Publications director details Washington Daily’s videocast

(Editor’s note: I asked Kristin Millis, director of student publications at the University of Washington, if she’d be willing to write up something about the UW Daily’s excursion into vidcasting, and she agreed. The following is her reply. If you have a story about how you’re doing something innovative online, drop me an e-mail [scmurley -at- gmail.com] and we’ll be sure it gets on the blog.)

The Daily at the UW is now doing daily videocasts online. We had a few obstacles in the beginning; such as no budget, no formal broadcast program at the UW, and no equipment.

This is what we’ve done to create the online video program:

• Hired two very energetic, resourceful broadcast students.
• Cleaned an 11×7 foot room used as a junk closet.
• Set up a borrowing system for cameras and microphones from Classroom Support Services, which is supported by the UW student tech fee.
• Taught a print photographer how to use a video camera.
• Purchased a student version of Final Cut Pro for $500.
• Transferred an iMac Core 2 Duo, 20-inch monitor worth $1,500 that wasn’t being used as much as much as expected from Ad Production/Design.

Shanelle Smith, a UW junior, has been the driving force behind creating the videocasts. With internship experience from KING 5 in Seattle and FOX News in New York – she borrowed cameras from a campus department and used iMovie (a free editing program available on Macs) to edit.

Over Winter Break we made our first financial investment by purchasing a $500 student version of Final Cut Pro. At the same time, we moved an iMac originally purchased for ad production/design into our new videocasting suite. We also hired a second videocaster, Marissa McQuilken, a UW senior.

Since Monday, Jan. 22 we’ve been doing a videocast every school day. Our videocasts are available to watch online, subscribe to through iTunes, or share on Facebook.

We averaged 417 views in December. In January, it increased to 3,623 views.

We had one videocast earn a total of 1,089 views. It was a fun piece on why UW Huskies are better than our rivals the WSU Cougars. The many WSU students who shared the videocast through Facebook made this our most popular videocast.

Our regular on-going costs are student salaries, as everyone who works at The Daily is paid. Our videocasters earn between $40 and $80 per story; depending on the time it takes to produce.

We are now negotiating sponsorships with local and national advertisers. We hope to recover our costs and start seeing a profit on this product by Fall 2007.

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