The Chicago Tribune wants readers to use its Web site to strike up two-way video conversations with its reporters and newsmakers.

The paper’s Video Chat, launched last May, is a half-hour program that lets readers ask journalists or other personalities questions about specific stories or subjects, said Mark Hinojosa, the Tribune’s associate managing editor of electronic news.

Guests answer the questions, usually sitting in the Tribune’s television studio. Readers can see the questions displayed on their Web browsers as the guest addresses the topic.

The Chicago Tribune’s Video Chat program is shot at the paper’s television studio (below.) Behind the scenes a Tribune Interactive producer types in questions from the online audience during a live telecast. The question and answers are then spliced and archived so that way readers can hears questions on demand.
Photos: Chicago Tribune

An infinite number of people can watch the chat live, but participant access is limited to 500 simultaneous users.

Video Chat is the brainchild of Dwayne Pallanti, a Tribune video engineer, Hinojosa said.

“He has also developed the paper’s in-house transcoding system and developed compression schemes for video out of Iraq with a satellite phone,” he said of the engineer. “He had been working on this idea on his own and brought it to see how we would use it.”

Jumping in the video sandbox

Chicago Tribune Interactive Executive Producer Clark Bender said chat allows the paper to engage its audience in a new and different way.

“We wanted to have a little more interactivity with our audience,” he said. “You can do regular chat, but it was good to try video chat because we liked the connection that it had with the audience.”

A Video Chat requires three people plus a host or a guest. A producer feeds the questions to the host while a camera operator and a technical director make sure everything is running correctly. Sometimes a floor director will be added if one is available.

Bender said Video Chat’s immediate feedback and the show’s ability to allow users to submit questions are some of the program’s strongest hallmarks.

“We felt like it added another level of personalization and that made it a more interesting experience.”

Archived copies

Once the program is over, readers can access archived episodes and explore the broadcast by clicking on specific questions as they are displayed.

“When we finish the show we encode it in Flash and put it back into the player in a different format,” Hinojosa said. “You can see all the questions that were asked and you can click on the questions and get the answer.”

Thus far, Tribune Interactive has produced more than 25 Video Chats, covering such topics as Chicago’s professional sports teams and financial pressures plaguing the Chicago Transportation Authority.

The shows aren’t regularly scheduled, but Bender said that is one of Tribune Interactive’s goals. “We’ve done a few dozen but we don’t have a particular time every week that we do them,” he said.

Prior to each show, Tribune Interactive solicits questions in advance so that producers have a backlog of questions to start the program.

“As great as it is to have something live, it’s kind of hard to drive people (to the site) at the exact time you are doing it,” Bender said. “We tend to try and do them over the lunch hour because we are assuming that people are at their computers at the office and have some time to watch.”

Room for improvement

Bender said the show has faced few technical bumps.

“The bigger learning curve has been determining good programming to do with this,” he said. “Sometimes, we’ve had writers come in and the topic was too broad and other times we’ve had more specific issues like real estate zoning in Chicago.”

With no set host or style the show can be like a box of chocolates, but the different topics also bring different people to the news site, Bender said.

“It’s been interesting to figure out what some of the programming challenges are in terms of what’s appealing to people,” he said. “It’s more about engaging our audience, keeping them on the site, keeping them interested and engaging them in issues of the day.”

Although Bender said the Tribune has received positive feedback from the show, it’s too early to tell if Video Chat has translated into a dramatic upswing in Web traffic.

“I don’t think we’ve ever had any delusions that we’re going to have thousands and thousands of people watching these chats. Maybe someday we can grow into that. Right now it’s something of a toe in the water as we figure out what we are going to do,” he said. “The bigger issue is getting the chats in front of more people, either live or archived.”

Looking for a draw

Hinojosa said that Video Chat has allowed the Tribune to cover a variety of topics in a different way, but that he is still searching for “franchise” subjects that would guarantee a consistent audience draw.

Sometimes, inspiration occurs when least expected, he said, citing one idea he thought of to conduct remote chats. “All of a sudden my boss asked if we could use it,” he said. “Then we started playing with the format, doing remote chats in New Hampshire and in Arizona when the Cubs were in the playoffs.”

The Tribune’s most recent Video Chat effort covered last month’s Super Tuesday primaries and featured six separate Video Chats with presidential primary coverage spanning three cities (see sidebar, page 46).

“We would like to put it on a more permanent schedule so that people could know it will be on every day or every Tuesday at a certain time,” said Bender. “We are going to do this but we are feeling our way through what we think is going to be worth that kind of regular effort.”