This week, The New York Times launched a new video series called, TimesCast.
The program, called TimesCast, lasting a few minutes, will appear on the nytimes.com home page at 1 p.m. each day; after 2 p.m., it will move to a less prominent position on the site. (It can always be found at nytimes.com/timescast.) It features interviews with editors and reporters who are covering the major stories, and scenes from meetings among the paper’s top editors discussing events that might go on the front page.
For the most part I would say it is an accurate description of the candor that I experience while working in this large newsroom. In a lot of ways, it is kinda like watching a dry version of The Office. The camera angles are more immediate, and the editing appears to be mostly in-camera, which is refreshing. It also is an example of appointment based viewing on the internet, which doesn’t happen very often on the web, and is still a bit foreign to the way I expect to consume media these days.
I would like to know what the average person thinks about this series. Does it provide more context to the top stories of the day? Is it too much inside baseball?
All said, I have been excited to sit down and watch it take shape.
Note: While I do work at the Times, I do not work on the TimesCast video production team.
Jeremy Zilar is the Blog Specialist at The New York Times and an avid creator and collaborator across the spectrum of media.
This is actually pretty funny to watch, but I don’t think it would have been as funny if you hadn’t mentioned The Office.