“Frankly, I don’t believe television has yet found the ultimate way to handle visual news. One reason is that the accent has been on the personalities, and therefore everything is subservient to the personality rather than to the cutting of a good continuity story. True, there have been efforts to pioneer along this line – the Garroway Show and the old Camel News Caravan were creditable attempts.

Another tendency has been to go into depth. Ed Murrow’s work is of that type, which is almost the news documentary – and of course they are all newsreel men who are covering this work for Murrow.

I think that we’re in a transition period. The answer has not come to the question: “How best to present news visually on television?”

– Edouard P. “Ted” Genock, 1957

Ted Genock was a long-time Paramount newsreel cameraman who ended up at Kodak in the mid 50s. He mostly covered combat for Paramount during his career as well as acting as a mentor for the legendary Australian photojournalist Damien Parer.

Numerous mentions in old broadcasting-related magazines shows that Genock was lecturing at TV workshops throughout the 50s and early 60s after he left the newsreels to work for Kodak.

The entire interview that the above quote comes from can be read online at http://www.jstor.org/stable/20686457. Its free to sign up, you don’t need to be associated with a university. It covers mostly shooting techniques. Its a hellva of an insight as to what was being taught in the 50s to those whom were willing to travel to workshops.