A features editor is swapping the newsroom for academic life when she starts a PhD in online video journalism next month.

Lily Canter of the Northampton Chronicle and Echo decided more research needed to be undertaken to see how video content was evolving on newspaper websites.

She plans to analyse the effectiveness of video on local and regional newspaper websites in the UK, with the hope of setting a blueprint for journalism training courses in the future.

Lily will study for her PhD at the University of Sheffield, from where she graduated seven years ago with an MA in print journalism.

She said: “Video is still a vastly unknown entity when it comes to newspaper websites and there are a lot of questions that need to be answered.

“Should journalists be following the broadcast model or is a new form of storytelling emerging? Who should be putting videos together and will future journalists be expected to be multimedia trained? I hope my research will form part of the foundation of a new – and challenging – future in print journalism.”

After graduating, Lily, now 29, trained on the Wiltshire Gazette and Herald before joining the Chronicle and Echo as a reporter.

In 2008 she launched the multimedia film competition Film Northants. The competition is now in its second year and Lily hopes to continue co-ordinating it whilst she carries out her PhD.

Comments

agedhackette (14/08/2009 10:09:08)
did you say “print journalism”.
I thought bosses of local rags were busy killing that off and running down staff levels to make a fortune from the web and videos (which they won’t).