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Print Reporters Armed With More Than Notebooks

By Hillary Profita

June 20, 2006 / 12:40 PM EDT / CBS News

(AP)

As more and more television news reporters contribute to their networks' Web sites by writing or blogging about their stories, a growing Web audience is motivating newspapers to provide what has normally been the purview of television news – video content. At least that's the case at The Washington Post, which is shipping digital cameras to its bureaus, hoping to eventually have them at every foreign bureau. Washingtonpost.com Executive Editor Jim Brady told The Washingtonian that about 50 Post reporters are currently carting cameras in the field and video reports are already showing up on the Post Web site.

With fewer people buying the dead-tree versions of newspapers and more turning to the Internet for news, it's no surprise that newspaper Web sites are exploring all the options available on the Web to distribute their content -- just as television outlets have expanded into more written stories on their sites. So the question becomes … how much of a threat does video on newspapers' Web sites pose for television?