As this video suggests, my tenure as a hired gun on the Wall Street Journal’s Olympics video team is essentially over. Three weeks lugging a camera around Beijing by day, staring dry-eyed and drooling at a computer by night…If only I were a full employee, I’d have the health insurance to pay the team of chiropractors and opthamologists I’m going to need to turn me back into a functioning human being after I pack up my gear and drag it back home.

Having said that, the pain had its pay-offs: We managed to produce 27 videos, more by far than any other US newspaper. And I now have a much clearer sense of what a strange dance these American titans of print are doing with multimedia. I’ll try to write more on that score after I’ve had a chance to recover…