Videojournalism: the revolution in media influencing academia. On assignment near Syria's border.

In this video, something happens at 1.27, but you need the contexts of the earlier footage, so be patient,

The girl singing survived, you see her ushered into a safe place as her caretaker calls her name.

The caretaker is a videojournalist, an activist documenting the atrocities in his country. Two years ago circumstances led him to pick up a camera. For the next 7 days, I share a space with him and fifteen other so called "activists", in one of the most rewarding and emotional projects I have been involve with for a while.


End of prologue. 

 ++++++++++++

"Non-emergency personnel and family members" were ordered to leave Beirut and given permission to leave Adana, near Turkey's border with Syria.

This news reported on Reuters couldn't be any worse. No S**t a friend said. In 8 hours time I was heading into the very region, Adana, where Americans officials were being ordered out of.

Was I scared? 

Apprehensive, Yes! Enough to talk about a likely exit plan, if things were to go Pete Tong [wrong] , as we the Brits say.

Last time I had butterflies like this was traveling to Tunisia, Beirut, Cairo and in the 90s South Africa. What's new? Except there was no whiff of air strikes or rogue chemicals in the air.

There are lecturers I know and respect who make it a habit to stay in touch with their craft e.g. Bill Gentiles a figurehead in the world of backpack journalism.

Not by design, more by default, but firstly, the need to stay in touch with the field I'm in is an anti-bored pill. Secondly, it furnishes me with my narrative for storytelling I like to tell. These story-forms derive from a fascination in what experts call the world without theory: Bakhtin's Carnival.

Beirut Videojournalism

I train enthusiasts to become videojournalists, but to paraphrase Mr Cobbs " I specialise in a very specific type of security  videojournalism". I apologise if that sounds arrogant. It's not meant to be.

This videojournalism has been the subject of a six year PhD, [historical and qualitative] which through the selfless help of  Rosensblum, Drew, Turness - NBC first woman president of News -  and several other people.e.g.  contemporary videojournalists such as Adam Westbrook. The thesis should  be evaluated soon.

videojournalism study

The working-in-the-field also, many performance lecturers believe has benefits for their students.
What I do constitutes experiential knowledge. Lectures become hermeneutical. Practice is informed by theory, and the process of curating information becomes wrapped in that most basic of perceptions.

You know the story of the politician expressing a point evoking Mary with one child agreeing that raising taxes puts her 100 UKP in the red each month. Well yes, merely saying that gives you scope to imagine Mary and hear her predicament, even when she's not real.

In performance lecturing, based on actual events, the narrative of teaching journalism, say expressing SEO, ethics or how to keep a low profile, is a story in itself.

A brief visual history of videojournalism from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

Did I tell you the time, I had to Q and A with Nelson Mandela at a press conference and I was terrified out of my wits, and then met him at a foreign correspondence do? South Africa 94.  Or being asked to film for Heavy weight Boxer Lennox Lewis and his camp as he fought Tyson?  Memphis, 2002. Or  back in February explaining cinema journalism to the Arab media summit? Cairo, 2013.

Experiential notes on a page - that mobile narrative.

The story of what happened in the week in Adana is extraordinary.  A series of lectures, exchange of knowledge, seven stories that we  (Marwan, Fires, myself ] had to shape - some of which constitute war crimes of a nature that would make you physically sick.  

 Marwan, from the think tank Menapolis presses a point over verification

The video at the top.. dramatic, terrifying.. their stories deserve a proscenium, where we can learn more about them in ways that are affective Presence reality?

Imagine going to see a film at the cinema, and then seconds after the film finishes the general manager tells the audience to hang on, because we now have a personal skype interview with the participants in the story.

Otherwise imagine I create a story that leads imperceptibly into their stories, and everything from the technology to the social issues become dialogical.

David discusses the philosophy of the 100 videojournalists and specialised videojournalism equipment

Or what about a lecture in which the wisdom of crowds is also the narrative. This is the domain of Touch cast which I explained in my previous post. 

These are methods to bring journallism straight into the lecture room in a more visceral way, but also to pump it out again as both narrative and eipitome [ notes in a lecture]. See my post yesterday on the BBC's secret weapon and popular post, the theory of new videojournalism

It requires a new collaboration - a pragmatism to lecturing emerging from the interplay of the professional practice and theoretician. The two have always been bedfellows, yet academia post 70s has invariably delineated the two. In his wonderful articles Bordwell expressed this in a related way why don't academics and critics get along.

This merge will also spawn a new type of university, one which corresponds to the demands on the one had of emerging technologies, but also as part of its core values thinks up the next generation of practices, not as a theoretical exercise, but by creation.

This new proscenium will see a heurestics of emerging media as key, utilising apps that bring journalism in the field right into lectures. I'm excited by this.


End



Thanks to Marwan and the team from Menapolis

Viewmagazine.tv is about to undergo an overhaul to reflect what academics refer to as an autoethnographic study, where I use myself as the narrative to express the changes to journalism and communications, such as shift media and videohyperlinking - my most recent post.


David Dunkley Gyimah is a Knight Batten winner for innovation in journaism, an international award winning videojournalist and Channel 4 Digital finalist, among other awards. His PhD research reevaluates videojournalism repositioning a new understanding of the form. David is a senior lecturer in online ( social) and videojournalism. he is a juror for the RTS awards.

How do you produce compelling video and media

The word "compelling" is probably one one the most over used terms applied to video from producers selling their skills.


But what does it mean?  


Definition aside, it's about an attachment to something that fixates you; you simply can't take your eyes of it. Though, yes, you'd hardly call your girlfriend or boyfriend compelling.


A simple exercise can yield characteristics that make media, or video compelling.


Firstly there are elements it must contain. Secondly, it's the way they're put together.


A good example of elements would be wars. Wars as content make for compelling viewing. It's so compelling that the belief is you don't need any video training to make a good film.


It's one reason why citizen journalism works in conflicts; right time,  right place for compelling event.


When the content is not necessarily engaging this is where the talent earns their crust. They must do something to the content to make it compelling without manipulating its meaning. 


A simple exercise in videojournalism
These images below don't really do justice to the exercise I conducted but here goes. 

• The stream on the left hand side down are key images for video 1
• While the images on the right hand side down  are for video 2

What do you see?

Semioticians, though you don't need to be one to get this, talk about the syntagmatic relationship between media, which basically means how one shot placed in front of the other has an effect on the next shot, itself and the film overall.


So if you look at the images all on the left hand side, which come from the first video you can begin to get a feel.


When I constructed this experiment a lot of the feedback focused on (1) as the more attractive, as opposed to (2).


I then revealed that first shoot was how as a videojournalist I work, and the second one was how I would have produce a Television News story. 

Reporting for ITV's for London Tonight

Interesting, but it's nothing really revelatory.


What becomes interesting is when you consider that any content can be made compelling, dependent on a number of principals.


But the experiment doesn't entirely help you, because as any masters student will tell you, knowing what you like and dislike hardly makes it any more easier producing exemplary work.


That's because those principles run into a daunting array. An alternative method is studying the experts and their films which is what my contribution to Adam Westbrook's project: Inside the Story was all about.


I'd advise you buy the book as it contains rich tips from some of the world's leading story tellers e.g. Brian Storm, Koci, and Claudio Von Planta.


But a more fruitful principle emerges from my findings which runs into a 60,000 word thesis which I will be publishing either later this year or early next year. 


But in the meantime perversely my advice is that the answers you seek to produce exemplary work may not exist in the genre you want to make your own.


But it's not that simple because you need to have an appreciation of the medium you're working in and how you can add meaning. It's not that you can simply throw different methods at different genres and hope they stick.


Take German Designer Konstantin Grcic, what he says about avant garde it's equally pertinent in film. Don't be afraid to take risks and polarise people. 


Learn by trial and error and be comfortable that you will make mistakes. Oddly enough in my lecturing experience, students tend to resist this.


Primarily and this is a view from Arnheim as well is that a) we don't like to fail and b) Art which expands our notion of creativity is not respected in the way say Maths is.


The more pressing results materialising suggest, as many scholars have done, that existing methods aren't working as efficiently as they should and and we're poorer for it.


But change is happening....Perhaps not as fast as we'd think it should.


++


Read: is how we're teaching media flawed

I want to be a journalist

Mr Westbrook's right. His post on 10 ways to make the most of your journalism course hits the right buttons.

Adam also gives a reality check for aspiring journalists. 14k a year- that's if you can find a job at the end. These are indeed tough times. In the UK it's 2000 new applicants for roughly 200 media jobs - a piece of stats quoted from newsbeat about four years ago.

It does beg the question. Why you want to be a journalist in the first place, really?  But the world needs nosey parkers. I mean those who are bothered by things and can see how journalism can be used to scratch that itch.

As Marr writing in My Trade says in the UK we've not quite mastered journalism as a profession. It's something you kind of fall into and then haphazardly make your way. Well, you can't even rely on that any more.

I tend not to speak directly about what goes on campus. Even in the digital open world, some things must remain safe for students and participants to engage in without feeling exposed. That's what are classes are "safe environments' to make mistakes - an artistic practice, which journalists might call Chatham House Rules.

Hopefully within are safe system we can harness a spirit too of reciprocity. However speaking in general terms, hopefully class of 2011 have already had a taste of journalism 101.

In other words a simulation of the real world in the lecture environment. Broadly and it's one that many students share, journalism can still come across as a light switch which is a given. Quite literally you grab the switch of the wall and et voila' you're now qualified to do societies' bidding.

Adam draws your attention to the pros and conversely cons. If there is a wider observation about trainee journalists it's what academics would refer to as what constitutes  a "comfortable epistemology".

Fortunately, and if it were the case I wouldn't say - at least this year, but everyone knew about 9/11. Last year that wasn't the case with one student, who needed prompting several times before making the connection.

9/11 just wasn't something the student was familiar with. But 9/11 is just a wider reality and expression for journalism knowledge.

The journalism curve that shot up so exponentially in 2005 has stabilised, with my mother even knowing what a tweet is - and she is most definately non-techie. This plateauing is a source of jubilation and trepidation.

We're moving storytelling on - (sigh!) finally, but now everyone can do what you do. However, employers as a matter of employment evolution, need a fresh crop of youngsters to fill in the yearly musical chairs of retirements, resignations and those moving on.

So there's still hope for the job, but the suits now can't be hoodwinked. "Er Yes really get a twitter account and you'll save your paper".  Quite! At a conference with now Guardian Journalist Jemima Kiss years back, I remember someone from the floor saying all managers needed to "hire a youngtser, and not just for Christmas".

Then tweeter was an insult to be confused with twit.

The Today Journalist
Today then young aspiring journalists might need a little bit more, which combines academic rigour, technical saviness and a maturity that allows them to oscillate from team work, to isolated periods of being alone, either as entrepreneurial journalists or freelancers. Yes, it goes on, but each year, requires a new confidence to cope with the world.

It boils down to using the year to learn something often not taught, but by default made available - human behaviour in a digital age. Why will one person read your blog, as opposed to a lot more? How do you make your presentations attractive, while being caustic with your keys? What is it that sets us off?

One student who wasn't on our course wrote "journalism sucks". Already? Whilst another lamented what was a facile exercise in monitoring and deconstructing media?  Deference aside, a sought after commodity within any discipline, sometimes its difficult to ascertain cause and effect- unless you're in the army and you don't question that.

No, I'm not suggesting you don't question. In fact question some more and some, but at the point where your lecturer tells you "it's time for a death march", you could trust them.

As Dorothy Byrne says in results from my Phd enquiry; '"Those doing news now could trust us TV lost a bit more, we have been doing it much longer than them". Yep and I can hear the counter argument too, but there is a case to had here.

 And if you don't know what a death march is....

So here's my two bits to bolt on to Adam's. Journalism doesn't stop outside the lecture room, in fact that's when its intensified. Become voracious at everything - including steep lessons in contemporary and classical media histories.  Social networks for instance did not start with facebook. grrr! Thomas Hobbs Intelligent Commonwealth more than 400 years ago

"Commonwealths ( woops, sorry Hobbs) Social Networks can be formed in two ways: through institution, or agreement; and through acquisition, or force. Although the group of people taken by force under a sovereign’s rule may resist the acquisition and depose the sovereign before he takes control"

Discuss and Share, not just tweets, but that round table drinks session at the pub. If you can squeeze in the EU bail out and what the heck it means, in between Desperate Housewives, you're morphing into the journalist.

We're entering a pernicious time in world politics, the economies doing its impression of a shark with tonic immobility. Money men meanwhile are lining their pockets with the fear that if the world collapses, they'll find a new home on Mars.

Oh yes - all of a sudden it will make no sense.

A labour party is in stasis, with a leader who looks like he's taking lessons from Thatcher, while the incumbent rulers are about to go to their conference and tell us we've never had it so good. By this time next year, the UK and a number of countries will not be what they were. The US elections looks like being the mother of all ding dongs.

All this is grist for the clever journalist, but it won't come looking for you. It's who dares wins. Truer back then, ever more so, now.

Future Journalism - trainee journalists go beyond the blog

Designed Journalism- Image Valeria Testagrossa

It's the holy grail of the future of journalism.

The pub talk is it's less about another app, but a generation with different needs and social wants from their previous lot. What's more they're working to an evermore info-literate populace.

At a recent Westminster University PR event: "Have PR and spin undermined trust in politics?" former No. 10 communications man Lance Price made that point.

Today, the audience knows what's duff, spin and good media, he more or less said.

The pen might be mightier than a sharp nudge to the kidneys, but today if you're looking to a career in the factual-story telling business you'd do well to consider options that scale the blog.

Pathways which strictly defined whether you were print or broadcast have overlapped. Words morph into images - graphically. Does Sassurean's signifier and signified mean anything today?

It's no longer a contentious point; the future is screen based, but the disappearance of classical media such as Time Magazine points out might be exaggerated.

New Journalists

Yet on the one hand it's still a listing trade; BBC et al cutting back on jobs. Then on the other side as shown with a new phenomenological group of journalists e.g. Alex Wood and Adam Westbrook playing online makes for a longer, even richer play.

To that evolving troupe, new cohorts, new journalists armed with their CSS, xhtmls, SEO continue to emerge.

It seems an eternity now since Anthony Moor, board of directors of the influential Online News Association, spoke for a generation on the OJR: "Go to the Web, young journalist.

Now its go beyond the web, enveloping jobs online once reserved for the techie heads.

Here then is the  the work of Masters students 2011. Share your thoughts.

http://www.StreetsLondon.co.uk

StreetsLondon.co.uk

http://www.london-performers.co.uk/index.html

London-performers.co.uk

http://www.whereislondon.co.uk

Whereislondon.co.uk

The flaneurist Mediaist - Videojournalism and photojournalism

The flaneurist mediaist - PhotoVideojournalism in China. David roams the streets looking for material to film.

From Wikipedia
The term flâneur comes from the French masculine noun flâneur—which has the basic meanings of "stroller", "lounger", "saunterer", "loafer"—which itself comes from the French verb flâner, which means "to stroll". Charles Baudelaire developed a derived meaning of flâneur—that of "a person who walks the city in order to experience it.

Inspired by two separate but connected incidents today I set about an experiment of sorts.  The first catalyst was my PhD supervisor noting my latest submission.

Sometimes I wonder whether it's possible to abandon critical theory in unveiling the molecularity of a subject, and instead opt for a historical account,  as many have that reveals and connects events previously unnoticed.

The second was Adam Westbrook's dissection of The Sartorialist. Adam does a wonderful job in deconstructing, which led to a couple of things catching my attention.

Firstly the movement of the camera and subject which created a poetic distanciation. Secondly, the close ups - the affective shot; and lastly when Scott Schuman says he just does "it". "It" being the creative process, what does he mean?

It is a given, if that process could be revealed as a formulae, it would be prized.  It is the "it" that I am at pains to do justice to, as a process to decipher.

The Creative It
In essence the "it" is beyond common sense and reasoning, Your subjectivity extends beyond the norms of 1st degree sensations. It is not external but becomes internalised; you feel it. You become lost in the process as the viewer watching "it".

This is pure cinematic, as opposed to cinema. And sometimes the sensation is so grand, so cosmic, you're in awe.  This is not my extempore, but those convened from Metz, Kant, Deleuze.

For the likes of Schuman and anyone else who has spent long enough pondering or working their craft. "It" is their DNA. It cannot be transferred. It's you voice, the conscious becoming the unconscious.

Right, so back to the inspiration. In and up to the edge of the 20th century, the photojournalist, photographer ruled when it came to the profoundness of the image, as opposed to the cineist who excelled in the moving image.

The invention of the word Videojournalism, and its deconstruction, which we've  set about doing as a body working with David Hayward BBC journalism College, and Paul Egglestone from UCLAN, leaves open several experiments.

The first, could the moving image decompose the still image? Could one day on your IPad or device yet to be invented, the moving image become a dominant thing, usurping the still image?

Now at this moment in time, there are scores of photojournalists who might shout never. Nothing beats the still image. Its immanence; the fact it is still capturing that singular moment defies any other logic for a contender.

Paintings vs Photography
But history tells us otherwise. We only need to look at painting and the revelation of perspective and Brunelleschi's, work in the 15th century. So for at least five centuries from that point, nothing could challenge the dominance of the still image as executed by painters.

Curiously our swiftness to be dismissive is redolent of that age old saying from Plato that in effect our knowledge is only as good as that we are conscious about.

At one point everyone, intelligent men and women believed the world was flat. Elsewhere social theorist Clay Shirky reveals how change takes place over years and not months and weeks, which we fight each other about.

So change is practicable, and the framework that often defines that nestles in trend extrapolation, new philosophies and the unknown. Yes and there are the obvious quack ideas.

So back to the idea. Today, I set about as the PhotoVideojournalist out to capture events. A sort of realism, where people at work would just by being reveal a bit of themselves.

That in itself may have little consequence, other than how people react to different systems: video and Photos. A photographer takes a single image, so the subject is attentive for that moment; in video, there lies a different behaviour, and the series of images are rendered obstinate without sequences or filmic meaning. Oh dear!

Lucy - stall holder

Miles - Street Performer

Guy- Tax advisor

Next I plan to see, utilising Vertov's notion of the loop, which we used in some award winning work in the 1990s, to see if I can affect a classification near to the affect of the image. By coding it in Flash using Action Scripting 3 I can sustain the loop, so the image revolves slowly enough - a liquid image- before the user changes the scene.

The next step which I'm talking to Jude Kelly at the Southbank should complete the process. :) I hope to return to talk about that.

The journo educational crisis

David's e-book ( pdf) working with Nato forces in 2005 looked at some of the methods and tips behind working in conflict zone.

There's a lot to take from Francis Becket, an author and journalist's article We're losing journalism education, just as we need it.

He says:

"I understand the Independent (newspaper) will stop publishing its Thursday education pages. Their last appearance will be on July 1.

Education - real education, that is, not training in the skills required for work - is in greater danger than it's been in my lifetime. Education journalists, who a decade ago would have been sounding the alarm, don't have access to their platforms any more".

More here

It had me thinking, particularly in this solitude time attempting to capture my thoughts and experience in a book, combined with teaching and training exercises over the last twenty odd years. And then in two weeks we're in Chongqing, China.

First things first. A revolution in traditional journalism or storytelling, no one perhaps can dispute and there have been countless attempts, many successful, to illustrate the future.

Adam Westbrook's self-published e-books have proved very successful in capturing an audience, and showing how the strength of ideas can still travel.

With the Ipad and related techware a more radical future appears to be opening around video+text books. Further evidence comes from ex-bbc colleagues of mine bidding for a multimillion pound contract for video delivery into the classroom.

And the blogosphere e.g. Lynda.com, Multimedia shooter has shown itself a great resource for learning. So, I asked myself what's the point of me publishing. What am I bringing to the table?

Education is about learning from our past
And the answer struck me from previous posts where I have spoken about my background.

The precis is something like this: 1987 (BBC Radio); 1990 (BBC TV Reportage); 1992 (BBC World Service/ ABC News/ SA TV/ Radio 4); 1994 (Channel One TV); 1996 ( WTN) 1997 (London Tonight/ producing in Africa);1997 (Channel 4 News/ BBC Breakfast/advertising Soho company) 2001 (politics show); 2001 dot com companies.

Bizarrely this peripatetic sojourn around broadcasting has in my eyes been my failure - in part because of the manner in which broadcasting was skewed culturally and technologically. You just were not allowed to be multiskilled in broadcasting. This was the era of monoliths.

However the knock on effect, whether it was BBC Newnight or Channel One and the Net in 1994 has been the different methodologies myself and many others have been privy to.

And in many ways it's been these different different insights and workflows, also working alongside some highly talented people, that has shaped me, and is the basis of a book in which I can reveal methods and tips.

Viewmagazine.tv was conceived by this mashup in 2005.

Journalism Training
Then there's been the training. Outside of creating stories, it's an area I deeply enjoy and have been fortunate to be involved in training since my early career (87), then South Africa, and more recently working with the Press Association and various outfits around the world e.g. Cairo TV.

Training I have learned has to be bespoke, because you're dealing with a range of experiences and personalities. There's no one size fits all.

Lecturing has different challenges balancing theory and practicals around a middle ground whereby students must reap the rewards of their own research - pedagogy.

We're in the final project phase of supervision at the moment with the potential for some amazing student work to emerge. And when it does it will be there work, sweat and toil.

The brief: take a single story issue and building a story. Chapter 8 by the way in the book.

Freytag's basic triangle as seen in Stephen Meadow's interactive, sits at the core of good solid story tellings, with an obvious plot featured in David's book. It can also be modified within multimedia.

It's not just the changes enveloping educational journalism we're all aware of but the experiments, and successful outcomes that many of us are looking for.

Those answers, I often believe do not lie in the profession, as many of Harvard Business Review articles in business strategy have shown.

Southbank Centre's Artistic Director Jude kelly, last January launched Collision - a deeply rich invigorating programme for mid carer artists. Any Journalism educator reading this would be minded to have a close look at it.

My good friend Patrice Schneider and I shared thoughts on a similar idea, and the concept is still up for grabs. Bring together creative journalists of different disciplines and create the surroundings for a healthy exchange of ideas.

Not as a conference, but something more tangible. Mr Westbrook, we will get the creative fight club up an running.

But perhaps after its had an outing in Chongqing, China. Next month four profs, me and my head of department head out to one of its leading universities.

So back to the beginning, where our education seems to be waning, (there are still great pockets of excellence by the way) the Chinese are upping the stakes. China's projected growth is a whopping 11.9% and the news today that China may allow its Yuan to appreciate, just shows the commanding position it has found itself in.

The mood appears to be China understands the value of investment, and quietly behind the scenes. There's a double whammy here.

Firstly predictions from an international conf. I attended that by 2015 the number of foreign students from China to Australia, the US and UK will fall significantly, will take crucial foreign earnings from theses territories.

It will also squarely place China, with its penchant for educational innovation, at the forefront. Innovation, web, China... don't scoff!

Our mission next month is to share ideas in lecturing and mentoring students, alongside training exercises which are designed so students can network ideas. I don't doubt also that we'll pick up vital methods, which I believe will work here.

And that in itself I hope will prove worthwhile inclusion in tomb I'm hoping will blur the borders between many of the storytelling disciplines.

Creating cine-sites using the integrated videojournalism approach

Creating cinema-sites along the lines of the Apple Trailer page uses the integrated videojournalism approach.

It's been a busy couple of weeks and won't relent, so I have been absent from these pages, but I did want to share with you a project I have been doing for the last couple of days, in-between book chapters and the rest.

Site starts with a short promo featuring Shlomo, one of the world's most acclaimed beatboxerspercussionist. who was working with Colin Currie - an acclaimed

In Jan early this year, as part of my residency at the Southbank Centre I participated in a programme called Collisions. Well, I'm now looking to create the legacy of that event, and some event it was.

The strategy falls along the lines of what I call an "impact site" or Outernet. It's when you take a single subject and engineer its reportage through video and online.

South African Poet Lebogang Mashile performs for the audience.

Thanks to the wonderful pics of Dominic Brewser, the job was a joy. Here's the ongoing results. I have treated the photos to enhance their aesthetic and am adding appropriate video where I feel firstly I have and secondly where it will be appropriate.

Thanks to Adam Westbrook whom I invited to join as a videojournalist. Some more of his directional work, which I'm editing will be up soon.

Food and cooking was an integral part of the programme. We all took turns in the kitchen aided by the Company of Cooks and SE1 United. I cooked on the first day, Jollof Rice, spicy plantain with an avocado mix and spicy chicken. I have never cooked for 50 people. Was I nervous? Not until my sister range me up to say she couldn't come to help. The video of my Jamie Oliver moment, er no, will be posted soon.

This methodology is one I also lecture in as final project modules for Masters students. In the end it's all ones and zeros. Flash, which I have been working with for more than a decade, provides the platform.

The bombastically talented Dave Clark

I'll be deconstructing this and others e.g. how to produce rostrum camera production slides in a forth coming book, in which I have been promised one of the most sought after film directors as an interview. Fingers crossed. To peruse the Collision site go to http://www.viewmagazine.tv/collision/collisions2010.html

Penny Woolcock the director of 1 Day - a grime hip-hop feature length film which she street cast and had the rappers breaking into song as with a musical was one of several artists, who I had the pleasure of meeting.

Multiple award winning poet, writer and recently MBE Lemn Sissay on the final showcase of Collisions

Adam Westbrook on Charlie Brooker’s dissection of the TV news package (and what you can learn from it)

Cross Post from Adam Westbrook's post in which Charlie Brooker derides news construct. Adam points to BBC’s Matthew Price's piece below as a good story. I agree.

Here's a sample of Adams original post below:

We’ve been big fans of Charlie Brooker round these parts for some time, with at least four articles about him on this very blog since 2006. Combining an ability to conduct a withering criticism of television with a brutal and acerbic wit, Brooker has risen to become one of the BBC’s most cherished (but underexposed) properties.

His current series Newswipe on BBC Four, in the UK, is a must watch for anyone in journalism.

For more go here

Here's my response I cross posted.

___________________________

Adam - superb as always.



There's all sorts of innovative reasons why this video works, As a construct it's free from the classic news template which Brooker lampoons (bout time as well. c.f The Day today Chris Morris), but still remains within the ecosystem of television news' semiotic.

Journalism's classic packaging is a mimetic truncated art of movie story telling that to a great degree takes years to master. The further we've got away from the likes of the Murrow and late Wheeler who implicitly understood the relationship between film making and news making (obviously, many others do now), the more tension there has been between narrative and visual construct form in 2 mins.

What was once fresh and uncontested now needs a face lift, but that's unlikely to happen in television for powerful reasons.

Arguably the best examples of video stories that tend to wow us are individualistic scores whereby the journalist/conductor knows when to modify any number of the different genres of storytelling or invent (small i) the wheel.

Price's piece plays towards a reversioned Romeo and Juliet, the film making is restrained and pathos of the reporter make you care about the two.

Foreign correspondents possess the rare quality of achieving this. They're intuitively joined through shared experiences to their cameraman/woman because of the time spent together and collective knowledge.

It's quite difficult to achieve this as a solo videojournalist, though Travis Fox et al have done so.

The alternative key, I think, to new video making is to look towards new visual languages, rather than hark to traditional ones. Is that at least not what indie directors do? But then if you attempted this you invite stern critique for messing with the form.

Oh incidentally, Price's piece is a feature news piece rather than on the day news, so there's more scope to play with the form in what's expected in the given time constraints.

Media Show Revival - a media story about itself

We made it!

The clock struck, and this place we inhabit rotated through just another cycle, monumentally to many, called 2010.

Somehow, though you couldn't help wondering looking back thinking that person on the ward with a drip hanging, a monitor bleeping, called Meeja, was still in bad shape.

What a difference a day makes? Nada.

We've realised now that we prosumers are part of the game changing, so if Meeja is going to discharge from A&E anytime soon, it's going to be because of you, either as conscious media maker or consumer.

In retropsect, we'll probably look back and say the decade gone wasn't that bad. Historians tend to be a little kinder than media analysts.

The Media Show 17th Century

"You should have seen the calamity in the 17th Century", is the riposte, "Now that was wretched".

OK there was no film or traditional cinema, but that's relative. What was there was going through cataclysmic births and rebirths e.g. Literature - a cycle that hit a rich vein in the 1900s only to be blighted by two murderous wars.

We can thank fortune, so far, it's not come to that, though the sniff of Westphalia lingers.

I'm excited though.

Not because of the marketing ploy that a new decade should yield new paradigms.

This, though that will happen through a collective wisdom of crowds, but that this year above the last couple should mark a period of consolidation.

That's my key word for now "consolidate".

The Chinese are Coming, Er No, they've been here just unnoticed. Google reports in 5 years time the Chinese will dominate the web.

Media Consolidation

In essence, there's nothing much we don't know that could creep up from behind and do a "tango" - that's the multiple award winning slap [ yes really!] by the way, and not the dance.

There are many knows that we know and few unknowns that we're yet to know, though we also know that the unknowns are not known till we get to know them, then we're back in known territory.

Donald Rumsfeld, you are a bloody genius.

So we could trawl any number of the "follow" sites * e.g. Adam Westbrook, Mindy McAdams, Mike Jones Digital Basin, Koci's Multimedia Shooter, Grant's Videographer, Andy Dickinson, Journalism.co.uk, MediaStorm... and gain invaluable intel.

All the above and more* are givers - selflessly providing knowledge and inspiration, notwithstanding the emerging native talents edging into these Circles of Trust.

The end to the beginning of the Polymath

The issue at hand, momentarily then, isn't the lack of understanding - that was an issue pre 2005. The issue now is curating this vast knowledge on the one hand, and targeted selectivity on the other.

Being a polymath is still to be encouraged, but as I tip toed across 2009 units of length to 2010, the jack of all things is oscillating again back to greater specialisms.

Specialism is perhaps also the wrong word; more a greater comparative understanding of one field than the other, though the understanding of the weaker field may still come with high knowledge value.

2010 will be a period when the experiment leaves the lab, when the 1000s of blogs/tweets/meeja all doing the same or not perhaps seek greater interdependency.

We've already seen this defacto in blog rolls, but as the gathering of the likes of Wemedia indicates, and Journalism.co.uk's Rewired event will illustrate there's intel gathering of a kind whose impact exceeds the mundaneness of "just another event".

Forming Expert Tanks

Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Rand Corporation, TED - all started with a few then amortized their intellectual capital to what they are today.

Incidentally, whilst I'm talking about Journalism.co.uk. Britain's answer to Poynter (sorry Poynter) you've really got to tip your hat off to them. I say them, but it's barely a handful of people that drive that amazing site.

No small wonder, The Guardian keeps on poaching its staff.

So onwards and upwards, we're not cleanly out this recession, and Meeja's still feeling a bit poorly, but if we can court greater understandings, affiliations, cohabitations, unions, then 2010 onwards will be for the right reasons a turning point.

From my end, it kicks off in less than two weeks with "Collisions" - a brain storming collective of Artists gathering from around the world with Southbank Centre's Artists in Residence - which I'll write about in my next post.

Belated New Year tidings

+++
David
www.viewmagazine.tv
* apologies to the many sites that are equally brilliant

Reasons why you should still blog - students et al

David uses his blog to reference more studied articles on viewmagazine.tv that change only periodically, thus still attracting google.

If all the hoopla is to be believed blogging is dead. Long live twitter.

Across the UK this week a myriad journalism courses will fire up to train a next generation of journalists. They do so in a climate that is both unpredictable and equally exciting.

It's often in the flux of uncertainty and confluence of new ideas that we see the emergence of real paradigms. It's a recurring feature of tech break throughs.

Even the great Guttenberg was not immune, neither was he alone in producing the greatest invention there ever was.

The basics will need to be addressed. Invariably when wemedia journalists talk about their new bag of goodies, they do so not at the expense of traditional practices, but as compass points that facilitate new finds.

Blogging to Discover
When the BBC Natural Science team discovered a new species of rat by equally using innovative explorative techniques we marvelled. Yes the product of their find was substantive and tangible, but their methods: infra-red cameras, doggedness, ambition and guile is a template for us all.

As many of us that will unveil the package for blogs, there will be many others, why I ask, deriding its use. But also disheartening is that for every student that starts a blog because they've been told to, after their module winds up, so the blog will be abandoned.

In many ways that's natural selection; nature at work sorting out those who believe in the power of blogging and those that feel it is an unnecessary burden.

The 15 minutes it's taking me to write this could be better spent elsewhere. A drink perhaps?

The blog is still a gift. Less rare now than it used to be 6 plus years ago, but it still has the power to propel you into a club. A club with no rules, but yields followers based around your ideas, the quality of their execution and your ability to engage.

So here are a few more, which no doubt have been discussed ad nausea elsewhere about why you should have and keep that blog. And if I sound unconvincing: Adam Westbrook, Dave Lee and Richard Brennan are just three reasons to continue.

1. The blog gives you visibility
2. Your blog allows you to hone your writing
3. Your blog allows you to try out new ideas
4. Your blog demonstrates your power of research
5. Your blog tells an editor how serious you are at writing
6. Your blog is a marketing tool. Your de facto CV
7. Your blog is a forum. Less a magic wand, but a space to experiment
8. Your blog revolves around ideas such as crowd sourcing, twitter, social networking et al
9. Your blog allows you to blog
10. Your blog could, at that interview, be the difference between getting that job.
11. Your blog says things about you not immediately apparent: time management, critical analyses and prioritising.
12 Your blog is you. It is the identikit used to judged you, form an opinion of yourself. Use it; keep it and nurture it wisely.

Why if you're a student, you MUST blog

Oh what like I don't know? It's been raked over ad nausea:"why should students blog", but here's my bent as a senior lecturer, former broadcaster, and blogger.

Firstly, I'd wish the name blogger had an alternative to it when looking to brand studious and prolific writers in journalism. At the next attempt launching a writing template, please simply call it "writer" and watch the fundamental difference it would make amongst student journalists.

Updates soon from "Writer lite", "Pro" and "Gold standard." Which one would you prefer?

So why should all students blog?

• That perennial yawning catch phrase that your lecturers cease to let go off; you become your own publisher. Tick box.
• Then, your blog will enable you to write about matters which concern you and your friends if you wish, a re-wording of the previous point. Tick box.
• And then a moment of silent clarity and internal huzzahs: you've joined the new world, a journey into digital journalism, the unknown, but which gathers pace in its quest to reformat the art of knowing and telling. Tick that box.

So why is it some students or trainee journalists resist the urge to blog or feel at best it's an inconvenience, worst rubbish?

This is something I come across wearing my top hat as a BJTC council member.

Briefly, the BJTC is the body which sits at the interface between journalism colleges, universities and the media industry in the UK, and whose kite mark of accreditation is much recognised and admired within the industry.


Why you don't blog
There are a number of limited reasons why I could think as a student, professional or who ever you may be, you should blog, but I'll keep this to students.

Overheard at our last BJTC council meeting yesterday by one member: "Oh if they could just write, our HR (Human Resources) could do with students who could just write and write well. Getting techie, yeah, but write".

Now here's the its not rocket science bit.

If you want to be an actor, act; if you want to be a psychedelic pharmacist, you're going to have spend some time in the lab; if you want to be a writer, write. With some professions theoretical knowledge alone just won't do.

Here I'm referring to writers as journalists and not fictional novelists. Two separate desires, no less superior to each other, though many journalists in their lifespan tend to become novelist than the other way round.

What blogs do is strip bare the tenants of journalism.

Disregarding the most complex of tasks, setting up the blog in the first place and gathering any number of widgets, you're being defined by the art of pen to paper; key to screen.

You are who you are by your posts, the frequency and quality of your style and argument.

Were I a media manager, I would insist on seeing an interviewee's blog. I understand the Guardian Newspaper does.

A blog provides a crucial insight into a potential journalist employee. That never mind all the wonderfully well phrased entries on that CV, the blog says the following:

I James Meredith Sinclair, studying journalism, blog because I am:

• Interested in writing - determined by the frequency of your posts.
• Can display broad interests or how well honed my specialist knowledge is - determined from the quality of your writing.
• That fundamentally, and often overlooked, it is my online CV, my "newspaper cuttings".
  

Yes strange as it may seem job applicants once used to walk round with dog eared binds, stuffed with their columns and bylines painstakingly cut from newspapers, and if you were a broadcaster researching any number of subjects you went down to the cuttings library. Ho hum.

Reasons why you don't blog
Often young trainees and student journalists will have reasons for not blogging. They vary, but some reasons are more prevalent than others.

• Not knowing what a blog is - fairly common.
• Not having anything to write about ranks in the top three
• Too busy with all my other work is a strong favourite

You could probably come up with your own counterpoints for the aforementioned. Here's mine.

• If you're unaware what a blog is and you want to become a journalist, then I may question your hunger. Just as if you wanted to become a chef and you didn't know what a microwave was you'd have me reaching for the next candidate.

• Having nothing to write about portrays a lack of high media consumption and perhaps forming your own ideas, which yes, is a skill that will develop at journalism schools. But if you don't listen to any radio news, read other blogs, watch the news, then you're isolated and will have little to fire the imagination into damming the hubris of that politician or health care spokesperson.
  

• And if you're too busy, then whilst that's to be applauded, you're exhibiting a key flaw of journalism practice which is a lack of organisation and priority.

Here's my back-in-the-day lecture. Sorry!

But back in the day, in 1989, when Daniel Boettcher, now one of the BBC's all rounder correspondents, was my classmate, and blogs were not around, our lecturers at Falmouth in Cornwall pressed us with work. At times it became mind-splitting, until the low down in organisational skills was aired.


Why you're never too busy
News does not respect time, it is not guided by what period of day it is, neither is it sensitive to whims; it happens. It's relentless.

And when it happens on your patch, you'd best be there, and when another big story happens on your patch again, you'd best be there as well. You simply don't have the luxury to say you are busy.

You may have made the decision not to do anything about the latter story, but that's a different matter entirely.

This was best put to me by the venerable and inveterate ITN News Editor Phil Moger, a true powerhouse in journalism and passionate about it to his retirement having served it many years.

I had some shifts in the 90s at ITN with Phil as Editor. After the niceties, for the following half hour my to-do-list kept rising steeply with one assignment or another.

At each turn, either Phil or a correspondent would request where I was in the task and why I hadn't finished. I'd been used to multitasking, but this was something else. Soon I would approach Phil, and after our exchange, he smiled.

There's no such things as being busy, just know how to prioritise and once you make the editor aware of what you're doing, let the ed make the call.

Later I would learn how to say "I'm busy" and by then it was understood and appreciated how truly busy I was.

Prioritising and finding the creative period in your day means a daily post should take you minutes. More on that in my next post.

The new writers
I have come across some wonderful student bloggers. It would be inappropriate to single anyone out from the current Masters programme, but from previous years there's the likes of Richard Brennan of Newsjiffy ( class of 2006) whose blog gets to the point, far swifter than I have here.

And also from outside where I teach comes Adam Westbrook from City University, whose latest post indicates how far City Uni have come with blogging.

I still remember that moment when having spoken about Adam to my students, various friendships were formed and Adam and us (students and me) would later meet at the Front Line Club.

Students from competing universities who share something in common - a creative common.

Then there's Dave Lee, whom Like Adam defines the future. In both cases, yes, they've recently pinged me, but that's not really the self-vanity point here. They're good strong bloggers reaching out.

And there are countless more, including as I alluded to before current Masters students whose blogs I read. But there are many others who have not taken the plunge.

Ultimately, and something Darwinist might say, that needs to happen. There has to be a distinction. There needs to be difference, a hierarchy.

You may rubbish this, for we're all not built the same, what interests you may be nonchalant to me.

But our job is to provide a route so that everyone has an opportunity to make strong their case for becoming a paid and respected journalist.

Blogs to some people, may actually not matter, but they do provide a weather bell, and if no one reads them nay mind you're at least, at least, doing something no one else can do for you which is....

There is no royal path to good writing; and such paths as do exist do not lead through neat critical gardens, various as they are, but through the jungles of self, the world, and of craft. ~Jessamyn West, Saturday Review, 21 September 1957

Next week what to blog about and what we've discovered in access to blogs.

David wrote his first published article at 15 for his school mag about the Neutron Bomb ( pretentious Ba*****) He doesn't believe blogging will save the world, but it will make a world of difference to understanding issues. He sits on Council of the BJTC