Open letter to Tony Hall BBC Director General and not to ignore diversity in different themes in expanding the BBC.

Click here for BBC DG talk

Dear Tony Hall

Some time ago I read Huw Wheldon's vision of the BBC. I didn't hear the original speech, but it formed part of my PhD thesis. Wheldon would have smiled. An executive with eyes across story form, innovation and the arts is milk for those growing up with the BBC  Wheldon expressed that at a time of globalisation, Hall expressed that implicitly while addressing the tenants of a not fully written digital theory.

Digital theory, if its taught the broadcasters one thing it is that there is no such thing as a dedicated broadcaster.

It's like going into a supermarket and getting your hair cut or clothes cleaned. If you're the producer of original content how miffed you're inclined to be to know that audiences watch you and then go and express themselves elsewhere e.g. facebook, Google etc.

Whilst a pioneer of many things, the BBC's is equally late in coming to the table. I have evidence when they tried their first attempts at embedded video, from an ONA meeting in 2008. The video I made is somewhere. I had embedded video in 1999 so was curious to see how they would fare. 

Peter Barron, the BBC's stalwart Newsnight editor who was rightly picked off by Google pressed the BBC's to go digital with blogs and the rest. I have a video of that too. Barron was my old editor at Channel 4 News, but I first crossed his path in 1991 as a researcher on Newsnight.

So being tentative is a BBC trait. Remember  WeMedia in 2006 which took place at the BBC and Reuters. I remember that event as the BBC getting its mojo back. I grabbed the then BBC director general for a quick chat.

The BBC was after the young, but as a former reporter on BBC Reportage, it had always been after the young viewer I told the director general.

The BBC has its mojo back. In part because of the talent it has sought. I met  a couple of them too, but also realising there was a different ethos. Now, even Hoover, a once great company could atrophy in the midst of the young pretender in Dyson.

No one is immune, so the strategy is to become a tech start-up. To do what the Facebooks have been doing, and boy how the BBC could flex its muscle because at least they have primary original content.

But there's still some massive learning to be done.

To exemplify how to wall garden behaviour, how to fuel chatter and keep in within the ecosystem of the network, how the content is also the audience's lifestyles. Hall's presentation alludes, even captures that -- the BBC, a producer of diverse primary media that seeks to become all encompassing e.g. My BBC. 

Huw Wheldon would agree. It's a grand vision, but it's there for the taking but the challenges are the BBC's often perennial inertia at levels below senior managers.

Back in the 1990s having done a few years of broadcasting at Radio Leicester, I tried to get a job at the BBC. But for love or money, I could never get past the application stage. I admit I had massive failings, but while senior management would give me the nod e.g., Newsnight, Radio London and BBC Radio 4s documentary department, middle management remained indifferent. But I must not be selfish in this letter.

The BBC's must acknowledge its quasi-curatorial role. It's different from being the 'knowledgable' being. That much the BBC should know in understanding Dan Gilmor's WetheMedia - now a decade or so old.

The BBC's various achilles include:

• Diversity in programming could do with diversity in personnel. Digital theory is colour blind, but it acknowledges cultural and societal impacts from prosumers. 
• Hubris in understanding you can contribute without assuming you know everything.
• Leading by what we, the audience don't know. If citizen journalism has proved to bve a success, then the professionals should have long raised their game to indicate the future -- unobtainable thus far to other. Joharis window should present itself to the new programme makers and thinkers, set about, if that's what they want, to teach audiences how to read and decode the media.

The distinction with forms of the analogue world will need refreshing, not as cosmetic exercises but new theories and practices Touchcast may be one such tool e.g. video hyperlinking.  But the rear window - what's coming from behind e.g. Vice will also set new challenges. Interesting times ahead - when the license fee ( money) won't necessarily buy you love.

What's needed are new relationships between constituents and the broadcaster. Should the social networks quake? Not yet, but if they get it right, this will be interesting.

Regards

David Dunkley Gyimah
Senior lecturer 
Artist in Residence, Southbank Centre
Creative www.viewmagazine.tv

News doesn't have to be told with a beginning, middle ad an end

How many times have you heard this advice? Make sure your story has a beginning, middle and end...But CNN’s Candy Crowley has a variation: “Every story needs a beginning, middle and end,” she says, “not necessarily in that order.” 

The above comes from a post called: Storytelling advice: Beginning, middle, end from the NewsLab site.  Newslab is one of the sites I pop by once in  while, and when I saw the post, I thought I had to respond, below.

As news makers, and I talk about myself here as well, we can often be guilty for recursive statements that appear innovatory, but have deep histories.

I know that much from starting my PhD, when I walked into giving a lecture to faculty and in two year time held my head in shame, at the 'original ideas' I was making.

One of the UK's leading documentary figures and world renowned documentary scholars, Brian Winston, goes so far to say anything original about films news form was made in the 1960s. However when he was helping me with my thesis he urged me to dig deeper.

That digging is to track back into literature, art, journalism and understand what came before. Take my last post where some scholars said the BBC started videojournalism in the UK. If you googled that you would have found that not to be the case. 

Similarly that a story can have different acts not necessarily in chronological order has its roots far back, but more prevalently in French Cinema.

The key perhaps is we need to research more. Very little of storyform has not been discussed in either French, Russian or German film and that's a limited overview.

Here's my response to Newslab.

In the 1960s French new wave filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard set about breaking many of the so called narrative rules that framed Hollywood cinema e.g., continuity eye match cutting, blocking, and that a film could have beginning, a middle and an end, but not in that order.

New wave would influence generations; in the 90s, noticeably, Tarantino and Pulp Fiction. Tarantino even named his production company after Godard’s film A Bande à part. CNN’s Candy Crowley re-iterates an important point which envelopes cinema and art, which itself is influenced by literature.

One of the earliest profound books was Finnegans Wake, by Joyce, which played with the linearity of a story.

Here’s the rub though, news making generally eschews cinema and the novel’s literary discursive properties. News is a genre of a media form that says this is reality as it happened, rather than a version of it rearranged.

Though it’s not news remember the fuss around Michael Moore’s docs about the sequence of events and editing. Thus news films playing with structure and ‘in media res’ have to be aware of when time and events are critical to the story.

That there is room to think this way in the noughties, albeit in a strict fashion in news, suggests how producers seek to play with the form’s structure at a time when news’ main narrative form is showing its age.

I talk more about the interstices of narrative within news, art. literature and journalism on my siteviewmagazine.tv

Cheers

David DG
London, Uni of Westminster

The Brits are coming, Black British talent as a cultural market force

in 1981 Colin Welland announced to a global TV audience at the Oscars that the Brits were coming.


That aphorism has hung around the film and entertainment world for a few generations, with the feeling that the eponymous label about the Brits never really did arrive.

Granted the UK, as Cameron told an audience last year has been behind the export of amazing talent.

Where do we start?

But in all this the experience of Black Brits as a global product has been muted. After all, why shouldn't it be. The Brits are coming signifies all Brits. Colour is irrelevant.

However, in  publicising iconic Brit styles the photo shoots and write ups allude to a thinking that the Brits are coming can be somewhat skewed.

The industry after all has struggled to, can I say, "create" a ground to nurture talent, be it black, white, working class, women or the disabled. All these groups are relevant but in an attempt to take the sting out of any barb I am a being narrow minded, I mean to focus on blacks for this post.

Famously, for instance when the British Film Institute went to Cannes taking scores of new talent with them they forgot to invite Jean Maria Baptiste, after she'd been nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar in Secret and Lies (1996). Baptiste was the first black Briton to be honoured by the academy.

I still remember watching her crestfallen on Newsnight trying to understand. Some years later, Baptiste appeared to have served up her dish cold as Vivian Johnsnon in the US series Without a Trace

In the 1990s I presented a show on the BBC called Black Londoners. Myself and Sheryl Simms considered ourselves progressive - still do, so race was not a blunt instrument in our show, but we were conscious of what it meant to empower generation as achievers. Take this interview with the great late Eartha Kitt




I mention this point because irrespective of the work often undertaken by black Brits, there is always a sense that their parent's heritage means as much to them, as their Britishness. That's why the Black Brits are coming is not incendiary or provocative. It does not promote difference, but highlights a strength.

Yes I said to Boer Farmer in 1992 in the deep rurals of the Orange Free state, there are black people in Britain, to his utter amazement.

So, yes the Black Brits are coming. Only visibly, in so far as the Oscars with 12 Years a Slave and Mandela's film fronted by Brits. Then there's David Harewood in Homeland (2011- ); David Oloyewo in Tom Cruise's Jack Reacher etc.

But is saying the Black Brits are coning, as both a creative and academic is there any empircal evidence to support this. Haven't they always been there and I am merely using a journalistic device of setting an agenda with a nice headline.

That's what I'll be exploring in a much deeper post.

In 1999 leading up to 2000 there were a number of articles written which included some work I had done. The most visible perhaps was from this Evening Standard spread which featured a dynamic new writer called Zadie Smith.

As I recall Smith said, it'll be a victory the day they don't have to line up a number of black talent to make a point.

David lies up with Black British Talent for the Evening Standard

Safeguard teaching videojournalism from online journalism's unsubstantiated knowledge to generations online

How important is Videojournalism to Online Journalism?

When we look at the New York Times's SnowFall, which pushes online journalism [HTML5/CSS3] to new limits, or data journalism in building statistical logic you could say very little.

On the other hand, since You Tube and the availability of cheap cameras deconstructed video production, so anyone could become a publisher online, you could equally argue videojournalism is integral to online journalism.

Andy Bull's Multimedia Journalism  and The Online Journalism Handbook by Liisa Rohumaa and Paul Bradshaw both feature video and videojournalism.

Both are presented in a lively manner in different ways. @paulbradshaw whose work I have known since 2006ish, from my interactions with US data journalist Adrian Holavaty, is an exemplar in the field of algebraic data journalism and scraping, among other things.

A new book "Online Journalism - The Essential Guide" also features videojournalism and like the former books covers the vast and expanding Hawkinsian space of online journalism.

Publishing a book is no easy feat. so if like me you've never published and are either contemplating it, or imagine what it involves the authors demand our respect.

Because it is a solitary, isolating pursuit putting together words on a page and digging into deep knowledge to share with others.


I know that little from my PhD I have been finalising. I have neglected my own health in attempts to write-correct-rewrite.

So anyone who publishes, in reviewing their work we should put their efforts into perspective. It is a herculean task after all.

 If a book contains 20 chapters and one of those is critiqued, and interpreted to be found wanting, this should not colour the whole book, should it?

Does it matter if one chapter on videojournalism needed greater scrutiny regarding its history or those that practise it and what that means in creating videojournalism?

Probably not!  Historicity is not essential for understanding, in this case, videojournalism, but some context of is history, perhaps is required.

But here's the issue. Books, unlike blogs, and like photos have a certain immanence. That is, the printed word sticks with you and is easier to find and reference than say a blog or a newspaper article.

An educational book sets up a thread and when the book is deemed "excellent",  it perpetuates an unrelenting cycle for providing great information for the reader or a next generations of authors looking to build on the source of the knowledge. This comes from referencing.

David in San Antonio

Dan Gillmor's book WeMedia is one such book and there is nothing wrong with the book. Quite the contrary.

When I read it soon after it was published and then interviewed Gilmor at a conference Restoring Journalism Trust I was invited to in 2005 in San Antonio, I was thrilled to interview him, to gain his knowledge. Here's my story of that event

Online journalism

Online Journalism doesn't state it is a definitive guide, or is a book about videojournalism. It is an "Essential Guide", so there is some wiggle room from an academic perspective, but it's likely the reader, you,  may not make such a distinction.

But, here's the rub, in the world of videojournalism, so many published books have thus far got so many things wrong on the subject. Specifically, within the UK perspective.

Does it matter where, say, videojournalism started or that the source of information could be deeper? From a practical point of view, you could argue probably not. Who cares where videojournalism started in the UK!

What you would like to know is how to shoot a videojournalism film that grabs the attention of your audience. How you create meaning from complex ideas in a matter of minutes? How to create narratives that mostly everyone is ignoring. The "what is videojournalism" and how it differs from say documentary.

But what if I told you the source of videojournalism defines the form and delivery of videojournalism that can become the status quo. Put another way by recognising the BBC as the source of videojournalism, this may persuade you into reading more and studying the BBC's videojournalism.

There's nothing wrong in studying BBC videojournalism except the videojournalism practiced by the BBC was a fundamentally different form of videojournalism to that which the architects of the scheme envisaged.

Another point, the BBC did not start videojournalism in the UK. The official source as recorded by the National Union of Journalists was Channel One TV in 1994.

a videojournalist from 1994 with her betacamera

Does this matter? Theoretically, probably not, until I tell you that the videojournalism practiced at Channel One was different types of story form that most probably you would have liked  to have learned, and probably still would.

How it came together on analysis, involved different phases, some ad hoc, some engineered, and from interviews with Rosenblum, the VJs and just over a hundred other important figures. Then, we come to a place where the landscape is a clearer.

Channel One's videojournalism is an integral contribution of the UK's style of  a new global videojournalism style which radicalises and fundamentally transforms video in journalism. Six years ago I uploaded this to my You Tube site. It involved the beginnings of the manifesto after thinking and practicing videojournalism in 2008 for 14 years.





So how does Channel One contribute to this global knowledge?  As a product of Channel One, here's one hint of many, where I use myself as an example. In this video from 2005, the jury head is reading their citation of a videojournalism award in Berlin.

International Videojournalism Awards Berlin (Bauhaus/ ZDF) from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

Here's another. What does this video too say about videojournalism and does this matter? Mark Cousins used to run the Edinburgh Film Festival.

He wrote the book - A Story of Film and then made the 15 part documentary series. He has won awards at Cannes and in the 90s had a series on BBC in which he interviewed all the major directors around the world.

So he is considered something of an expert.







In several academic books thus far, the BBC is cited as the source of videojournalism in the UK. This is not true. As part of my PhD I tracked down the senior BBC executive who was responsible for bringing videojournalism to the BBC. His name is Pat Loughrey. The picture below Pat is  Stewart Purvis who was the CEO of ITN in the 1990s. He too used  videojournalism at ITN - but says it was a different form of videojournalism.

Loughrey, former head of Nations and Regions at the BBC, now a Vice Chancellor

Purvis former CEO of ITN

Loughrey says Channel One was ten years before its time, while Purvis says Channel One deconstructed video news making to have one person film, produce and present their video on the day.

This video below is from 1995, one of many different submissions for my PhD. The point I make here is that this is an example of a story made in a day in which one person had control. There was no editorial input into this story. I researched, told my editor, shot it, produced it and here we are. Remember this is 1995.

The web is not knowledge

There is a video online about videojournalism, which is hosted by the BBC Journalism College. It is a conference that was put together by David Hayward at the BBC, myself and the University of Central Lancashire.

It is a worthy video, but it is not the repository of videojournalism. It features one of my former students called David Heathfield, who I invited to the event. David is brilliant. He works for Nato. Nato is an intimidating title, so I can see why on that video David becomes the videojournalism spokesman.

Now, here's where I have to be careful that the points I am trying to make do not come across as some academically elite bumf, brought on by red mist, or that I am spitting hairs. And that they amount to nothing other than my own ego.

In 2006 Nato asked my university if we would like to be involved in an incredible project. Help train their military by participating in their war games.

I was the editor for the programme. David was a graduate of the scheme two years later, before he joined Nato as an employee.

Nato practices a videojournalism that is aligned with BBC journalism's form and David as much as anyone's view of videojournalism needs to be contextualised.

Steve Punter, a brilliant videojournalist and editor was also featured in the Online Journalism book. Punter is a rare animal. He was one of the UK's first videojournalists, a great thinker and one of the editors helping the BBC understand videojournalism at two of its regional stations.

But as brilliant as Steve's quote is from the video online, it cannot begin to tell you about videojournalism. That requires research.

That's why we invited 25 of the most appropriate practitioners and managers to the event. In my PhD I interview 20 of the original 30 Channel One videojournalists so the reader is provided with a more rounded view of the form.

What does this all mean? Perhaps nothing, but the danger is that we come to believe that everything we see online is the be all and end all. The web is not the source of all knowledge. Not yet, anyway.

Videojournalism is the most adroit form of video making in journalism that came to the fore some twenty years ago in the UK. This year we'll celebrate its anniversary. In a couple of weeks I submit my thesis and then I can share its contents with you. There are more than a few surprises in it.

But even with that, it is only one part of a landscape of an expanding plain of videojournalism in online journalism. Hopefully, it will be one that places videojournalism where it should be and enable us as a community to argue and discuss more forcefully what is is and how it can help us.



David Dunkley Gyimah was this year's Chair of Television Innovative  News at the RTS.
He is the founder of viewmagazine.tv, a senior lecturer and artist in residence at the Southbank Centre. he submits his PhD in two months time. He's been in the media for 26 amd has worked for BBC Newsnight, Channel 4 News and ABC News years and now lectures and trains [ he launched PA's videojournalism training programme] around the world.

Coming up : They say the Black British talent is coming. It's been here for as long as. In this from the Evening Standard, I was lined up with some of the breakthrough talents of the millennium e.g. Zadie Smith. In my next post I reflect on why and how black British talent is probably now getting a hearing.

London LIve - Everywhere television, the future of television

London live

As alliterations go, they could not have picked a better name: London Live.

Finally the sleeping cockney flaneur awakens. For visitors to the capital, stuck in a hotel wanting to savour London's treasure, this is it.

For video addicts turned off from television's biggest disease: sameness, London Live is about to rewrite the rules.

In a few weeks we'll know. In recent years I have learned a few things myself.

It's 2.07 a.m in the morning and I'm inserting video bibliographies into a text, whose simplicity, hopefully, belies the enormity of the task I have set myself. 


WATCH DAVID'S RECENT FILM TRAILER FROM NEAR THE SYRIAN BORDER




What will TV look like?

What will television look like in the digital age? That's the grand theory. I'm doing the accessible bit in a world where grand theories are like stray shoelaces on trainers. Steady, cuz you're about to  fall flat on your face.

Six years in the making, several countries, more than a 100 experts and a lot of crying into cups of teas, trying to get the rhetorical arguments to flow, finally it's nearly here...

David Dunkley Gymah on the future of Video go to viewmagazine.tv for more

Thus far I have had a number of enquiries from industry figures, but alas my friends will have  to wait a bit more. Sorry!

But the questions as my research collides with the launch of London Live are as follows. 

• In an age of digifest, user-gen, and mobile tech, with html5 and Vice breathing down the web, and social flaring,  how will fixed television fare? 

Could it be the new 4K camera, sourced by @GlenBMulcahy that creates the impression of watching life unfold from your window? Or is there a new style or narrative we should be aware of?

My thesis points to an array. Six months ago I introduced Touchcast to a friend - one of the top executives in the BBC. Videohyperlinking. -- how you create linear television by being discursive, is a biggy, or game changer if you're stateside. Watch it hit a space near you soon. 

And then there's the method behind the concept of the Outernet, which featured on Apple's site ( see pic below) 

A new form of television - live in public spaces by David for Apple profile

Culture Vultures

Technology is a part of the solution. But actually there's a more interesting question. How do  grab and then hang on to one of the UK's most fickle audiences - Londoners. And how do you measure success?  

The Evening Standard has the opportunity to launch a new type of television.  A TV that can radicalise our perception of what constitutes TV. Just as they did more than fifty years ago.

And why not - a new millennium, a new 24 hour entertainment TV station. No one's tried it yet, not in this era of digital plumbing. Live TV and Channel One were before their time.

Prresenting at Time Square NY

Television, according to one of the most influential texts ever written on the subject, Television by Raymond Williams,  is a cultural construct. What does that mean? It means at some point someone decided what it would looked like.

And over the years that feature has been normalised in various cultures, so that you and I have expectations. In fact Television has taught you and I to understand the media it presents.

This facade withstood the pen of many sociologists and focus groups before cable, satellite, mobile phones and the Net took shape.

Knowing what television looks like now has become the turn on for one generation and the major moony for another who traditionally shirk TV. The question becomes who do you pitch to? It's a constant concern for TV makers. In the 90s I worked for Reportage and the issue was as ripe then as it is now.


BBC Reportage from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

Janet Street Porter's Reportage wrote the rules outside mainstream before they adopted its techniques.

New TV

Alternative methods are only suitable to various cultures, as I spoke about at one of Europe's biggest media gatherings. NewsXchange.


Consistently television has reverted to type. The group it knows and the progamming itself understands.  It's had to do this too, because of the bottom line and the idea of turning a profit soon. 

Being part of the launch of a new station or Dotcom is exhilarating. When the candles on the cake have been blown out, it's also for execs, a bloody pain in the neck,  particularly when the suits start asking about projections.

Ask any savvy entrepreneur behind a television station and you're inclined to be disappointed. Sky News, for instance, is funded from other kitties. At Channel One they burnt through a million pounds a month  and that was peanuts in terms of funding its operation costs. 

Newspapers and television stations, as some of the videojournalists discovered from the Press Association's VJ programme I helped set up, are different animals. The pros is it means Nupes in TV can reset the agenda. The con, is that they should be allowed to left alone to build a brand. Sadly, like Cardiff FC, managers like unrealistic changes.


So what if you could invent a new form of television?  Oh yes it is possible, but to do it, firstly you would have to reconcile the idea that you would be teaching your audience a new type of television to grow into to. You'd  have to hold your nerve, and then secondly know what it is and produce this new type.

18-30s don't do traditional television

The second is hugely difficult because most television forums call upon other television types to assist them. Imagine where You Tube would be if it relied on the convention of wisdom. Or, think of the talent pool where TV people come from  - and consider, if you had the data of commissions from non Traditional TV types.

Many years ago in the capital, a little unknown station called Channel One did something radical -- low cost reality TV series? Well, yes, that's the television cultural construct at work again. No, it chose people who were not in, or done television. 

Steve Punter, a videojournalism and later BBC Editor referred to them as the "odd ball".   Many now litter the echelons of innovative television.

To produce good TV, you've got to be anti-TV, otherwise you merely mimic, without the budget -- if you don't have it - what your competitors are doing.

I come from a television background: BBC Reportage, Channel One, Newsnight and Channel 4 to name a few, before a couple of years with a huge mentor, John Staton formerly a TV producer at Saatchi and Saatchi. Hence I am guilty of the second.

But in my six-year study submitted soon for my PhD at University College Dublin, the first question about operating away from the norm is critically considered.

It took in some of the world's leading talent in story form,  and my own autoethnographic narrative:  the Knight Batten Awards for Innovation; Channel 4 Digital Awards Runner Up; International Award for Videojournalism, to sculptor an argument.

These served as both markers and also door openers to some of the busiest peoples whom I needed to speak to. The content is king argument has proved to be one the most versatile sayings for grabbing audiences, but the research underscores this with some key caveats.

The content is standard, the question become how different can you be to put one over the industry and sate the appetite of a new audience.  London Live could provide some of those answers.

David Dunkley Gyimah was this year's Chair of Television Innovative  News at the RTS.
He is the founder of viewmagazine.tv, a senior lecturer and artist in residence at the Southbank Centre. he submits his PhD in two months time. He's been in the media for 26 years and now lectures and trains [ he launched PA's videojournalism training programme] around the world.

Television news has its last laugh at social media, but could that change?

BBC's Hackathon event

Many digital natives willed it, the end of the behemoth broadcasters.

In 2006 at the BBC in London, WeMedia - a forward thinking agency -  held a two day conference.

A measure of the company's pulling power was how the then BBC's Director General Mark Thompson was one of the speakers, as was actor Richard Dreyfus and roll call of international key figures, such as Jeff Jarvis.

If you examine the period, what was equally interesting is how corporations like the BBC wobbled in their confidence when it came to areas of the web.  That would later change. How?

The BBC either bought in talent such as Erik Huggers and Roo Reynolds to launch its second life, otherwise sent its management on tech finds.

I met BBC managers in Podgorica, Berlin, Brussels and so on. When the Social tech history is properly written and TV states its place, what will emerge is how networks like the BBC stayed relevant to audiences by coming quasi social e.g., its iPlayer.

Digital natives may stand outside the corporation and critique the BBC's lack of this and that. For instance its social media strategy, but in truth, companies like the BBC have bolstered their standing in the new digital age, by adopting and recreating.

Its innovation devision and its Hackathon is just one example. There are many, and as one of the BBC's senior executives told me, yes they are learning from the web. It took a while - I attended the BBC's ONA meeting in 2007 when it was trialling embeded video - but the divide between the rump of the bell curve of external social mediast and themselves is quite narrow.

The BBC is part of a multibillion dollar industry. It's news department sells news and whether it sticks with ageing traditional models of broadcast which are 50 years old, it's not going to go away anytime soon.

Because as I said their adaptive skills, but also because of their legacy viewers. In other words, the way we watch and consume news was taught to us by corporations like the BBC, and when we went online the BBC merely reworked its videos to meet our needs.

Young people may not watch the news, but that's not because of Social. Young people rarely watch the news and where news corporations are losing audiences, actual evidence will show its enough not to affect their confidence.

That's because their brand is still strong, and a considerable number of social media still rely on the BBC for content to tweet and talk about.

In my PhD research I address a fundamental issue that questions news production. It is relevant for the younger generation and if its contents prove popular, in part driven by marketing, then it could add to other strategies in the way we produce news.

Until that is, its readopted. I've already had some interest.

David Dunkley Gyimah is involved with innovative news production

Sharing and laughing. See you in 2014

Then he wanted to take a picture and I couldn't help laughing

Then I laughed some more. I had ro sit down

By this time, I had no idea why I was laughing

But still laughed some more

And then I thought, you know, it's good to laugh. Happy New Year and may 2014 be a brilliant one.

Young people, You and young black 15-30s doing social in journalism - redux Chapter 3

It's proved a highly topical subject. It started off this Christmas after I saw something Q, a go-getter filmmaker had written on his Facebook about support for filmmakers. Q and I have been meaning to touch base since a couple of years. We share common interests as filmmakers.

And then we started to talk and we've been talking ever since.  I posted about young people and black folk doing journalism, but not as we know it.   Q,  taking his skills as an entrepreneur, filmmaker and social media artist  crafted a response of sorts -- more a self standing piece. 

To say his article has caught fire is an understatement. It speaks with an authorship that is personal and relays direct experiences. Anyone who is able to put together a feature film, create a book, physically do something that others may take enjoyment from deserves to acknowledged.  Q has done those things and his narrative spurned one reader to leave a message.

Here's a clip of what Q asks before a reader The New Black contributes...It started on Twitter.

TOP DOG AGENCY @topdogagency

@viewmagazine @digidickinson @DSLRinformer my basic question is: "What is news?" no I am being totally serious. "What is news?" because its vital 2 me 2 understanding journalism. if we don't value whatever the system, universities, journalists claim to be news. What is news?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

..... Later Q adds

Buy Dead Meat here

In my book Deadmeat, I talked about the commodification of the digital youth. However, young 15-30 year old black people are learning how to make money from their own online commodities and keeping the digital income, because they have their audiences.

 -------------------------------------0-------------------------------

Here's what The New Black had to say

Thoroughly enjoyed reading this innovative response from Q and have to add to the topic. 

The business model for news organisations is crumbling because social media has created a digital ecosystem model that has changed the way to do journalism. 

News organisations not only struggle with public perception of journalism, but also to find the right balance between quality and quantity for their brand value. The key to building a healthy digital ecosystem is to create value for everyone involved. 

Simply, the journalism brand is broken. 

The young people understand the value of digital technology and use this to seek out opportunities for implementing it with a view to make an impact... this is known as The New Wave! 

A few weeks ago, a well known recording artist dropped her new album using this strategy and shocked everyone. 

Journalists now want to be navigators in this realm. Rule #1: To navigate, one has to operate ‘light years ahead’ of the traffic in the super highway. 

What is digital ecosystem? Click link to watch the short animated film http://on.fb.me/1kUQrgc

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That then led me to think of several things related to the New Black's  comments. It's a bit long, but I hope you enjoy it for digging back experiences,  reflecting as an educator ( I lecture at a the University of Westminster) and as a videojournalist ( DIY cinema news maker) and drawing on my experience as me - and everything that represents.

So first I'd like to introduce myself.

PROLOGUE ONE

David Dunkley Gyimah at Aggrey House Prempeh College

This is me above....Prempeh College, Ghana -- one of the best colleges in Ghana. We have a name for ourselves" Amanfoo. It translates as: "one of us".

We believe in the motto: Suban ni nimdie. "Character and knowledge". When we tracked down the headmaster who built this school he stated I wanted something that the boys would be aspirational about. Good word that! aspirational. It is life's fuel.


Trailer - Prempeh College from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

He wanted us to do things for our country and others, not the other way around. That motto is important then as it is now. It is Social!

This is me again. 1992 I tried to find work in the UK having graduated from Uni and worked for Newsnight. For two years I emigrated to South Africa. I worked for ABC News and one of the people I produced was Danny Glover.

In 1997, having had a brilliant stint at working back in the UK, I returned to South Africa to make a programme for Ghana  and South African TV called the United States of Africa. Back in 1997 before You Tube was born, the Ghanaians were using videojournalist. Wow ! Very few people know that ! I have film of us working.

I was in Soweto in a bar and then a friend said to me look who that is and it was Quincy Jones, so I went over to him and we had a short Q and A. On this trip  I also met Nelson Mandela. This was the age of analogue photography so sadly I never got a pic of us shaking hands to send to mum :(.

In  2001 I took on one of life's memorable assignments, as team  Lennox Lewis videojournalist fighting Tyson. We went from the Pocono mountains to Las Vegas. It was mad good. On fight night, no one slept as we partied all night and wrote copy about the fight.

As a creative and journalist your sense of belonging never escapes you. I too have fought battles, but as a filmmaker you also seek to be recognised by your peers whatever their colour, so I have done what you could say is 'hard core' media.

In Washington this interview with the former head of the CIA. Yes one of the world's renowned intelligence gathering agencies is a favourite.

Last September I undertook an assignment that will stay with me forever. I was invited to  near the Turkey-Syrian border to work with some young Syrian Videojournalists. Was I scared? Flying out yes! Because all Americans had been ordered to leave the place, I was going to, by the US government.

So by now there's kind of two reactions I get. I'm crazy. You have to be a bit. And he might know a thing or two. I'm cautious and I don't believe in hierachies. If anyone is reading this who I have taught, knowledge is power to be shared. I get angry at those who believe knowledge gives them a particular pedestal. This is why social-- a word that has been around for a long time, but has become popularised recently -- means a lot to me.

Many of my former students are now very good friends and they too have shown how Social works for them, like Don Omope of African Screens.

And Dionne Clarke who became an LA correspondent and now is an editor for one of the UK's top entertainment magazine. She and Don filmed Dream Girls the red carpet that we put on Viewmagazine.tv

I did do one thing that was a bit crazy ( oh another, oh yes and another). In 2000 I dived down 35m to a wreck in Turkish waters with their army to find  a World War I  ship and nearly had my last gulp of air. I panicked under water after a giant under water ribbon current slammed me against some bomb shells that could have gone off. It's funny how you start thinking of wierd things in these circumstances. I kept thinking have I put the rubbish out!

Example of Multiple Platform Reporting - Video journalism et al from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

A couple of years ago I was in China. That was good - even learned some Mandarin. Funny, but no one in the city paid any notice to me as a black man in a sea of Chinese. Only one eight year old thought I was Will Smith. LOL

And then another cool thing was walking down Time Square after a presentation and seeing me being beamed onto some giant screens.

That was followed by Apple giving me the shout to speak about digital.

END OF PROLOGUE ONE

So here's my response that picks up on themes from the New Black and perhaps spells out a few myths about the media.

Thanks "The New Black", I'm sure Q will come back on this. Everything you say is valid, but if I can add some footnotes to this. The business model for news was always a precarious one built on cultural commercial interests. In the 1930s newspapers complained against radio. In the 1960s newspapers lobbied against TV. In the 1990s mainstream complained against cable and satellite. In the noughties it was the Internet.

The issue with journalism is that it was never a one size fits all i.e there's Jet Magazine, Ebony, The Voice, Caribbean Times, Jewish Chronicle etc, so I believe we're talking about mainstream media in say, the UK, sometimes dubbed "white media".  

Professor Hall - Wikipedia

News and journalism has always struggled with perceptions way before the Net, which is why it is one of the most researched areas in academic studies.  1000s of books have been written about why it's broken, with some great ones from Professor Stuart Hall

News audiences at the BBC started to drop off from 1994 - just as cable kicked in and provided wider choice. The idea of 'broad' in broadcasting could not be sustained, because people now had cable and satellite to choose from. MTV recorded some of its highest penetration figures in the 90s, particularly after screening Thriller -- first time MTV would screen the video of a solo black artist.

You're right that "The key to building a healthy digital ecosystem is to create value for everyone involved". Newspapers/ broadcasters  have attempted to do this by talking to constituents who make a great share of the audience.  Audiences = business, and these audiences fall into strict class and market groups.

One of the first things the Net did, particularly during the Dotcom boom of 2000 was to show that those market structures didn't work online. You could pick other systems like early and late adopters or Digital Natives or Non Native. However, the legacy power of certain media has proved strong enough to resist changing to new metric's altogether.

In any case, black people's economic firepower has continually been questioned by marketeers advising their brands, so commercial stations rarely feature black content only output. Witness Capital's take over of Choice FM. The bottom line was money in changing the playlist to "urban". For right or wrong  reasons (many DJs remain h***ed off by this).


And newspaper after newspaper targeted at black people have folded e.g. Black Britain, though the reason are far more nuanced. (see Ethnic media)


A friend of mine Charles Amponsah wrote an article back in the day called: "Black people eat Cornflakes too", which somehow found its way into the Face magazine penned, more or less, by a different author.

And do you remember C4's Black on Black or BBC's Black London, which I worked on as a presenter producer. We had meagre resources. In fact that's where I first met Q in 1992. We were all looking to make our mark. Ozwald Boateng the designer, and the brilliant Fella Kuti expanding his UK audiences. BTW he came into the studio with a giant spliff  and no shoes and I had to beg him to not smoke, otherwise I'd get the sack. 

Various studies have also shown that young people don't watch TV. In the 90s I worked on one of the UK's cutting edge shows back then called Reportage. It averaged about 700,000 viewers. The Word and Normski's prog did marginally better. It was much more cool to Listen to Horizon on pirate, or Kiss before it became commercial. All those acid and warehouse parties :)

Broadcasting and main stream journalism could keep its secret of how poor they were doing in the analogue age because there was no (digital) Internet to challenge them. And when it did, they did what most business do by appropriating the bits that suit them for the audience, whilst still not acknowledging other constituents.

The Daily Mail ( I know, I know, but I'm making a point) gets a 134 million unique readers a month ( july). As long as that's paying the bills, Social may not mean nothing. If it ain't broke, as some say, why fix it.

Black people, Asians, and in particular the young have always created their own social networks - and yes the term social networks has been around for a long time.

Anywhere there's a minority against the power of the status quo people have gathered, have socialised, have looked for solutions.  B92 a young person's station during the Bosnia war, which carried non-propaganda news was one example.

Selling mix-tapes from the back of a car and at parties has been another model of pre-internet social. Kurtis Blow's ( 1st commercially successul rapper) We are the breaks got leverage from this. OMG I learned all the words to this when it came out.



But yes the idea of social networks has caught fire now, in the same way videojournalism that I practice can be traced back to the 60s, but has only now become popular because of the Net, social media which You Tube is one of the primary media outlets.

But back in the days, your Ozwald Boateng (we used to club together- where he would sell the idea of a suit to a celeb), Tribe called Quest, Qs used their talent and business acumen to build audiences -- their own networks.

The social bit is really interesting, particularly when you come across some bloke called Hobbs who in the 17th century stated people must come together and share. Obviously he didn't have the net, but what if eh?

The game changer has been the Net - firstly as a distribution mechanism with near zero costs. Pure commerce! But, secondly in nurturing what sociologists called the long tail of users.  and he low costs for programme making. 

Revolution is not videojournalism from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

I'll use myself as an example. In 2002 I was freelancing at Channel 4 News. I'd previously gone to South Africa to live and find work. In 2004 I had an idea for a website which would use video. Everyone laughed, because in 2004 there was no such thing as You Tube, but I' d found a way to do it. Here's the original. It looks fairly puny from where we are now, but 2004 was a different world to today.

When the site was launched it gathered little attention in the UK, but its long tail  (aggregate of smaller groups coming together) in the US and elsewhere grew resulting in it winning one of the most prestigious awards in the US. The Internet became the game changer for others to see little pieces of work we made in our bedrooms.

Young people, whether it's the swinging 60s have always been beyond the status quo. Young people fashion the changes in cultures we see, whether its baggy-slinging thigh jeans, laceless Nikes or bellbottoms or stomping down to  the Cat in the Hat in the 80s/.90s, Legends near Saville Row or Dingwalls in Camden where Jazz spats where in vogue. 

The new wave that Social Media see, to others is remembered as the New Wave for the new style of filmmaking in the 60s that broke rank from conventional forms. The New Wave also became a term for the music scene of the 70s.

The New Wave strikes again

The Bourne supremacy's edgy style of filming comes from the 60s New Wave.  All artists want to do their stuff unmediated. Beyonce follows in a long line who want artistic integrity. James Brown and his King label. Fiddy, Q, Spike Lee, even little ol me.

In the 90s, I made a film from South Africa about the countries new black grads going places. I negotiated with a network, who liked the film. I satellited it to the UK, only to find out when it went out it was recut and re-voiced. I was furious. 

It took 6 months for an apology. So when I launched my site and made films from Ghana, Lebanon and what not, now I had control. Whatever direction it would take would not be predicated exclusively on some other person's point of view, particulary when I would be risking my safety.

It was great to see Beyonce stick her fingers up to the establishment and thus endorsing the DIY approach.  Remember when Prince wanted to release a batch of records and his label said no, so he changed his name. He too would later to the Net, but the coagulations of social networks had not fully taken shape. 

However,  other indies have used the Net to connect with their friends and fans too e.g. Linken Park, but you're right in where you're going. Beyonce's status gives the process a certain oomph. A global icon who has sashayed past the machinery of the music industry. Ouch ! ouch F****ing ouch!

Journalism, as I said, is not universal and it's always had its problems. Social Media theory comes on the back of other theories that have worked in practice, such as User Generated theory.  But Social Media too is not a one size fits all either.

Everyone has the potential to create their own social media network by talking to their new followers as friends, but Greenpeace's social network is different to Linkin Park's social network is different to your and mine, unless we share certain key values.

When I'm thinking about the film I could make of young blacks entering university and the struggles they face, there is a social media group whom I could connect with. However that same social group may not necessarily follow when I talk about the data scrapping, unless that is I make myself the narrative.

You're right too that. Rule #1: To navigate, one has to operate ‘light years ahead’ of the traffic in the super highway. That is innovation at its best.

Mainstream journalism is a huge juggernaut and does not innovate any time soon. It serves its audiences at the point of a critical need to change, but even then it will not, never, be able to match the nimbleness of individuals creating their own media -- only when that media serves their purpose.

Wide studies show that digital ecosystem is a platform, language, philosophy and ideology. The nice thing about the book featured above is it brings together a wide number of experts who shed light on various angles.

Digital has many stake holders and the brilliance is we can all make of it as we should, because for once the link, as you have proved between you dropping this message here and my decision to respond is without any mediating power. Your actions and successes become part of the digital narrative.

What digital is, is a pastiche of ideas, which aren't in themselves fixed. Your animated film is right, but so is TED, so is Q, so is ???? Knowledge as theory should be also tempered by practical knowledge of what works.

Twitter was supposed to be about ambient knowledge when it first launched. It'e become a successful tool for broadcasters to publicise their shows. 

It was the end bit of the animation that asked those crucial questions, having built a sound argument. That argument is necessary cuz we respond, but we are now freer to hear alternative points of view to build our own arguments. Digital frees us from the tyranny of corporatedom telling us what works, before they themselves e.g. Facebook become corporate and then digital users begin to find new cool things.

There's some interesting stuff ahead. For instance I can, in my lectures show, how 21st journalism can become cinema. The original word "cinema" was about seeing things and filming them and making them into narrative, but guess what happened, Hollywood changed its meaning to fictional film.

Social media is creating elite social mediast who theorise, but don't do. The US still wants to pursue net neutrality and break up the Net into fixed super highways. All good stuff for thought.

Thanks for your contribution, because ideas beget ideas. I have written this without any assumptions that I am preaching to the choir or that your views are not highly valid. They are and many of the things here you might hold the same views or disagree. That's all good. Debate brings about renewed meaning. In my case this post  gave me a window to write about stuff I know.

The new black is turning Kenya's tech industry upside down, is leading to new infrastructure and wealth generators from what George Ayittey (@ayittey) on Twitter calls Cheetahs. The new black returns with vigour to a scenario in the 1960s when Ghana's GDP was greater than North Korea, and the Chinese visited Ghana to understand how to drive business.

The Internet, supra media, social networks, cheetahs gives everyone the means and how. 

Anyone who's had to struggle to create and then finally do it share a common social network. Q; Ismahil who produced Bang Bang in Da Manor;  Henry Bonsu who was dropped by the BBC and now is director of the Colourful Radio;  TV presenter Trish Adudu;  you; the DJ connecting with new friends, and me and many others like the brilliant Thabo and Real Deal being managed by my bro Kienda, are also doing social in their ways. 

The real beauty with the concept of a 21st century social is it does not, as a media, turn off and embraces wider social behaviour. This blog has been writing about aspects of it since 2005 e.g. here

Q tell em how we were up till 2 a.m in the morning fixing something :)

Take care New Black.

Best

David

Senior University Lecturer 

Alumni Prempeh College, Ghana.  (OH yes I wear the badge of my Ghanaian)

Creator Viewmagazine.tv