The Alterity of Breaking News

How to become an instinctive thinker covering breaking news when you're mobile

In the term "breaking news"it would not be anomalous to imagine a giant surf set breaking - rolling out a life of its own.

The UK Press Gazette recently reported a group of surfers uncovering a 50ft wave in England, yet refusing to give its exact location. This contested spirit is much the same for the news surfers seeking to break news.

Yet, somehow in our meta data-mined digiworld, breaking news is becoming an irrelevance - at least in the way TV once had the monopoly and practiced its wares.

Not any more - anyone now can break news.

CNN, London, I'm told by a lecturer-colleague no longer invests in the act of "breaking news" being its raison detre.

Breaking News Broken
Baudrillard, the late contemporary philosopher might have proclaimed the media's incestuous naval gazing has now seen some sense.

He might add what TV inevitably saw as a form of electronic corporeal voyeurism, the need to get to the scene and flaunt oneself first whilst attempting to ride the wave exclusively is diminishing. Merci Dieu.

Today as part of a Masters lecture over a couple of hours trainee journalists sought to deconstruct this modernistic news parlance.

In 1963 the term would evince a chilling turn,  but in the hands of the television supremo Cronkite the most gut-wrenching of news is delivered in a matter-of-fact, unflappered manner.

Contrast this with the many excitable presentations of today, some crassly riddled with bon mots.




Breaking News in the Lecture Room
The lecture room does not do its justice.

Breaking News is truly realised under the intense gaze of the controlled frenzy of the newsroom, where old friendships can be lost in seconds, and where everyone is calling for order in disorder.

Here then is what we devised. A collaborative meme, which I have since added to and hopefully our MAs can modify as well. That I published it gives us all a moment to evaluate its purpose: the lecture gave it much more context.

But when the news doth break, what is one to do? When you're working for an outfit with limited resources how do rise above your station? Also when you break and its an exclusive, how do you manage, control, stay with the story?

Today app-determinism e.g twitter answers some of those questions. But it needs to be buttressed with the old and new . Those old fashion acts include the relentless act of "phone-bashing."

Remember time is the premium commodity. Every second gone, reduces your real-time prowess in driving the story. Like a trader, one minute the stocks up; the next it's down and now you failed to bring it in.

So instinct is crucial. Instinct however is practice learnt.

That means arriving at the point where when the big story happens you get all the elements in a Madhatter row and publish with all the prudence it deserves.

The hacks hacka

ABC Associate Producer David Dunkley Gyimah in the midst of a breaking news story in Johannesburg

David reporting live on the BBC World Service wrapping up Breaking News of the above bomb blast

To the hack in anyone, the breaking news story is or was the supreme Adrenalin rush. My first at a live station, BBC Radio Leicester was in 1991 - the assassination of Rajiv Ghandi.

When the news broke, I was shifting on the Asian network about to go home for the day, with only four other members of staff around to subsequently run a rolling news programme.

I'd had four previous years of radio to give me the confidence of what to do.

Today, within Breaking News the pubic demand more: participatory, explanatory, localisation - features explained in news' generic terms in Stuart Allan's News Culture,  but apply to the breaking format.

Being on air recounting information you reeled of seconds ago only wears the news down - a symptom of 24 hours news. We watch perhaps because of our insatiable appetite and curiosity, goaded by the announcer.."More news soon, meanwhile let's go to our correspondent". 

This, and how we now address breaking news in the digi-age  is food for this generation, compounded by a myriad of ethical and professional concerns.

Breaking News? More like Constructive for the post-TV age.

How to become an instinctive thinker covering breaking news

1. top zone is white heat hot - an abstraction from Mcluhan. The news is breaking fast
2. The lower zone - the temperature is more tempered. The news gets cycled into the lower zone for the creation of the news feature, whilst attention is still given to the top zone

• The blue zones are web-enabled activities towards coverage of breaking news
• The grey circles are customary traditional news practices
• The reds are routes that may often not yield swift responses
• The black will be hard pressed for an immediate response

The one we did not discuss in detail that we'll look at next week will be your reputation. In the event that a news story breaks and you're competing with others, how do you ensure a response from a potential participatory body may depend on the presentation of your reputation.

David Dunkley Gyimah, a senior lecturer at the University of Westminster, and PhD Candidate at SMARTlab University College Dublin is a member of Microbes Mind - a gathering set up by Nasa researcher Zann Gill, which provides provocative questions and answers to scenarios.

Post Script.
Spare a through for a Masters student who knew about the Royal Wedding announcement before its official announcement, but did not break the story for all sorts of ethical reasons, not least though if you break the story, how do you go about managing it.

How anyone can make Video - Master class lecture

Re:sounding motion was a short film made to complement the performance of a group of dancers and musicians shown on the big cinema screen of the Royal Festival Hall on Friday 26th, March 2010

Can anyone make a film? A good film?

I believe so, because it's a language and languages can be learned.

Michael Rosenblum, (my friend and tutor 16 years ago) arguably the most influential videojournalism evangelist in the world believes so fundamentally.

Recently he got me :) to make this video for one of the many illustrious clients he works with. ( See video below)

So our Master class at the University of Westminster will explore traditional and new themes of video making, and it really doesn't matter what level you're at, because this should be as entertaining as hopefully rewarding in prepping you for your careers.

Riz Khan, could be feeding into our lecture. Link here to earlier post.

I'll be pulling some early finds from my PhD study which surprised me and I'd like it to open us up to the new e.g. the IPad and films and make it as interactive as possible.

So I hope bring in a number of interviewees specifically for this lecture either live or pre-recorded e.g. Riz Khan, who is a huge digital film buff.

So see you back at Lectures and to Albert Gachiri for sparking the idea this possible.

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Below is a post from an earlier write up on this event.

Jay-Z and Prince Charles sharing a joke at the University of Westminster, Harrow Campus, 2006. Yes the biggest rap star was in the TV- film studios. Link here to previous posts on IPad design.


It is shrouded in past iterations of different forms; just the word videojournalism may be somewhat novel in its acceptance of such a standard. No one ever calls a news item aesthetic !

But what does it mean?

Certainly not style over substance or otherwise a vainglorious attempt to dress mutton up as lamb but a distillation, to communicate as efficaciously as possible maximising the impact of what's said or envisioned.

You may end up playing the above video more than once; your behaviour, influenced by the affect of an aesthetic. The frame choice, mood, experience - all part of a complex interactive mesh.

Master Class
I aim to deliver a Master Class lecture at the University of Westminster for Masters students very soon.

Here, the focus is to illustrate, via an interactive forum, my own background as a practicing videojournalist/ artist in residence and findings from my PhD research how aesthetic videojournalism is crucial to our solo ability to tell more informed stories.

That is more informed stories of the same stories, taking into account the variables that allow us to enrich those moments.

The other notion I posit is how the very essence of "the story" in itself requires further interrogation in an age when the idea of story teller is no longer univocal. The concept of video-hyperlinking unravels ownership.

On page 44 of The Documentary Handbook (2009), under "Flying Solo", documentary maker, lecturer and author Peter Lee-Wright writes:

" His ( David Dunkley Gyimah) conception of videojournalism stands in stark contrast to the newspapers and broadcaster who see VJs as a cheap alternative to crews and traditional working practices"....

"While the experts trash around in uncertainty, it is a good time for the innovators to show their stuff...from the core investigative issues of public interest and accountability to the new forms of storytelling that Gyimah champions" (pg47)

If you're on the Masters programme (print pathway or broadcasting) reading this, then I hope to stage it after the Easter break and if you're allow me to say this, I believe it will benefit anyone with an eye to video or visuals of some sort. Details to be posted soon.

More on videojournalism here www.viewmagazine.tv

Viewmagazine.tv circa updated from 2005



David making a video for his friend and former tutor Michael Rosenblum for Oprah.com