Web journalism's forte during Israeli-Hamas conflict

From the album:
"Ramattan During WAR ON GAZA" by Hamza El Attar In this photo: Hamza El Attar, Tamer Almisshal (photos)

A report by AP is further proof of the web's increasing hegemony over trad media.

AP reports during the Israel-Hamas conflict Al Jazeera outflanked all other media including CNN, because it had:

• Reporters on the ground inside Gaza
• Used social networks extensively to push media e.g. twitter.

Ayman Mohyeldin , Al Jazeera's 29 year of correspondent emerges as a star reporter assesses AP, which is another break in tradition.

Warcos (see front page of Viewmagazine.tv) nowadays across the networks tend to over thirty, more in their forties.

The picture above is one of my stars, whose nebula hasn't near expanded to what it will be.

Tamer Almisshal, who started his career as a correspondent with the BBC in Gaza, age 24, and is now with Al Jazeera.

According to AP, AJ's web figures rose by 600 percent. In the US, where they have little to none TV presence, 60 percent of their web jump came from US-based onliners.

That jump is repeated with shows like Riz Khan's Q and A.


AJs continuing web rise
Riz, a good friend and renowned international broadcast figure, alongside AJs brand, demonstrates that while policymakers may seek to curtail media penetration, the web will provide freer access points and viewers will decide over regulators what they want.


Watch out for an interview between our Masters students and Mark Regev, Israeli government spokesperson, which took place two years ago and features a Q and A from Tamer.

Read AP's article here.


Another Star- this week
This week I'll post an interview with Rania Al Malky, one of the youngest and most dynamic editors in Egypt.

She's one of the few women editors in the country of a daily newspaper, which in itself is one of the few, if not only, independent English language newspaper in the region.

The Daily News is distributed with the International Herald Tribune.

Strengthening photo essay visual story telling

Helpless from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Tilt shift photography technology is 165 years old and should be hitting iphones if not already.

Simply the technique means positioning a camera in a manner that combined with a large aperture creates a shallow depth of field ( everything bar your subject is out of focus)

Well, It's in vogue again. In Time Magazine Vincent Laforet has a kick a** image that is just sublime.

Sydney photographer Keith Loutit's has pushed it a stage further mimicking video ( above) via time lapse. On my twitter I link to what one site calls 50 of the best tilt and shifts and they truly are awesome.

Two years ago I posted how to cheat it using photoshop. Here's how. It's not perfect, but the effects can be quite dramatic.

Expect to see this and others combined to up the ante on rostrum montage sequential photo essays.

Nice!

Journalism software integration

No one said it would be easy.

And there's no such emerging piece of software that screams Journalism.

History tells us that the gramophone's intital use was for recording voice before some bright spark decided music had some merit.

And Facebook, summer of 2005, when a professor at Missouri introduced it to me, had nothing to do with journalism, but students staying in touch with one another.

Co-opting is certainly de rigeur now.

There's a nice piece from Storm Media, which co-opts an animated cut out expression to tell a visual story, which works equally well as a pop video.

How did they do it? Well you can ask Brian himself if you're going to be a Wemedia. The organisers are looking to see if we both can lead various groups into the deconstruction of multimedia.

Amazing story telling
But back to his piece. After Effects!

Yep by now, you're editor has just figured out what flash is. Don't even mention Director ( huh!)

But after effects is the unsung hero in film making.

This one by Storm Media, mixes animated masks, in which you need to separate images firstly from their background. Then Camera and 3D on a path.

It is time consuming. Rob Chiu put together a project like this for his "Black Day to Freedom". And there were a few nights when we spoke, it sounded truly labouring.

But as you can see the results, Media Storm and the Ronin, are brilliant.

But how do you visualise the end goal if you've no idea of the ware or what's possible?

How do you get into that zone?

More later, but this year's motto could be learn a new software package that has nothing to do with journalism per se, but will have huge pluses down the line.

p.s I'm using animated masks from Flash for the front cover of Viewmagazine.tv, which I'll build up to something.

Diagrams/praxis and how to creative think -journalism?

Just finished a 2 hour online session with my research class into the use of diagrams as a feature for research.

It has interesting implications for creative thinking, for the likes of video journalism/ journalism. At least for me and many others who draw out their plan, either as a meme or actual scribbly story boards before setting off on assignments.

It's the journey of unconnected that form new axioms and new ideas. re: brain storming, which this afternoon engaged with Masters Journalism students to visualise programme iddeas..

Any way here's a precis of some of the things said today from 7-9pm. All names are that of research students, whilst Susan and Leslie, Devril etc are the all part of the teaching supervisory team.

As the debate was unfolding on drupal, I teased out comments that needed further enquiry or leaped out at me.

--------------
[ did not take down links from intro - doh]

Alison
My take on this is that of using visual methods to "How do I know what I think until I see what I say" Forster

turlif:
images/diagrams are also sequential

susan kozel:
i like the suggestion that diagrammes are liminal, or interstitial practices

alison:
transliminality - a best word - pulling stuff (a technical term) out of the intelligent unconscious into the conscious intellect

Kat:
the diagrammatic process used by paul klee, it is just a sketch book so familiar to us

Kat:
Look at the Semiotic Sqaure of Greimas (1987)

will:
yes, photos can be seen as functional, but Heidegger said that drawings need to exist to pull objects into relief against the ground of the functional

- debate ff here why people don't draw. fear of being ridiculous or that they think they can't draw.

taey:
drawing requires visual editing process while you are putting ink on the paper, but photography makes you to snap the moment without editing.

anita:
surely it a conversation between transmitter and receiver and the connections

kasia:
sketch is an instant and more true than a snap of photocamera, however camera can be more objective (Gerard Richter has a lot to say about it)

kasia:
Theory comes from visual, not a visual illustrates some theory. Using John Berger’s quote:

kasia:
For the artist drawing is discovery. It is the actual act of drawing that forces the artist to look at the object in front of him,

kasia:
A drawing is an autobiographical record of one’s discovery of an event – seen, remembered or imagined.

will:
I like Wittgenstein, 'A picture held us captive and we could not get outside it for it lay in our language and the language seemed to repeat it to..

kasia:
All the intricate philosophy of marks, signs, and traces plays out in drawing. Drawing is the place where blindness, touch, and resemblance become vis

Ian:
Typography is diagramming with words

Klee: it is a visual metaphor - a way of marking his thoughts - perhaps like automatic writing?

bruce:
there are those who are visual thinkers (temple grandin fe) and those who are verbal/textual

susan kozel:
drawing is akin to the curves of our thoughts

bruce:
brain mapping now shows if you have a series of long connections vs short microcolumns you are a 'wired' for visual thinking

[ note I missed some of Bruce's interesting inserts on his geoworld]

bruce:
Temple Granding: "thinking in pictures" published a few years ago

alison:
bruce, thanks

bruce:
http://www.vizthink.com/

Ian:
Alison: thanks for Csikszentmihalyi

bruce:
http://www.xplane.com/

Kat:
A person who forgoes the use of his symbolic skills is never really free. Csikszentmihalyi

Ian:
I fascinated with the non(traditions) of graphic notation in music. The cage image is a manifesto for the instantaneous and its capture

susan kozel:
for bergson intuition is a philosophical method

susan kozel:
intuition is a method

susan kozel:
it is in the first chapter of Deleuze;s book Bergsonism

Ian:
is diagramming also an info-aesthetic, ie based upon an illustration through an a priori language, of icons, symbols, lines

David ( me)
Drawing/ diagrams have been hugely significant in sciences c.f Einstein and Kekulé - who discovered the ring shape of the benzene molecule - the 'gene' of organic chemistry after a day-dream. Some say it was the start of structured theory.

As a chemist we were always encouraged to draw to visualise chemistry's abstractness, unfortunately to the detriment of writing

Leslie:
the scientists we work with often draw things to explain them to us artists

Ian:
visual programing has a long and interesting history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_programming_language

susan kozel:
merleau-ponty says perception is based on motility, and learning on perception

David
Mind maps, meme's as art. For the Olympic bid there was a giant canvas of ideas in one of the lecture halls at UEL, covered all the walls helped the bid in crystallising ideas.

kasia:
very true Alison. painting, drawing are extremely kinesthetic

robbie - do you man circuit board diagrammes? i was thinking of those

deveril:
http://tblayden.com/

My mind as a meme
http://viewmag.blogspot.com/2009/01/meme-mind-map-for-current-affairs.html

Meme/ Mind map for Current Affairs module

Mind map for intro into current affairs for Masters students studying doc/current affairs, explained to them.

Obama Day - pic from university.

University of Westminster, London.

We've just broken off from classes before the inauguration.

In the foreground transfixed, Kienda Hoji, Course Director for Music, who is part American and from diplomatic stock.

In the background me capturing a shot of the television.

The picture was taken by Andrew Otto, a Masters in Journalism Student.

The verb that is "Barack Obama"

The dials are lighting up at the stations. We're in London. I'm listening into LBC-speech based radio.

Could there be an Barrack Obama in the UK?

Some callers blame Britain's class system. All our previous Prime Ministers come from the upper echelons of society e.g. education, wealth, et al strata.

Some say there's still institutional racism - a term Britain's race czar, Trevor Phillips, said should be consigned to the waste bins.

They said that about black footballers not to long ago a caller said, but then now look, there's a healthy number of black soccer players in the UK premier league.

Then a few claim it could, but not in their lifetime.

One caller says he's not moved by all this and does it matter, for which the presenter James O'Brien countered : It matters because if colour is a bar to progress then there's no guarantee we'll get him or her.

One listener texts into the show lamenting the debate. Why doesn't anyone talk about whether a white person could be president of Africa? Yes, Africa?

Young Black and Inspirational
Eric Miyeni, a well known South African polymath says he broke many apartheid rules as a young man. He's still in his thirties.

"I would walk into a restaurant and the way I carried myself, my confidence meant if the manager wanted to chuck me out, he would find it difficult to tell me", Eric told me from spending many days with him for a documentary.

You need to fix your space and beat the system with words, not anger. Eric certainly had all the qualities Obama exudes, at least when I knew him, except rather than pursuing his degree in law, he fore sake that for a profession as an actor/ comedian.

If politics, as we tend to interpret and why not, is the Everest of any high office or all professional careers, then President Obama's mind blowing achievements are just that mind blowing.

But there are many Obama's outside of politics, working youth centres, criminal justice system, education, health and local municipal politics, whose ambitions fall short of the mother of all offices, the presidency.

But as I was watching the screen yesterday, I couldn't help but think, like millions, the "what if" that the images could have on a new generation.

And, whether there was any mileage in any articles searching out the Obama's of their fields - something Ebony does in celebrating success, and something that could have a wider merit of interest in our times.

A Day like this - web we can

On a day like this, you'll remember where you were and what you were doing.

The occasion drew on memories from reporting in South Africa, the inauguration of Nelson Mandela. The first black president having broken the yoke of legalised racism.

But while the similarities are prevalent, of course there are significant differences.

Does a new political era chasten a different reportage in style and issues; a new prism to view culture, people and the arts?

Does it shift an ideologue away from dogma, or what traditionalists prioritise to lead the news agenda to something broader, more pragmatic?

Can we barrack that we've been led to believe is important? Petite politics, Personality trivia news, vacuous issues dressed as central themes?

This is a reworking of a now popular tone .

I hope to talk about an innovative video journalism initiative at some point.

A continuum in "change journalism" - which I have wrapped up in a 30 sec promo opening Viewmagazine.tv

To paraphrase the architect of this day, perhaps, just perhaps web we can.

Go to the web some more young journalists

Ed, a former University of Westminster student now working at the Financial Times

It's difficult to talk about the web as this new thing anymore, but it's interesting sometimes how much scant regard is given it by new journalists.

Ed, a journalist now at the Financial Times talks about how important the web module was for him.

Now in his present job, he gave it short shrift at the time. Ed was a strong enquiring student, so deserves his early success -he freelanced at the Guardian during his studies, then soon after got this job.

I caught him sitting on the news desk one morning whilst training Financial Times journalists about videojournalism.

You can find that training programme and how the police stopped us filming here. This film on Ed was shot on a Canon Ixus 70 which I keep in my coat breast pocket.

Ethics and new Journalism
But there are also professional standards and ethics, we as journalism lectures must emphasis to a generation, more so, given the wild wild west about the web. This is something I talk about visiting colleges and engaging with those within my institution.

For instance, the use of copy or anything which breaches the rights of others and professional bodies. Its relevant because, even though the web is this anarchic soul, there has to be some order to the way we treat others and deal with material not deemed our own.

Because ultimately good journalism is also about good journalism practice. Go to the web young journalists. Please read.

1001 novels everyone must read

In the Guardian/Observer a panel compile a list of the 1000 novel must-reads, with names such as Thomas Harding, Far from the Madding crowd (1874); DH Lawrence, Women in Love (1920) and Enayat el-Zayyat Al Hubb w'al-Samt (1967).

What these all have in common? They're all love stories. Er, I might have once flicked through Mills and Boon, and Jackie Collins and Barbara Cartland did get me pondering a world of dashing doers having their cake and eating, but 1000 novels, where d'you find the time?

Then again, I spend half my waking days behind a Mac, watching a film or making my way to University- 3 hour ride back and forth - or some meeting.

Now that might be ample dead-zone time for a novel, but then I'm more this genre I have got my head buried in at the moment. If you're like me, you're a grazer: pick up one book, consume a couple of pages, then graze through the three others in your bag. I can't help it.

So currently in my sack.

• Truth - a guide to the perplexed, Simon Blackburn
• The Wisdom of Crowds - James Surowiecki
• Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell

Latterly, this book seems to have pushed all the others aside, Obama - Audacity of Hope.

Great scene in there when he meets up with Bush in the WH after forsaking a group photo for food. As they both walk together, he unconsciously finds he's put his arm around Bush.

A reporter, was it, said she liked the first book and wondered if he could pull this one off.

Whoa, New York Best seller list!

President elect Obama is a kitchen story teller. You know the sort of person in a party everyone gathers around in the kitchen as they tell their tales.

They'll be no shortage of listeners now.

Meanwhile a nice turn to the story of Joe Biden.

Having accepted he lifted passages of his presidential running speech from a former UK running prime minister, Neil Kinnock, Kinnock now finds himself off to Washington courtesy of Biden.

Now who says being nice after you've been plagiarised doesn't work.

Frost/ Nixon interview - wow! Collectors item

It's not often an interviewer will make an exec look like they're on the run, let alone a president or former. Frosts now epochal interview with Nixon over Watergate, the subject of a current film Frost Nixon, is worth seeing.

But why just go to the cinema when you can acquire the original - a collectors item for the princely sum of £1.60, because it came free today as a giveaway with the Independent newspaper.

Terrific stuff!

Strange how you can find moments that make you reach for your contemporary history book to rediscover the events.

I was with ABC News in South Africa at the time, in the midst of the South African election, when ABC staff begun reflecting, hearing that Nixon was poorly and would likely not recover.

If you haven't got the DVD hunt one down.

God is Black -Time Magazine

Witty piece in Time's inauguration preview issue by Michael Kinsley noting how the Brits (us) having lost it all, have now been stripped of that quintessential omni role of being the Voice of God.

And that it's now to be found in the rotund vowels of James Earl Jones, behind CNN's tag :" This is CNN", [Does he get royalties each time he says it?] and Morgan Freeman.

Essentially without delving into the minutiae, Kinsley has noted the accented Shakespearean presence that was behoved to the Almighty is no more.

Burton, Gielgud, and Guinness, some of the finest thespians of their generation once convinced a generation of US nursery kids who'd pester their mom and dads why God was speaking in a funny accent.

Well those days are long gone, though Kinsley forgot to give Julian Bond a mention: I mean Eye of the Prize..

Any wonder, he says that if a Black Man could be God, then high time he made president.

All cheery fun.

Here's a trick given to me by a veteran voice over artist when I had to do the occasional piece in my high squeel voice, have some chocolate. Apparently it dampens the chords, making them resonate less and you begin to sound like Barry White.

Bye By Bush - anecdotes

Go on, you know you want to.

The $500,000 water plane Flikr picture

I've been asking around. If this dramatic pic by Janis Krums of the US airway's crash and rescue went exclusive it could have by conservative estimates netted half a million for Janis.

It's an interesting dilemma. If you're a blogger/twitter and you come by a news story of this magnitude, do you:

• 1. release it immediately and get famous?
• 2. wait for a bidder?
• 3. tag across it and put it out; the original after a sell won't carry your logo
• 4. you don't know.

There are many newshounds scratching their heads about the sums they could have commanded.

Pap pictures can fetch anything up to millions depending on how exclusive and important the picture is.

The video taken in 1996 of a plane unsuccessfully landing in water, blogged earlier today went for about 70,000 UKP, which would have been near 120,000 US at the time.

It was a dramatic video ( not sure the couple had an a agent. Doh!) so frankly they must have been gobsmacked at the sums coming their way. In any case the comparisons with the significance and symbolism of the NY pic in today's frenetic media world are poles apart.

The famous pic used by the BBC of 7/7 underground has an interesting history. It was given to the BBC, but then a number of media felt they could also use it. The owner, I understand, with help from the BBC was able to recover some money for the its improper use.

Janis Krums may well reap significant rewards yet; he already has with air play across various networks and a flikr hit rate through the roof.

It's likely Krums took more than one, so he might still be approached by a magazine to see the others and or buy the original of him.

And given the popularity of the pic, its unlikely anyone will ever be able to use it without his permission ( creative commons aside- if that was being exercised).

Mind you if you're the phone maker behind the pic, that's your stock rising after a lavish campaign. So keep an eye out for where the photos going. 500,00 US is still possible.

landing on water -its origins, but unsuccessfully

Air JetLiner Crashes into Sea


This was the moment that passengers held their breath. The landing of flight 961 in 1996 off the Comoro Islands, East Africa.

Fifty people survived. 125 people died on on the flight including one of the world's most respected cameramen/photojournalistst, Mohamed-Mo-Amin.

The circumstances leading to the crash were very different.

The video was shot a South African couple on their honeymoon in the region as they lay on the beach.

I was working at WTN at the time, which has since become APTV. WTN acquired the film and in a frenzied bidding right, and once acquired promptly sold it to the aviation industry, effectively making their money back.

The video's unique quality. It's the first and only time a commercial airline has been caught attempting a sea landing, which means it would have been studied by the airline industry.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's comments about how "incredibly brave" Captain Chesley Sullenberger and his crew were in landing their US Airways Airbus A320 safely on water is being universally acknowledged.

The South Africa couple who shot this video may have had an unwitting hand in events more than a decade later.

Look your age and act it

Oh the problems over looking youthful. Not for the first time.

But at the recent BJTC meeting, Liz Howell who runs the TV and TV docs at City University and a stalwart broadcast manager, almost single handedly slung me out of the meeting.

I arrived puffing, barely able to get my jacket off, when Liz approached on guard. Eyes closed in, finger pointed and the phrase: You're not allowed in here. It needed me taking my cap off and a meek, "really I'm allowed in here" look before she realised.

Must have raised a giggle over at Adrian's City, cuz I got sent the following:

View As Web Page
Subject: Secret of eternal youth
LOL – Lis Howell told me she thought you were a student!!!!

It's no wonder successive students perhaps walk into Westminster and perceive a twenty something lecturer and wonder: "what the hell he's doing here ?".

Must tell me aerobics teacher tomorrow that this jumping up an down malarky is working; though truth by the time we get to mid term with looming markings, I've aged considerably.

Now where's that snake poison elixir!

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

Judging the UK's best TV media in Innovation

RTS meeting, 5th floor

When the email came, it was a polite, short, and to the point.

That was 3 months ago.

Today we gathered. Nine of us off Black friars, near Fleet street - the home once upon a time of the might of British newspaper journalism.

Our task might have been simple enough, but there was nothing simplistic about it: to judge this year's UK winners of the Royal Television Society Awards in News Innovation.

It is a highly sought after award, the equivalent in the US would be the EMMYS and it strap line is often emblazoned across the face of its victors. This year's entrants, as always, were stellar.

There's much I would like to discuss here, but I won't because it violates the openness in which juror members spoke.

There is substance in this that could lead to further debates for academic purposes, so I have an idea. But for this session a reworked edict of one of my haunts rules, Chatham House rules.

All I'll say is the submissions mixed online, with offline, video journalism and personalised video, drama and journalism, and ambition with ingenuity providing the seeds of where TV could, might go next.

After the awards event itself in February, I may post more expansively where there will be appropriate context.

RTS jurors for News Innovation 2009

What is Innovation
Innovation is a fascinating area of enquiry. What defines it? What values are inherent within it? And is it an acquirable commodity?

The media whirlwind we see ourselves surrounded by at present is being whipped up by innovation and creativity, and there will, I hedge, be much store placed on this as we move into a new cycle of offline and online expansion in these trying times.

Bill Thompson, a technology pioneer for which much has been written about was one of the jurors and this supposition is an area I will return to with Bill in mind.

Incidentally, and I hope he's not embarrassed but here's Bill in 1996 from a broadcast about the future of British newspapers made by a Videojournalist colleague of mine. [link soon]

There is a note which affects my own assessment of innovation, and I'm referring here more to my job as a senior lecturer.

It is that no matter what I see, however small or grandiose something is in its bid to be innovatory, there is much that can be discovered about process and fortitude.

Those qualities alone may not win for innovation but I'm intrigued about that process all the same, the ethnographic quality.

So in debates I have learned not to be so dismissive. That said by the end of the day there has to be a winner and alas genius can often be a scant commodity.


Searching for Innovation
On a general note as well, what we consider innovatory, may well be, and sometimes be far off the mark.

Innovation searches for great leaders, whom inspire others, and the more diverse the debate about the journey, the more creative, I believe can be the outcome.

Watching Danny Boyle, an awesome figure, talk about Slumdog Millionaire which swept the board at the Golden Globes, is a typical example.

After screening to an Asian audience, he was asked on the BBC's Culture Show how he managed to get the richness of the city on screen in a way that suggested he must have lived there.

I was lucky, Boyle said, but then he spoke about someone, I'm presuming a fixer, he had kept on and would advise him and his team where they could be going wrong making clunky mistakes.

You can see this 7.29 minutes in on the Culture Show on the BBC's I- player. But quick because after a week this link is deprecated.

Innovation is a mixed mind pursuit. At the start of the web 2.o "S" curve, it was an Achilles for TV. But much, much, has changed since. Though "mixing it up" still holds water.

This article from Edward Roussel, digital editor of the Telegraph Media Group, for the Nieman Harvard Reports site is a compass for navigating the new journalism, and being innovative.

So back to the RTS. It is an award for innovation, which did have me asking introspectively. Why me as a juror?

I might have wishfully hoped the fact that I had a broadcast past, had worked across several broadcasters -all with different house styles - had an insight into the world of newspapers and would yap like a terrier without drawing breath if I was brought onto the subject of innovation and new media.

No, I'm certain, but I didn't ask. But mixing non broadcasters and broadcasters in a room together does yield interesting areas of discourse, so there it is perhaps: that mixture of academia and media.

But I was here all the same and am looking forward to the event itself, where I hope [with permission] I can put together a VJ feature package around this most fascinating of subjects.

End+

David Dunkley Gyimah is also a 2009 juror member for the International Video Journalism Awards in Berlin and will be in Miami for the Gamechanger awards, where his work was cited.

Slumdog millionaire - playback

Culture Show 10 pm GMT, Asian youngsters question Danny Boyle, director of Slumdog Millionaire - worth a watch.

The making of slumdog, the titbits I have been picking up, is extremely interesting.

They had to work with the backdrop/environment, and were equally urged not to stereotypically portray the city.

Fascinating to know that Slumdog almost didn't get distributed and was days away from going straight to video. Now, it's picked up four Golden Globes.

Funny ol world.

redesigning viewmagazine articles

Viewmagazine.tv is going through a few face lifts. At some point I thought of abandoning it. But have slowly come around to an alternative.

Quite a few of the videos, you've prob noticed don't have controls. That's because they're pre-Flash FLV.[2003]

It was a nice idea back then to present video at all.

But user control and navigation are even more pertinent now than they were back then , so it's meant reworking those files.

Similarly, even CSS on the pages require updates with hand held encoding, particularly if you're using IE 6 or 5.

Understanding what's going on is probably good enough for me, but then seeing something out of kilter needs remedying.

I'm a firm believer in the rule of interdependence: let the specialists do what they do, but when everyone's busy, you've simply got to pick up the tools and try and do it yourself. That was what brought on viewmagazine in the first place.

The articles are often an illustration of a theme, and perhaps a method of how I might cover it.

So the report on The Mayfair Club, one of London's most fashionable night clubs, whilst not new as a feature piece, coupled with the more open use of white space in the article, provides an example of a particular slice of work.

Here's the Mayfair Redux, and an update coming soon.

Matching cinema's new promo strategy

Fighting for the same attention, eye balls, time and money, cinema bosses have become complicit to a number of ways to get front row, before you decide staying at home for a rerun of Wired - fantastic drama - is indeed a good idea.

Hollywood kickstarted the trailer, it discovered the DVD, and now a surprisingly interesting proposition.

I first noticed it on Doubt - an intense drama on the morality and burden of proof of child abuse by a member of the cloth, staring Hoffman and Streep.

And more recently, before general release on the much-talked about Valkyrie starring Tom Cruise amongst many, documenting the intended assassination of Hitler.

In both cases, though it's now deprecated on "Doubt", you could watch the first six minutes of the film.

I can't think why only six minutes, but what bosses perhaps are gambling on is that it's enough to get you immersed into the characters and the chance to make up your own mind against the welter of flux talk - that's the back chat over a movie's worthiness.

And I'd say it seems to work. In both cases I can see myself trundling off to the plex and handing over my tenner.

Now, what's the equivalent in innovation in TV? And I'm not advocating the equivalent action in TV by the way.

The days of "tent poling" and the likes, on TV, are being usurped by the depletion of appointment TV, more so online. And so it's online where these ideas to engage the new, time poor, consumers could play out.

I'll say something though for TV.

NBC 1998 and their innovotary exploration of "Homicide - Life on the Street", which saw an extension of the TV episode play out on the web, with a new team of detectives.

Now that truly was clever, and that was 1989.

Responding to Prepare for the Future, Skip the Present

To Prepare for the Future, Skip the Present

‘… today’s obsession with saving newspapers has meant that, for the most part, media companies have failed to plan adequately for tomorrow’s digital future.’

By Edward Roussel who is digital editor of the Telegraph Media Group (TMG)

Ed wrote a truly fine piece on , Nieman Reports (Harvard site). I have a few friends who are former Nieman scholars, so often take a run around the site. Do read the piece. Below was my response.

David Dunkley Gyimah says:

January 11, 2009 at 3:22pm

"Stop trying to control everything and just let go! LET GO! "

One of the more memorable aphorisms in 1999 from David Finch's "Fight Club".

Quite a few media execs are picking themselves up, handkerchief dabbing that upper lip; either they've got a hang of these abstract new rules and expressions e.g. (SEO, code-event driven multimedia) or they've confined themselves to the thinking: "it's all gonna stop soon - this madness".

This year we're told to expect the following:

- Increased traction to mobile web; writing twitter type micro stories
- Refinements in search string optimisation
- More APIs encouraging greater mash ups
- Thermo, 3D, and further breakthroughs in HD web video and videojournalism.

And then as one respected company, Razorfish, put it, expect more of the unexpected.

Sociologists might refer to this period of uncertainty and abstractness between journalism and the media's comprehension as "Grand Theory", when what we appear to be caught in is a highly fluid phase of Deduction.

Meaning you can match customs [macro and micro] and behaviours, to the way viewers and readers are inter and (intra) reacting with a myriad of new exhausting apps and modifications - spawning new social theories.

But you need to be in it, to see it, let alone win, which certainly shouldn't turn you into a techie shepherd, but open to the idea of the speed and paradigms of change affecting the media/consumer/ etc.

Countless newspapers, particular the big brands with room for "Chatham House" rule type experimenting, are already in there.

And, building up those figures may help thwart any future shocks. Or should that be "those future shocks".

Old sea hands scoff at 5m waves; quiet storm, they say, she'll get a lot more rougher yet.

As Ed put it, the dominant newspapers have an advantage over start-ups.....but time is running out.

Here in academia, and outside, with the an eye and modules on the future, a new generation of all round digi-journalists is gestating.

Thought-swilling piece Ed, and I have enjoyed the training and interaction with your extremely bright trainee multimedia journalists.

Future Net TV - Outernet shapes up

Many of the big names in TV manufacturing are now building Internet capability into TVs. Now there's a surprise.

It's the annual fest of TV people in Las Vegas. The other news TV's will become 3d. Extrapolating games culture trends gives some idea how this might work.

The trick, with Internet-TV, is to transmogrify the socio behaviour of lean forward to the big screen. It's been tried before, but didn't much work. I attended my fair share of NET-TV meetings in 1998.

Still have Microsofts strategy document they gave out.

But now, and I recall posting about this in 2004, HD wide screens have been normalised into the home. This IS the Outernet. If you compare this image here in this article, with this one Apple featured from viewmagazine.tv a couple of years, spot the difference

Ipod - a mini culture cannibalising super sizes - is accepted. You place your ipod into a docking station to get surround sound. We might not shirk now at wifiing the cinema screen while still controling the screen from my Mac.

Essentially it could act as an intelligent monitor.

If this does take off, then the televisual feel for websites, not breaking the fold, will be common place. 950 px x500px may not be a daft idea after all.

Er someone called it daft recently.

Does it seem much of a stretch now for video story telling to take on a cinematic feel?

p.s Did you know Slumdog Millionaire was a whisker away from going straight to DVD? This link says US TV dramas are looking to go big time on the internet.

See Trends 2009 posted two days ago

Qunicy Jones, Viewmagazine and SXSW

Been invited to speak at SXSW in March, where Quincy Jones will be delivering a key note. So I have posted this brief interview with Quincy in Soweto, South Africa.

At the bottom of the page are links to Eartha Kitt interview, the late James Brown's right hand man Maceo Parker and that pic of Jay-z with Prince Charles which I have got some video of that meeting somewhere.

Meanwhile busy day: firstly going through entries for the VJ Awards 2009, researching thesis, assessing Journalism Masters' websites and working up a funding document with my colleague.

We had quite some fun using google's open app word document, which enabled us to share writing an article together, whilst skyping and conferencing with friends in the US, the Ipod blaring, with the occasional sms to punt.

We might take this technology for granted now, but only five years ago, none of this was possible.

Now where's that type writer. Oh yes, I have a type writer somewhere.

If you haven't booked for SXSW, what are you doing?

Freemium model - how to sell digital assets covertly

On In Business, Chris Anderson editor of Wired, behind the best seller, The Long Tail, talking about his new book, Free and how digital companies are making money, through a play on the Open Source Movement.

Of course the word "free" in any product is enough to catch anyone's interest.

The more contemporary form has its roots in software development, in which you get version one free and version two comes at a price.

Have little knowledge other than from the interview on BBC of Chris Anderson talking about his book, but it's a fair bet it'll be a good read.

2009 trends for accelerated media - videojournalism

Scientists refer to the point where one species is superceded by another as "passing through the bottle neck".

It is a punctuated timeline which yields an entity, species zero, much able to cope with new conditions. So if you thought newspapers and TV will disappear, having adopted web 2.0 mannerisms, you might want to think again.

So what are some of the things that might crop up in 2009?

• Ever more richer multimedia films in which the likes of Thirst in the Mojave presents one of the more interesting uses of the lean towards greater linking e.g. video linking. Use of the events in the FLV player provides "bloombergesque" content. Next step in Mojave is independently being able to drill or hold the info on screen.
• HD video, richer saturations, wider screens and more player innovations e.g. click to send to your i-phone etc will become more evident. Paradoxically, the web is set to realise the same problem TV wrestled with during its launch. It'll need a brand to face those videos. To some it's not rocket science, but the "screen" factor for the generation ahead will begin to matter in deciding who to visit in this vast digital soup of ours.
• Since front end ads have proved not to be a distraction for viewers, will we see behaviours such as tent poling creeping into video stories? That is the first 15 seconds sets up the next story from the one you've clicked.
• In the face of a crippling economy and lay offs, is this the year finally when whole swathes of former bricks and mortar broadcast employees set up alternative online structures. e.g. NottheBBC.com or Alternativebbc.co.uk. Might as well, particularly if you can keep overheads down.
• Video journalism - appreciation of the psychology of the moving image and its emotional flow online
  
• Training, training and more training - not for information, which is transient, but knowledge.
  

Outernet - Internet+ Out there + behaviours - musings

It's the stuff of Isaac Asimov, except that it's really not so far fetched.

The snippets of news from Razorfish's report [see last post], the general uptake of new apps and their volcanic explosion, revival of TV integrating new social tools on line e.g. wiii on the net etc, all add up to something akin to a grown up web in the offing.

So far the net supports a number of apps, that, with the exception of the obvious mobile ware, is largely fixed. But the very variable that constrained the Net, will be the Outernet's gestation.

The context, "Internet"; inward looking makes empirical sense. Outernet, sees the Net and apps work all around us e.g. an audio twitter demand that calls up a programme and turns your followers' TVs and PCs into a TV screen, [Orwell] or triggers an event which changes the music at Dance club "100Z"

Sensosor related apps, iris scan receivers that give more info on pleasure you derive from videos.

Beahviourial science drives the Net
The work of Martin Lindstrom in Buy-ology, a New York Best seller points to this. In his book, Lindtsrom conducts a number of MRI experiments. [brain scans] to unlock meaning to our actions.

Attaching people to probes that give some idea of their thinking, if we can, and some sort of nano sensors will do that, gauge behaviours of consumers via the web, then we're climbing new levels.

And what if we could conduct the same real-time studies for watching video. It would crystallised some of our own thoughts but also reveal new ones.

What makes a good video, and what makes a bad one - a loaded question which envelopes aesthetic, codes, visual design, psychology of lines, tone, mis en scene. Frankly a whole panoply of signifiers.

Couple of years ago, I filmed myself on one of the huge monitors in the heart of Time Square (I'll post that this week). The gig was arranged by Reuters from an Online News Association Summit. But what if the tech-set existed to do that myself with my twitter flow, at a cost of course, but triggered here from London.

Why Not?

It will be difficult to know what the Outernet is, you'll have to be there to see it - I am reworking Morpheus' line in The Matrix, but the reality is closer, believe, than we think.

Two decades ago I abandon a career Chemistry and Maths, for a more exciting one in the media.

Now it's the technologists and science who'll be pushing the best part of the Outernet. I need reversioning.

Connected consumers reveal new habits

Consumers prefer using multiple destinations, and then aggregating media and services, via simple tools like RSS, into a highly personalized view of their digital world.

This is just one of many findings from Razorfish's consumer report 2008.

You won't believe the amount of news (broadcasts,online and newspaper) that originate from surveys. I used to fill several waste paper bins in the morning at news meetings.

Still, few out of the 100s are chosen. So what determines their worth?

• Content - how truly unique and of use is it; that is the qualitative research.
• Trust value - What's the motive for the report. If it's narcissistic, why bother.
• Presentation - Is it eye catching?

Razorfish that powerhouse of design released Meet the Connected Consumer last year. What I liked about it is having revisited today is its:

• Transparency - it doesn't play overtly to Razorfish. Unlike say a survey that says chocolate makes you sexy and you discover a chocolate company commissioned the survey.
• It's got some break away thoughts from your standard quo. This is probably the a result of the quality of those they questioned

Take this: "Brands will need new tools and services because today’s widget might become tomorrow’s TV set". It sounds innocuous but obsolence in new digital media is rarely discussed so this is an interesting view.

And: "We were most surprised to see widespread acceptance and frequent consumer usage of Web site widgets."

And finally: "We are still in the early days of social media". .... "Online video consumption by connected consumers continues to soar, as 94% of respondents reported watching online video with some level of frequency."

It's not good news for TV people, that's the underlying message, but says the connected society are having a ball.

Well worth a digest, forget that it's two months out. This should give food for thought

Drinking the most expensive beer in the world

One gulp would probably have you reaching for an aspirin. Not because of the price per se, though that might be the case if anyone was serving, but the taste.

That slosh across the palate at one point tasted... "am I allowed to say exquisite", but today clouded by impurities and well past its sell by date, this brew really has returned to a museum piece.

Tutankhamun ale, not your average Budweiser saw the light of day somewhere in 1995, from being in the dark for 3000 odd years.

Some archaeologists unearthed the formula from scraping old pots; science, the kind seen on CSI and actually while I was standing behind test tube , using gas-liquid chromatography did the rest. Et voila, this is what the Egyptians drank way back when.

Then Harrod's, London, decided to sell some 500 or 5000 bottles, not sure, on the day. Folks came from far and near for the purchase. The first one went for more than $7000.

Oh please if you're out there and you want this, I can go and fetch it from my uncle.

The beer of beers
Back during its launch, I was dispatched by my editor to do a VJ piece. On Harrods' hospitality balcony I sampled one and then picked up two. I later handed out glasses of it at a party - dem days huh!

But show me a reporter who doesn't like a jar and I'll show you a banker who can tell the difference between pyramid selling and banking.

Harrods' PR as I remember pleaded with me for an eternity, not because I wasn't turning my camera on, but he wanted his boxy thing back, or to the historians the wooden sarcophagus.

He wasn't wrong, as they've become a bit of a collector's item - which brought about this tale in the first place, when over Christmas I stumbled upon said great beer and a friend asking me if I knew what the box was worth. %$£@*!!.

I mean I always knew it was somewhere, but like an old letter bringing back memories, I picked it up reminisced, scurried up stairs for my camera and did a vlog.

I thought of doing a straight cut but having travelled to Egypt and brought back some video, I have a different idea. I'll post on viewmagazine shortly

This morning it was announced beer served in pubs in the UK was being reduced to 99p a pint. Chirpy cheerful huh! That should alleviate us Brits from the credit crunch.

Mine's going back into the vault, spirited away to a good friend who likes the idea he can tell his friends, "beer 99p? You wanna try this - the most expensive beer in the world".

He'd better not flippin drink it.

Generation N+1 - deconstructing the future

The downloads didn't match the spread of video

The company knew their video had gone viral but the web's analytics did not reflect this.

Then someone asked the question, which left strategists scratching their heads in wonder.

The game was being heavily trafficed, except that around the playgrounds teenagers had dispensed with the nonsense of rushing to a url and waiting a couple of minutes. Instead, it was being blue toothed from a primary source and further blue toothed around.

There's no way strategists could have gauged the level of activity, well......!.

This story emerged from a web 2.0 conference, where, in one session, instead of the obligatory suited execs, they let the screenagers tell us what they did; a further revelation, as if you didn't know, they [a gross generalisation] won't pay for things online.

Two lessons. Firstly you might figure you know what's going on with your target audience, because you've a cool video or product, but then some.

Secondly, some of the best media companies get it wrong.

We, any generation, gen N+1 ( the screenagers) including, behave independently and dependently of each other given the circumstances.

We show video on our sites, but won't allow them to be downloaded once we've branded and tagged them. I'm just as guilty, but then I'm not in the process of building a media behemoth- quite.

The epitome of youth research and being in touch on the ground takes more than what goes on in board room meetings.

Tim Windor on Zero Percent Idle gives a perspectives on digital natives in a recent post.

Innovation - visuals, video and the message

There is a line. To the naked eye as invisible as the break of dawn, where visuals perform sensually alongside sound and their execution is like sea horses mating. And when that happens, something new happens. It's like an awakening and you marvel without equivocation.

It can take years to get there. And sometimes never. Good content is king, but it requires a good courtier to show content at its possible widest best. There is technique - a formula - in this, if you can spot it

And then there's creativity, and the journey, the journey is one of emotion, a connection, an acknowledgment.... respeck.. of the brand. For visual story telling, there can be no future, this is it, and it can be remodelled any way.

There is a line, where good artists, reside and what they do is breathless- story telling at its..........

The director of this spot is, Mark Romanek, and behind him lies a whole creative team. The client, who else, is Nike, whose "Just do it" refluxing street, sport, lifestyle and the cool hunters has stood the test of multimedia time .

If you want to read more then that 2000 phenom book No Logo - Naomi Klein is as good as any place to start. I have just pulled mine of the shelf for a skim pleasure read.

Thanks to Ian Schafer for catching this sparking my attention. On his site he does a brand break down.

I'll put together a series of viewmagazine.tv pieces previewed here later after cutting a couple of stories I intend to take to wemedia Miami.

++

David Dunkley Gyimah presented "The Cool Hunters" for the film council a while back from working with Jon Staton Productions who was formerly the head of TV at Saatchis and Saatchis, whre they devised the agency, Re-active.net.

The connectors - connecting people

Picture I took of Riz Khan interviewing Gerald Scarfe, Political Cartoonist for the Sunday Times.

Some people are born with it; others acquire it, some never achieve it.

Riz Khan, an old friend based in Washington where he hosts his popular show, Q&A with Riz, definitely has it.

That innate ability to connect with people and in many cases connect them up.

In the latter it's a selfless quality pairing up ideas and names, in which the connector receives nothing in return, other than the silent joy of seeing something come of an intro.

On a flying visit to London we caught up with each other. Firstly where can you find a decent pub when you want one.

Pub found. And really those non-smoking rules do make all the difference.

Off the back from interviewing Oliver Stone, and with an enviable roll call of names to his show's credits, we talked ambitions and the future.

At heart, Riz is a geek. We could talk Macs and Ipods all day. In fact there was a time when we did, editing programmes through the night, following Riz's reportage from the Hajj for the BBC World Service

Now at Al Jazeera where he's been based since leaving CNN International at the turn of the millennium, his audience may know him as the news anchor and talk host, but there are many other layers there.

He's done little in the way of Breaking New outside broadcasts more recently, but happened to be in Mumbai at the time of the terrorist attack and found himself hosting an off-the-cuff live show for a couple of days.

But then we come down to connecting. It's that old chestnut between connectors. You never overtly ask, don't think I ever do, but an idea sparks another idea, which leads a connector to proclaim interest in how the idea can be taken further.

Successful connectors as Malcolm Gladwell points out in Tipping point have certain qualities.

They're very likeable, have a diverse number of friends and are well trusted, and as such make good dinner guests. [ I added that last bit]

In Riz's case dinner with Kofi Annan, or former UK PMs are just one of those things.

AJ, is yet to break through into the US, though 60 percent of online traffic during Riz's show, which combines interactive feedback via Livestation, comes from the states.




Two hours pass and a couple of things we'd like to do for 2009 and time to wrap. With Riz the connecting doesn't stop.

Making our way out of the pub, an elderly man spots him. "Hi, like the show".

Riz connects back.

The tao of video journalism continued - making media

An interview with one of the world's greatest musicians and
composers Quincy Jones, but how many times can I repackage this?

Video journalism is badly in need of a neologism.

It's not nearly enough now to categorise a video piece with journalism as the apotheosis of video journalism in much the same way an astute writer in the 60s might have said there were writers from New Journalism.

Definitions vary across geographies. Film's inception spawned a slew of categories from German Expressionism to French New wave.

The exception, there are no ontological categories for VJism as yet, meaning it's so fresh a form that we're yet to assign prescriptive genres other than proclaiming a VJ piece as "breaking news" or "featured piece from a broadcaster or non broadcaster".

Categories have their purpose: in awards it's the difference sometimes of a few more hundred submissions. But for future generations I'm inclined to think, we'll likely hear of the "accelerated VJ" or "Photologue VJ" ~ more neologism.

Or not.

You could argue that in fact many video journalists are indeed not what they seem, whilst others actively, with good reason reject the claim.

The simple def for VJ is that person who does it all, but there's no accountability for style, substance or proficiency. You could be an amateur film maker, photographer, in broadcasting a P&D ( producer/director) but in video journalism you are who you say you are.

Does it matter? I'm not arguing either way, but attempting to dig deeper into process and production, setting out to refine some thoughts for 2009.

I might call myself a VJ, but don't deny I've P&D'ed network TV programmes, made promos, produced commercials, shot this and that... you get the picture.

For that reason then what am I? And does the term alone VJ suffice, indeed for a generation of 90s talent who shot factual programmes on DV Cam? And also now generation?


In search of the VJ plus
The more intriguing aspect for me has always been the "whole". A body of work, a film, exists as is, but the transaction between the maker and audience still has connected dots with marketing, posters, campaigns and indeed the net.

Video online is as much influenced by the furniture around it; even when it's white space(-), the site design, the allure, the wow, ease of use - all matter if you're looking to build an audience.

Again multimedia, I have said in previous posts, is just the half of it.

At Future TV, one of first conferences of many digital media to kick start 2009, the body of knowledge in the sessions assumes compelling content is a given i.e you've already got Quincy Jones, but how do you a publisher or broadcaster become omnipresent?

Is that still possible?

If you're a broadcaster coming out of 2008, yep. If 2008 was a consolidation of the 2007 experiments, 2009 is where you're looking to reap those rewards.

For a more robust explanation of this read Dealing with Darwin by Geoffrey Moore. Here's an illustrative cycle well worth looking at for how innovation beds down and early adopters versus Early Majority

Those wise web guys and gals who showed you the big L, well guess what? You now know what they know and you've got the content.

On Future TV, this caught my eye.

CONFERENCE TRACK TWO: MARKETING & BRAND MANAGEMENT
7 counterintuitive strategies to succeed in a Web2.0 world

• How can you use the opportunities of Web2.0 to attract more customers?
• Are consumers expectations of instant, always on, and free content making revenue generation harder?
• What are the new rules of brand management that you need to bring to your organization to thrive in the social media era?

We're back to basics, updated for the 21st century. All the content in the world, the new technology to boot, and if you're a corporation not bringing it in, woops!

Because we're back to the fluidity of the brand. Did we ever leave it? Briefly, fleetingly, because for a moment everyone else's opinion mattered but the publishers.

The kerzillions of conferences during the 90s that we covered unveiling marketing plan after plan; now there's a whole new branch of social philosophers detailing how we consumers do what we do.

I'm fascinated by the the above, deeply, deeply so. It engages every aspect of the creative process I have come to know in design, film and marketing.

Because it engenders behaviour, value, desire - the qualities of desire, want, need and aesthetics.

• How do you know when something's good?
• How do you instantly reconcile that which isn't working with your ideas?

That's pretty much my 2009 thoughts mapped out. And as for video journalism why can't it be called videnouralism, other than the fact it's daft name.

Hitchcock's genius today

"I'm a believer that film belongs to the masses. It was the newest art of the 20th century and there always that feeling that commercial or box office are dirty words. It's nothing to do with it. It's to do with telling the story with the widest possible appeal but still applying all the artistic techniques and manner of story telling without degrading yourself to what is vulgarly called commercial".

I'm watching an interview with the great Hitchcock talking frankly about film. The interview had been cobbled together from rushes, a technician discovered.

In it Hitchcock confirms his extraordinary talent in the philosophy of film, the image-movement, and his innate understanding of audiences.

The image-movement in essence is an understanding of the images before and after. In other words the actual scene you're watching is not as important as the next one that will follow contextually, ie it's all in the edit.

Hitchcock made 60 films in his career and my ambition is to get through, in some cases revisit every single one of them starting with 15.

Hitchcock was fond of a roguish, seemingly affable phrase he coined ascribed to audiences called "moronic logic". Essentially it was the art or non art of asking the bleeding obvious, when in retrospect it would have been obvious why a film maker would have taken such a course of action.

It's a tad harsh but I can see how I might apply the phrase "loose logic" to some of the material I review.

His first director credit as 25 was The Pleasure Garden - a silent film which gives glimpses of his signature through out his career.

There is in this filmic cytoplasm lots to dissect.