MINNEAPOLIS, MN (October 14, 2008) – KARE11-TV director of photography Brett Akagi is leaving broadcast television to join the staff of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Akagi will be a senior video producer at the newspaper.
"It's a really really big move," Akagi told News Photographer magazine today. He's been in broadcast television for 20 years, and at KARE11-TV for just over ten years.
"Yes, I'm going from broadcast television to print, but really I'm going to the digital side of the newspaper, and I'm going to be learning from them and getting into a new culture," he said.
Star Tribune multimedia director Peter Koeleman told the staff when he announced Akagi's move, "Brett will be the newsroom's craft leader for multimedia storytelling, working with reporters, team leaders, and photographers to create and produce video stories. ... Brett's arrival signals a clear commitment by the Star Tribune. We've made strides over the last year to increase our skill and capacity for video journalism. It's an important component of our future success, and a storytelling medium that our audience craves and expects."
"With the new technology [like the just-released Canon and Nikon cameras that shoot both still and video] we can do a lot, and the photographers can take advantage of the long lenses," Akagi said today. "And it's important to remember the stories are playing on the Web, not on a big screen or always in HD, and there are quality differences ... but storytelling is storytelling, whether it's one image frozen in time or a bunch of moving images put together in video."
Akagi says there were mixed reactions at KARE11-TV when he broke the news.
"There was a lot of surprise," he said. "It ranged from, 'How could you be going to an industry where they are clearly struggling financially, for circulation and advertising?' to 'Holy Cow! How exciting for you to get into an industry where they understand where digital is going.'"
Akagi started at KARE11-TV in April, 1998, and he graduated from Fort Hays State University in May, 1988, where he worked on the student newspaper and yearbook. During his career he's worked throughout the Midwest in Kansas City, MO; Topeka, KS; and Great Bend, KS.
During his tenure at KARE11-TV, the station has won NPPA's Station of the Year title four times (in 2008, 2007, 2006, and 2000), and it was runner-up for the honor twice.
Akagi is a four-time NPPA Regional Television Photographer of the Year, and was a national runner-up for the Ernie Crisp Television News Photographer of the Year honor. He's also been a faculty member teaching at NPPA's NewsVideo Workshop in Norman, OK, over the years. And in 2007, he was named a Poynter Institute Ethics Fellow.
He's set to start at the Star Tribune on October 20.
