On December 7, the International Press Institute (IPI) in collaboration with its Turkey National Committee organized the fourth episode of the Turkey Master Class series which brings international journalists and experts via online and hybrid workshops on digital transition and innovations to journalists in Turkey.
Gülsin Harman, a member of IPI Turkey National Committee and an experienced journalist working for international news outlets, hosted Natalia Guerrero – a senior journalist who works as Content Manager and Editor at BBC Reel, a sub-unit under BBC that produces visual stories and short documentary content. During the Master Class entitled “Visual Storytelling for New Formats”, Guerrero showed examples of visual short-form content of BBC Reel, particularly short documentaries and video explainers which are BBC’s recently most popular formats for journalistic output.
Guerrero first talked about her journalistic background and how she started producing visual news, then she drew attention to the fundamentals of visual news narration for journalists by showing examples of her work at the BBC Mundo, the Spanish news service of the BBC World, where she worked for 10 years. Guerrero then underlined that the most important point to tell a story within the news is that doing it “simple” and she stated that the biggest advantage of creating visual news is to be able to use different presentation techniques for different audiences.
Underlining that constantly thinking about new ideas and bringing them together is very crucial in terms of creating a story, Guerrero stated that the most important criteria for visual news are “the right choice of narrator, timing and the angle in which the event is handled”. Guerrero also said that it is important for the visual news to be more effective that they should capture a format that can be easily understood by people with different backgrounds and characteristics.
Guerrero continued by talking about her current position at the BBC Reel. Discussed the process of creating short news content with examples, which has become increasingly popular lately. Talking about how the explainer videos should be prepared, Guerrero said, “Keep the timing consistent, explain the subject in simple words and present various data”.
Guerrero then drew attention to the importance of journalists who want to produce news in this field to recognize the opportunities brought by technology and to try different production techniques with these opportunities, as well as to cooperate with their colleagues and to develop ideas by sharing with others.
About the increasing importance of technology in changing journalism environment, Guerrero said, “Not only for journalists but also for all humanity, the increasing access to technology and the active usage of it contribute to the development of the understanding of democracy in today’s world”.
At the end of her presentation, Guerrero answered questions from the audience. As an answer to the question of “Will YouTube broadcasting replace television broadcasting?”, Guerrero said that the television broadcasting is trying to adapt to today’s media conditions and that it cannot be easily overlooked.
As a reply to a question of “What criteria in YouTube metrics measure the success of a content producer?”, she said that one of the most important criteria for her was that the number of viewers watched the videos she made until the end.
