Capturing News picks up on the theme of the film Capturing Reality, an inspiring work that explores the documentary genre through on-camera conversations with acclaimed directors. Like those filmmakers, video journalists are also in pursuit of documentary truth, trying to capture that subset of reality known as news.

Online video journalism is spreading across newsrooms, including ones that traditionally dealt solely with print media. Because of declining costs and rapidly improving capabilities of cameras and editing systems, many reporters are becoming “backpack journalists” capable of reporting for multiple publishing platforms.

These are the stories of video practitioners with a first-hand view of how digital technologies are transforming the media world.

The Independent Journalists Workshop has finished up six days of multimedia training, and video was naturally one of the elements. Program leaders said they were especially impressed by Patricio Espinoza mashup, Good or Bad… YouTube Changing the World. As the film says, “there’s no way back.” Which should be a chilling thought for TV broadcasters.

Paul Slavin, digital chief at ABC News, tells Beet.TV that the audience hunger for online video seems insatiable. There’s been a “real explosion in consumption” that is “almost outstripping” ABC’s ability to produce enough of it, he says.

An “almost limitless demand” for the news organization’s video is occurring across all digital platforms, including tablets and smart phones, he says. “More people are consuming news and information in larger numbers than I think we’ve ever seen before.”

What happens when eight broadcast journalism students based at City University, London, decide to explore the nuts and bolts of online video? A blog, naturally. In regular posts about the group’s observations and video productions, the aptly named Online video journalism blog examines “the impact of online video on journalism and how online video journalism has come to be recognised as a powerful medium in its own right.”

George Brock, professor and head of journalism at City University London, says the future of video journalism is bright despite a “certain amount of gloom” in the print news industry. But the video journalism field will have to “reinvent” itself to flourish on digital platforms, he says. Part of that reinvention could mean shorter pieces that rely more on the inclusion of text and still images.

Filmmaker spotlights Danfung Dennis, who says his Condition One project reporting on the uprising in Libya aims to “use a network of journalists, filmmakers and servicemen to send a stream of high-quality video to millions of mobile devices.” It’s a project worth watching, says the magazine:

Condition One’s reinvention of war journalism for the mobile age is provocative, mindblowing, awesome and even kind of scary in a Strange Days kind of way.

Independent filmmaker Harry Hanbury makes a powerful statement about worker safety with a video marking the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Factory Fire on March 25.

Think we’ve learned the lessons of history? Think again, this timely piece advises.

And now for the ever-popular you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up! category: James O’Keefe likes to make headlines with his hidden-camera stunts, but he objects to being videotaped himself—even openly. Or so the Asbury Park Press says it learned while trying to record his recent speech to members of the Bayshore Tea Party in Keyport, NJ, only to have its videographer barred.

As David Carr at The New York Times puts it:

So what kind of journalist, especially one whose primary medium is video, objects to having a public speech recorded? Just a shot in the dark here, but maybe it’s one who doesn’t fit the clinical definition of a journalist.

But it gets even better. The APP quoted O’Keefe trying to justify his surreptitious video tactics by telling the crowd:  “If you want to call out a hypocrite, the best way to do that is look at how he lives his life.”

Nope, can’t make this stuff up …

American University documentary filmmaker Bill Gentile was  embedded with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (24thMEU) in Afghanistan in 2008 and shot some instructive footage of New York Times photojournalist Tyler Hicks. The clip is a window into the rigors of being a news photographer in what Gentile calls “one of the most unforgiving locales on earth.” More recently, Hicks made his way into another unforgiving locale. He was one of four Times journalists freed by the Libyan government Monday, six days after they were captured covering the fighting there.

The AP’s Kevin Roach offers some insights on the wire service’s video strategy, focusing on training efforts, equipment and storytelling. Sounds like a plan.