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Video is Converging on Us Spurred on by technology and the Internet, now more than ever before, reporters at the Washington Post are expected to report in multimedia. For example, Maryland environmental reporter Elizabeth Williamson wrote a well-read story about a "wasting disease"afflicting rockfish in the Chesapeake Bay. For a follow-up story, she packed a pad and a video camera and boarded a charter boat on opening day of the rockfish trophy season. "My story on the Web site was linked to the video," she says. Williamson, who's been reporting since 1994 and came to the Post in 2003 from the Wall Street Journal, had never handled a video camera. "Not for weddings, not for babies," she says. The Post gave her a 45-minute tutorial, "and I was out there shooting video," she says. On a related note, Mindy McAdams made a great post on her blog about what she learned from online photojournalists during this past weekend's NPPA Summit. A lot of newspaper photo departments are going the way of convergence, like the reporters at the Washinton Post are. Mindy said that the best argument she heard for people embracing multimedia was something Richard Koci-Hernandez from the San Jose Mercury News said: "If someone in our photo departments doesn't take control, and encourage someone who wants to do video to do it, someone else will take control -- and they will hand you the Mona Lisa with all the numbers and a brush, and say, this is the way we want you to do it. And you'll have to do it that way." 
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