorable characters and pictures that stood out from the rest of the entries.

I wished the horse story had a little more build up and didn’t reveal the horse so quickly.

Scott Jensen

WHTM’s compilation starts well and ends well. This station’s strongest stories were better than WLEX’s, and their weakest stories were stronger than WLEX’s weakest. “Lucy’s Café” and the three animal stories were done very well. For me the café story decided it.

Jon Knorr

The Medium Market Station of the Year competition was very tight. With three stations vying for the top spot, it ended up coming down to WHTM and WLEX.

Both of these stations used about half their photographers on the tape. WHTM had some good stories led off with a story about a stray bear as well a singing crossing guard and a fabulous story about an antique car hill climb.

WLEX was an extreme close second. They led off with some great spot news followed it with a horse in a well and had funny story with an 80 plus crossing guard.

Shane McEachern

This was a tough call, down to the wire on these two stations and a close call from Asheville, NC.... but photographer count and a much higher amount of higher quality stories put WHTM in the lead. It would be nice to see more stations participating in this contest because I know there is a lot of quality work out there not being seen.

The winning station had some real standout pieces “Poor Chickens”, “Lucy’s Cafe”, “Forgive and Go On”.... and some other quality ones too. The tape could have been a little better with some brevity, longer isn’t always necessarily better, but it was a pleasing viewing experience. Good characters, solid photography, good moments in stories like “A Hill To Climb On”, “Crossing Guard”, and writing/photography in pieces like “Mail Pouch Barns” and “Fighting For Family” helped them squeak this one out.

Second place was close behind with some solid spot news pieces “He Walked Away From It” and “Search For Maxine”.... a Deadline piece “Sounded Like A Bomb”, which should have been entered in the DEADLINE individual category (it would have done well). “We’ll Miss Them” was a very nicely shot story but it had a graphic which wasn’t a big deal but I would have tried to get the girls pics at the memorial and used them instead. “You Can Recover”, “My Mom’s Yard” and “One In a Million” were all strong anchors for this tape. Great job everybody!

Tom Sharkey

This years station of the year WHTM had a pretty good tape with some interesting stories and what sold it to me was solid shooting all they way through. There were no lazy stories or shots which showed a dedication by the staff to good storytelling. There were good strong characters like in crossing guard which stood out. There were a couple of stories that fell flat but I think it was the writing that let down the photography in those cases.

The runner-up, WLEX, also had some good stories like the “Clark Fire” which was one of the best spot news stories in the bunch and ‘Search For Maxine” which had a lot of emotion, but there was also one that had music added where it didn’t have to be and another that was just one long shot, which looked like it was shot on +18. In the end the two were pretty close but WHTM made the fewest mistakes.

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