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Petition to Save a Video Institution
Hello All
A video industry institution is facing a dire end. Dick Reizner’s “Tips to Clip” column is being canceled. Apparently, Videography’s management felt it “wasn’t cutting edge enough.”
This move seems indicative of an attitude in technology circles that “old” is bad, “new” is good. Dick’s column doesn’t cover technology really. It’s all about the “how” of the video production business, not the what. When he does talk about technology, frequently it’s how to work around it’s limitations. I cannot remember a time when I didn’t learn SOMETHING from one of his columns or his presentations.
Especially now, with the great emphasis on technology, we need someone out there grounding us in the day-to-dayness of the production business.
A petition has been started to inform the Videography management just how their readers feel about dropping Dick’s column. Go here to sign the petition.
To make an impact we will need to get out to the various forums and lists to generate support. Your support AND help will be required.
PLEASE FORWARD THIS MESSAGE to friends and mailing lists that you subscribe to.
Regards,
Todd O’Neill
San Antonio, TX
Doing Media blog
https://www.doingmedia.net
on*********@***il.com -
16 Replies
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[Todd O’Neill] “Especially now, with the great emphasis on technology, we need someone out there grounding us in the day-to-dayness of the production business.”
Hi Todd,
Glad to see that you have found your way into the COW’s Business & Marketing forum. I have always felt that this forum is the COW’s “crown jewel.” This, as its focus is exactly what you point to in the quote above. What makes the COW unique is that we have always felt that technology is great but if you can’t make it in business, what does it matter?
Yes, the trade magazines seem to fail to recognize the importance of business in their pages. Over the years, I have received the 2nd-most mail for my article here at the COW entitled “Clients or Grinders: How Understanding the Three Main Personality Types Affects Your Business.” When I submitted it years ago to DV, they turned it down. It has since become one of the most popular articles we’ve ever published here at the COW.
In fact, the reason that we started Creative COW Magazine was because the trade magazines were doing such a poor job in covering this industry as a business. It is our main focus in CCM and it’s one of the main reasons that the magazine’s popularity has skyrocketed over the last year or more.
We also tend to treat business as a key part of our website and have some great articles online here at the COW. While things are quiet over the next few days due to the holidays, we will be adding some more business-related articles to the library.
I hope that Dick gets his job back, this industry needs more columns like his.
Our attitude here at the COW is that “Technology is simply not enough.”
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronlindeboom
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
Join the COW’s LinkedIn Group
Now in the COW Magazine: Commercials. A look at the history, strategy, techniques and production workflows of successful commercials. All brought to you by some of the COW’s brightest members. Accept no substitutes!Would you like to be in Creative COW Magazine with your story or contribution? Contact me.
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Dick’s column is one of my favorites – I’ve clipped out most of his articles since I started reading them in Videography over seven years ago. Thanks for making us aware of this.
Karl Soehnlein
Reel Wave Media -
I agree, Ron. I hate to sound so cynical, but most of those magazines seem to buy into the theory that articles are just the stuff between advertisements, rather than the other way around. In fact, they take it to the extreme by making 90% of the articles about the same products being sold in the ads.
Most of our industry’s trade magazines really seem focused on promoting this gear or that software, with little to no focus on the Big Picture. I would imagine this would make them appeal more to freelancers, which is odd given that, more often than not, it’s established businesses who buy those $20,000 cameras and overpriced Avid suites.
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Everybody on Vidpro has already emailed the editors and publishers about this, and signed the online petitions. Being a Chicagoan, I signed it three times along with my dead relatives. 🙂
If you get a chance to see one of Dick’s mixed bag of tricks seminars, do it. Some of the tricks are so old, they are new again, you will smack your forehead that you forgot this… others are simple new things people have shared with him over the years that help make your work more efficient or organized. He’s published a tip or two from me over the years, so maybe I’m biased.
Why the magazine doesn’t “get” the value beats me. I only define that magazine as “the one with Reizner’s tips in it”. Sans that distinction, that magazine could be completely interchangeable with several others, and I probably won’t bother reading it anymore. Two things I always used to take time to clip or photocopy were Reizner and the “Power of Lighting” articles by Bill Holshevnikov (sp?) Maybe the magazine editors think they know all these tips and they are old news, but we have a constant turnover of new people coming up all the time to whom these are brand new. Maybe they are too cheap to pay him what he’s worth. Another issue is that many specialty magazines may not actually have staff that know or care anything about the specialty, they are just selling ads and plugging things together like legos from a pattern. (For more about this, see the humor forum for my piece called “my moment of clarity”) And Dick doesn’t fit the franchised pattern.
I’ve told Dick before that I think he should go solo and publish an RSS feed or weekly 5 minute tips video podcast, he’s got enough material for a year’s worth of shows. it could even just be stills and voiceover, published from imovie, I wouldn’t care. If the petition fails to make a change, maybe we can get him to mooove to a greener pasture over on this web site? Throw a 10-second ad on the front to pay the bills? I’d watch it.
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> When I submitted it years ago to DV, they turned it down.
Ron, that’s amazing and not unexpected at the same time.
The internet creates a very valuable distribution network for creative and clever writers like Mr. Reizner. I won’t sign the petition and in fact I wish him well. The cream of the crop always rises to the top, he obviously has a solid following that respects him and will follow him elsewhere I’m sure. In fact, as an example, take a look at what Morgan Webb did when her gig at G4 wasn’t moving in the right direction. Her Webbalert
…podcast seems to be doing great. Take a look at her sponsors and she’s been live only a few months.
I’ll follow this story if for no other reason to see where he ends up.
– Rick
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Mark
Maybe I missed something, but after reading the entire thread, that started with a post from Dick Reizner himself, “everyone on VIDPRO” amounted to six or eight people. The petition I started currently has 128 signatures.
I was just trying to spread the word.
There were lots of good ideas on the VIDPRO list about how to Web 2.0-ify Dick’s work, all very simple, but Dick doesn’t seem inclined.
So, please sign the petition. It seems a magazine may be the only platform for this kind of column, at least from Dick.Later!
Todd -
More people read vidpro than post to it, I’m sure plenty sent emails direct to the magazine offices, and others signed your petition, as I did.
You know, If it wasn’t to help my friend and colleague Mr.R., I would never have signed that petition thing; I’m leery of such things on the net and consider them mostly traps to harvest people’s names and personal data for spam and direct sales work.
I actually doubt it will sway those magazine people, unless the notes came from advertisers. From a content perspective, they have every reason to keep him. But like others have implied, a lot of the trades have slimmed down to just being a big brochure for direct-marketing hardware and to a lesser extent, software products. The people that want and need Reisner’s stuff most are now hanging out here, in cyberspace.
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[Todd O’Neill] “There were lots of good ideas on the VIDPRO list about how to Web 2.0-ify Dick’s work, all very simple, but Dick doesn’t seem inclined. It seems a magazine may be the only platform for this kind of column, at least from Dick.”
Many people still see paper magazines as “more real” than places like The COW. They have yet to learn that they are wrong.
This page at the COW shows that over a half-million people a month come to this site in a month. The page points out that that is five-times those that attend the NAB expo.
Tim Wilson points out from time to time that many Oscar winners make their homes here and give of their expertise. Then there are all the many Emmy winners and those of us who haven’t won anything but have a wealth of experience and are not exactly idiots, either. Even the smartest writers in the world are no match for hundreds of thousands of users exchanging feedback, information, ideas and support.
Magazines like Videography seem to be adjusting to these kinds of market changes and are trying to find their own raison d’etre in these changing times. Part of this, is learning to make what they do work on the web.
I wish both Videography and Dick Reizner well and hope that they both find their way to new successes.
— Mark Nance
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A Video Institution?????
When I first saw the subject line of this thread, I thought something important was in danger of being lost.
I have read Dick’s column for years and there’s been so little new in it that I quit reading him long ago.
When I make the exception and try to read him again, it’s just a rehash of the same things he’s said time and again. I can see why Videography finally gave up on him.
chuck
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Charles,
While I would agree that much of what I’ve seen in Dick’s column has been a rehash, that which is old to some of us is quite new to others. I think it’s that “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” adage thingie.
Using “new” as a yardstick, much of what’s at the COW would be gone. This forum is filled with a lot of tried-and-true ideas that have been around for years. But it’s very valuable.
The trade magazines have been moving towards a more “advertorial” stance for some time now. In fact, Studio’s recent “Tripod” issue read like a giant advertorial issue, with it even extending onto the cover. It was the first time that I can recall seeing advertorial actually showing up on the cover of a magazine.
Companies have to redefine themselves to survive, and this appears to be the direction that many of the trade magazines are following. They must find a formula that helps them survive and from all I can figure out, this seems the tact that many of them are taking.
The less product-based writers like Dick, whose columns seem esoteric held up to the light of advertorial leanings, makes them expendable.
At least that’s my opinion…
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronlindeboom
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
Join the COW’s LinkedIn Group
Now in the COW Magazine: Commercials. A look at the history, strategy, techniques and production workflows of successful commercials. All brought to you by some of the COW’s brightest members. Accept no substitutes!Would you like to be in Creative COW Magazine with your story or contribution? Contact me.
Do you have your complimentary subscription to Creative COW Magazine yet?
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