City University electronic publishing academic Neil Thurman presented a paper on online news video at the ninth International Symposium on Online Journalism in Texas at the weekend. Though previous papers have been hampered by reliance on out-of-date contributions, interviews for Thurman’s latest were conducted with digital news bosses just a few months ago, and delightfully lift the lid on this emerging business. Amongst the juicy highlights, web video vendor Roo gets a kicking…

—Mirror.co.uk editor Steve Purcell: “The promises that were made by [our content partner, Roo Media] didn’t materialise…. It was a bloody mess, relying on American-led stuff.” Mirror.co.uk only inked the Roo deal in February 2007.

—Times Online editor Anne Spackman: “We didn’t have a sense of ownership of the (Roo) player…When those early deals were done nobody knew what people would want to watch on a site like ours.”

—Spackman and Sun Online assistant editor Marc Webber reinforced News International’s reluctance to follow Telegraph.co.uk and Guardian.co.uk toward integrated multimedia newsrooms.

—BBC News Interactive chief Pete Clifton, shooting from the lip: “Historically, we’ve put huge amounts of video on the site, and it’s just really been what’s been on the Ten O’clock News. At the moment, there are too many people here who are still very focused around the traditional outlets.”

—Telegraph digital editor Edward Roussel: Although podcasts “do quite well . . . video will win hands down against podcasts and audio . . . from a commercial point of view I don’t think [they are] viable”.

—Thurman: “The universal view was that (video) advertisements should be no longer than 15 seconds because of the relatively short length of video stories. The Sun experimented with 30- second pre-rolls but had little success.” Sun’s Webber: “We’ve sold some, which no doubt affected the amount of people watching the video. They clicked off.”

Meanwhile, former BBC News online technology editor Alf Hermida - now teaching in British Columbia - presented his paper on BBC blogs, finding the Editors’ Blog in particular has become ” platform for rebuilding trust”.

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