Guest Speaker: David Frank

October 12, 2009

David Frank is a video journalist at the New York Times; but before beginning his video journalism career, Frank used to be an editor for the photojournalism department at the New York Times. After a long tenure as editor, he turned away his managerial job and decided to go back out into the field. He is now currently working on creating video news stories for the New York Times. By doing so, Frank is taking his photojournalism background and melding it with more a traditional, written journalism to create a more contemporary form of news coverage. Though this type of coverage is young and not yet proven to be economically profitable, Frank assures that this not the reason these new forms of coverage are explored. Rather, they are ways for news outlets to experiment with more ways to incite the public into becoming better informed, by providing more 'entertaining' ways to present their information. An example of his work can be found here. This tear-jerking account is exactly the kind of news Frank loves to cover. It is a sports story in that it does inform the watcher about Olympic hopeful Melanie Roach, but it is also unexpected since it primarily focuses on her struggle with her son's autism.