The death of the multiskilled journalist - sans corporeal experience

When the Guardian Newspaper placed its half page ad in its newspaper looking for videojournalist, anyone would have thought they'd be inundated with applications.

The Guardian stands as an iconic newspapers in the print world; its award winning Berliner design, double page photojournalism spreads, and of course Guardian Journalism - a synonym for excellence.

When the applications came pouring in, they totaled around 200; of which around a dozen met the requirements stipulated in the advert. Four got jobs.

Back in 1994, the Guardian was the chosen newspaper to host the advert for associated newspapers plans to recruit videojournalists to launch the UK's first and only videojournalism station.

Over a month lead period, around 1000 applications were received; some from broadcasters who are top names on BBC TV today. 100 applicants were seen over two staggered half hour rigorous interviews and then whittled down to 24 successful applicants.

Talking to one of Channel One's former employees, who went on to carve a career in ITN, she tells me, as many others have iterated ..." There was something unique about the group; we were all different, actually all mavericks in some way".

And that perhaps is it. A point also echoed by my interview with a former senior Guardian editor who says in their job interview he was willing his applicants to be attitudinal, relaxed, composed, edgy, expansive and knowledgeable about their subject.

Why? Because the job, you're about to enter, which will require quick turnaround will also be measured by high, veering towards exceptional standards. And that says the editor is rare.

Martin Adler, an award winning videojournalist epitomised the new digital journalist. He was shot in 2006 in Mogadishu. Kevin Sites, is another. There are countless more, but these two will forever be associated with the art of the new journalist.

Says Newsnight's Paul Mason of Martin Adler

"Martin's approach to video journalism is the opposite to the way most mainstream media works: you go there, get the footage using little battered video cameras, you don't shoot "sequences" - you shoot the truth. He went on and on at me in the edit about the film director Lars von Trier and his philopsophy of Dogma.."

The social self and stories
If you're reading this it's a fair chance you're into multiskilling; invariably that's one of the themes that runs through these posts. You may or may not be a practicing journalist or content aggregator, but you know your way around a Mac - that's multiskilling plenty.

Then close your eyes and imagine: your diary you've discussed with your editor includes:

• reports from Afghanistan with Bravo company
  
• interviewing Angelina Jolie at a film premiere
  
• interview with a CEO over the potential economy collapsing
• Death Knock

Four different jobs, requiring more or less the same apparatus, yet requiring fundamentally different experiences from you.

And that whether by way of perception or otherwise is one of the problems we face in the digital-body age.

All the above are executable as derived from experience, if not actual, the perception of what those might entail from proxy experiences.

Going to Afghanistan by yourself: logistics. Filming in a high stressed area: discipline. Getting the story from soldiers: association. On the other end of the spectrum, talking to Angelina Jolie will require some suppression of emotions, if you're a fan. Yet respect, for who she is.

The CEO requires an embodied patience. The art of doing nothing but looking busy, knowing you're bored out of your wits, but you MUST not show it, as his secretary tells you he'll be out in a minute, and then when he arrives you seamlessly set up your equipment, while engaging the pre-interview space ( the idle, but necessary chat before you start).

And how is your authority in challenging his point of view?

Then there is the death knock. Perhaps the most confusing, emotionally sapping, and delicate of tasks. A story must be told, but it requires you to breach the privacy of the bereaved.

Now, multisklilled journalism ceases to become primarily concerned with technical competence, but increasingly of the sort of paradigms expounded by philosopher Merleau Ponty.

Not an exhaustive list of formulas for what a modern journalist ought to be, but an understanding of our embodied selves. Your experience shape you, and you won't find those extraction skills from lists on twitter or a blog or facing a terminal.

GET OUT! travel, experience others. GO NATIVE!

The job interview that says: "must be sociable" scratches at personal attributes. Sociable to whom- a virtual online community, whom you' re unlikely to meet face to face, or the ability to switch facades corporeally ?

These are new spaces I believe that are creating new, yet virtually ignored areas of debate and will affect what and how we come to perform the function of journalist and storytellers in the future.

Postscript.
As I was writing this a former student of mine ( anonymity guaranteed) sent me her covering letter to a potential employer. I'll talk about the art of writing to an editor later on.

Can the Wire ring on a different form of journalism

Solo - a film about videojournalism from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

Chapter 13.

The Wire - good for videojournalism

Detective: The reporter comes with us?
Producer: He's a VJ..
Detective: A what? ( laughs) sounds like you said he has the crabs....
Producer: You know they film and edit their own stuff
Detective: Unions let you do that shit?
Producer: What unions? Stopped paying subs when we lost an injunction to you guys. You pay subs?
Detective: Yeah, robbery... times move on. Guess your VJ will get an Oscar for this.
Reporter: Oscar does films, Emmy, most likely get a bullet. Does he get a vest?
Detective: What like a vest, vest? You been watching too many dramas!
Reporter: He gets a vest!
Detective: In the f*****ing Wire he do. Here we so damn down on it, be lucky if you get a hot dog.
Detective: So what's the beef with the boss saying I should let you guys in...
Producer: Oooh noo, we aint going in. He is ( pointing to VJ)
Detective: You guys have one $%£^ing sick sense of humour.
Producer: He'll be inconspicuous..
Detective: Yeah like no one's ever going to find him when he gets out a there.
Reporter: Where are we anyways?
Detective: Dagenham.
Reporter **** where?
Detective: Outside London somewhere!
Reporter: Then why the hell are we talking like we Americans
Detective: We're having a "Life on Mars" moment.
Reporter: True...
[ pause]
Reporter: Does he get a vest?


There's no denying The Wire's huge influence. Realms of thesis have been written and combed over. I'm still suffering from withdrawal symptoms.

If men would knit in public and police could be exposed for cross dressing, you'd find it in The Wire. So what's it got to do with videojournalism?

Not a lot except that it inspires to go beyond the mundane. For original VJ inspiration, Homicide - Life on the Street, is the bible. In one scene it breaks 5 TV rules. But what The Wire does is inspire thought for the way contemporary chat has moved on.

The way you might speak and access info differs broadly from the way news speaks to you in intellectual high tones. That doesn't mean journalism should dumb down, but that there is a new language that's required, a new semiotic, which few have rarely tried

Er sorry Fox News doesn't count.

As I mentioned at SXSW - the film is not enough. Now where's my vest?

Info overload, the new journalist, so why become a journalist?

Imagine in 2030 - all outside kiosks, plasma screens, holodecks will be showing data like this one - a view of viewmagazine.tv captured in an article on Apple Pro. If we're surrounded by data what's the role of the journalist?

The concept of the journalist of the 21st century has still to be resolved. At some point like all industries, networks will get smaller, new citadels will usurp others, funding becomes unsustainable and then what happens when the next information wave hits, where more data than ever is available, what then the role of this arcane 16th century profession, journalism?

There is such a thing as information overload. It was the french Philosopher Baudrillard who gave it a universal currency, but in order to qualify what is an overload we must ascertain what our limits are in the first place - for it fundamentally affects are notion of journalism.

Meanwhile inside the BBC circa 1999, I had finally met with one of their senior execs, lunch! He reviewed my CV, made some remarks and uttered, lets get you in and see.

This image of me at various workplaces is also an allegory for the way, I, even you have come to imbibe data.

If you follow the development of media: Traditional medial - Cable and Satellite media - Digital Media - The Net, each occasion we take to its form, we're met with new data in which previously our cultural ways had no means of accommodating

Think about it. Pre-web, you worked, went out for a drink, home made VHS movie and slept. Today we have an assortment of gadgets that impinge, and require us to alter our social habits.

Social habits that have been built up over long periods are now met with the sudden challenge of, ok instead of looking at my favourite game on a Sunday, I'll blog.

This predicament is most acutely on display in lecture rooms, where students access facebook, twitter and the likes while a lecture is in progress. Our choices have boiled down to: all monitors off or lets reinvent a new way of lecturing where you're able to multiskill. Personally now, I give 10 min FB windows after a 40 min lecture.


Devised in the 1920s, will it celebrate a 100 years in good shape? That's a political answer.
So I didn't get into the BBC as a roving reporter, maybe that was my fault. Should I have pursued my contact some more? But I knew I was doing something right. A piece of advice given to me by an ol' time manager rang in my ears: "if you're wanting to be a journalist, do something, bring me something that the other person wouldn't do, or couldn't do, and people might want and don't endanger your life doing it"

The networks had to find a way to mediate what they felt we the public needed. They couldn't and wouldn't be able to show us all the world's woes.

It's impossible, that would be overload, but instead of finding a means to facilitate our increasing penchant for news, their attitude was still 1950s" "the news is fine as it is". They by and large still think that way, when I think other than our desire for stories, news has become cause and effect.

News is fine as it is ? It couldn't be: the web has showed that with a new breed of citizen journos, determined not by wise counsel sitting yonder, but by you and me, has room to bring us news.

The big shift
What's happening? We've culturally shifted our access to information absorption. MIT Henry Jenkins talks more about this in his writings. However it's still pretty much an unregulated system; they all are when they start, which in time we'll find a way to manage.

So if you can find something that the other person wouldn't do, or couldn't do, and people might without and endangering your life doing it, I reckon the road to the next elevated stage will be short in coming.

What makes the networks work well is their access to data and unquestionably some bright people mediating and delivering that.

The latter is something the best citizen journalists easily do. If all those clever people that couldn't or wouldn't want to get into a network set up their own, or all the people who left a broadcast network did so, we've the makings of some powerful new mediators.

We've started that adhoc already, with blog lines and tweet followers; we still like our repositories. So a new line of journalists, semi-pro, becoming pro not by earnings, but by their knowledge acquisition is on the rise.

The next thing is knitting a structure together and a good friend of mine Steve Punter has produced a document that does just that.

Did I mind I never think I fulfilled my potential? Well it depends whether potential= working for the networks. No, not any more. All the rejections I had accrued made me develop alternative ways of working.

David presenting at SXSW on IM Videojournalism from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

Segment of a SXSW presentation that showed we've done all these things before. There's nothing new in multiskilling

A decade ago, the idea that someone could or would do as many things constituted an overload of sorts. Today we take that for granted, until that is the next spike occurs, perhaps - the outernet - where info isn't locked on the web, but like air all around you.

A student called it the "information wave". She's not wrong, then what kind of journalists will you be then - curatorial is not a bad start.

Effecting a Matrix Lecture

The nature of a Matrix Lectures stems from an idea within Matrix maths, where multiple columns and rows are multiplied across each other - necessary within algebra and studying geometry.

In effect then multiple calculations are in process; it requires acute diligence and stamina from the executor and observer.

In many ways matrix lectures as a methodology are like a good comedian on a run. He or she uses the personal, abstract, plays with the audience and above all introduces a motif, an icon.

The very best ones, without you seeing it coming, use the motif as the denouement.

Many of you may have engaged in matrix lectures ad hocly or under some other name. But few will have tried it in its performance guise. The performance Lecture was first mentioned to me in its modernists terms by Prof. Wolfgang Kissel of Bauhaus-University Weimar.

Videojournalism in mathematics is the integration of different practices along the XY, and I would contend as yet not much on the Z plane

University teaching tends to be monocausal. It's based on an eventuality - that you may need to know - as a baseline for all. Many are yet to crack a system otherwise and will not want to veer far off from the syllabus.

The matrix then is a sign of the times. In a non-viewed multimedia world, we'd expressively countenance that students would be unable to think about a cluster of different disciplines at the same time.

When radio was just radio, we taught the voice, writing, technology of operating the gear - all geared to the single cause. You rarely have a drum or guitar in the room and say "right then lets make some music, talk poetry, reductive speech patterns and metronomic talk".

But why later you might ask are some accents more geared to the radio and how might we attenuate the voice as an instrument. If you've ever listened to BBC correspondent Fergal Keane you'll know what I'm talking about. Music thus become part of the lecture.

The Internet out of its net- The Outernet from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

Made in 2005 - this promo explores ideas

Matrix lecture pulls from different strands, but fundamentally is less about the art of teaching you what to do, but how you might do it differently or not at all. It's not an oxymoron.

In a group work I have noticed individualists gradually assume the identity of the group. If the group is cautious, you will soon taken on those attributes, sometimes temporarily. If the group takes risks, you'll do too in the long run or risk being exposed.

In that vein the idea is to get the individuals within a group to become "illogical rationalist", challenging antecedents in constructs et al.

Birth of a station - Video Journalism revolution from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

How videojournalism looked like in 1994

Here's another one, you might believe the inverted pyramid is ideal for journalism, but remember when that was and the culture is was born out of, and online how it might manifest itself as the truncate- pyramid.

The processor seeks to fit into the system, the artists looks to redefine it, thus wrestling with the very things we take for granted.I have taken various groups including students from the Communications University of China, and all have responded favourably
_______________________

Hi David,

I'm Amanda, a Chinese student in your class that day. I'm Chief Editor of
the GDUFS News Group in London (GDUFS is abbreviation of Guangdong
University of Foreign Studies). Since we plan to report your class, we long
to know your comments and opinions on our 3 ideas made in your class that
day, and we also want to know your comments on us (the 3 groups in your
class). We will be very grateful if you can send these information to us as
soon as possible, for the news cannot wait.

Furthermore, thank you for changing the way I think, for help me to jump out
of most people's prsent behaviour style and to try to shake off
the restriction of stereotype. Your lecture did make the oversea trip
worth.

Amanda

------------------------------
In the coming months I'll talk more about this and how I believe it can go some way in addressing modern teaching methods. Incidentally the blurring of the lines between the science and arts is nothing new, so I'm not being "out there" at all.

Here's a suggest link for you about how students will make up their own curricula in the future and lectures will become curators - from a former Vice Chancellor of the University of Westminster. You'll find it on viewmagazine.tv, once you get past the short pieces called EAT. :)

Why I wanted to become a journalist - and you? by David Dunkley Gyimah

David working in Radio circa 1998 physicall cutting tape before spooling it on a reel to reel before playout- you can hear some of those archive moments on his newly launched viewmagazine.tv site

For some it's a calling; others an easy shoe-in ( a linear extrapolation of middle class status sensibility). Then some fall into it by accident, some are well placed given their indepth knowledge of a subject, and some try as they may will perhaps never reach their full potential.

Journalism is a unique field, a gladitorial arena - many will join its quest; thousands will fail. Not because they are no good, but a range of complex reasons. The 80s was an easier era to become a broadcast journalist; in the 60s and 70s when it was in its nascent form it was much easier.

A brief visual history of videojournalism from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.
A timeline looking at one of the areas of journalism that I have practised for a while - Solojouurnalism

Though if you were from an ethnic background; it was problematic. Today, the chances of joining an established outfit against the weight of diagnosed upheavels, makes for serious questioning of : why you want to become a journalist.

Yes you don't have to join the big boys or girls -as the bloggorama has shown, but you'll look to bring in an income.

On Mr tweets journalism the question was asked: this was my response.

Why I became a journalist
In the UK of the 80s if you were black you'd have to gone to Oxbridge for a decent chance of a foot in journalism’s door.

It was a naked, disturbing, crass affair (one that publicly would not dare speak its name). It excluded not just the views of a section of society, but people from sections of society who also felt they had something relevant to share in the public sphere.

Years earlier I remember standing in college cadet garb in Ghana circa 1980s in the midst of a coup de tat, with citizens and friends being shot, indignantly, thinking "people should be seeing this".

That was one of many incidents that later fuelled my interests, I’d see something and say “people should be seeing this”.

In 1994, 6 yrs after beginning my hard slog, I stood amidst the masses in South Africa, witnessing and speaking into a phone to the BBC World Service for the inauguration of Nelson Mandela; People should be seeing this, and it stands as one of the more powerful icons for scratching my itch.

Untitled from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

In 2009 I went back to South Africa and fleetingly recorded this.

I wanted to become a journalist because when journalism’s common sense prevails, we have the ability to unveil, expose, talk about those individuals and corporations who feel no accountability for their actions, yet should.

And less it be forgotten tell the most amazing stories about human achievement and those who set examples for us to follow, with the thought at the back of my head that: “people should be seeing this”.

The most advanced technology for the future of journalism

The most advanced technology for the future of journalism is.... (drum roll).. YOUR NOGGIN.

I'm not writing as much now, partly because I realise I need to change this blog's template and also because my spare time is spent buried in books on technology and media.

I have a good many friends who like me are technofetishers. Our love for gadgets sees no end. So the last five years has been an orgy.

But I now find myself questioning such exuberance at the expense of those around me and my social development.

The gadget show
Today every gadget that comes to the market has tech journalists pronouncing its "Star Trek" moment in the ever changingling journalism. They too must drive copy!

Poor journalism. It's as if its been caught napping ( which it had), scolded by the ear and told to wait in the corner.

As each tech device emerges we turn around and recite: "Nah nah nah nah nah".

It's getting to the point of absurdity and the professional and amateurs alike ( if that distinction can be made) need to take stock and dampen down their "wow syndrome".

Oh yes I was an Applied Chemist and the wow syndrome as first described by New Scientist in the 80s captures elegantly the scientists penchant for the new. For me that was before I was lured into the ways of the 'scribe ' - the visual scribe.

In 1964 at a news event sponsored by the Radio-Television News Director Association and Time/Life, a senior executive from NBC, Robin Still, announced how in the future small electronic cameras would be small enough to hold with hand.

The world of news was only just negotiating a move from the expensive and clunky 35mm to its poorer cousin, but a new approach to news film, the 16mm.

Oh they must have sneered.

Video I shot in 1997 showed a healthy discourse between members at the Online News Association, looking at the first trial of the Reuters' mobile phone reportage.

The technologists' technologist noggin
Vannevar Bush, and if you don't know who he is, then er shame on you, spoke similarly in his seminal text "As we may think" of a device, the size of a walnut that would facilitate capturing data

"The camera hound of the future wears on his forehead a lump a little larger than a walnut. It takes pictures 3 millimeters square, later to be projected or enlarged, which after all involves only a factor of 10 beyond present practice. The lens is of universal focus"

He added referring to the camera:

"It would be a brave man who would predict that such a process will always remain clumsy, slow, and faulty in detail".

The year was 1945.

So what's my point? We're in danger of becoming celebrants, no dysfunctional celebrants to technology, when a less talked about asset is human agency; our capacity to dream first before the technology accomplishes those feats.

This is aptly distilled by Avatar Director/ writer James Cameron, who says he had to wait fifteen years before he could make his ground breaking film.

Meanwhile we're caught in a braudrillard-frenzy of instant gratification wooing to be exploiter of the next thing, that any pronouncements have come to resemble a vaudeville carabet. That may be fine, but for the reflective practitioner, there should be more healthy skepticism.

Technologies metamorphise with cultural wants; different cultural needs drive technological considerations.

Which is why in Kenya money can be hot-wired via mobile phones and spent accordingly, but it has not yet caught on in the West where the banks woud resist such a process unless there were at the heart of it.


Innovations inform art and art informs innovation

University of Westminster August 201o Students from one of China's revered media universities - address in a low tech way, their ability to think illogically, but rational. Here devising how "wisdom of crowds' might develop

Let me not sound prudish about this. There will always be innovations of a kind that use a technology that may well yield fresh methodologies.Twitter kept the Iran siege alive, mobile phones captured a plane on the Hudson, and a home movie cam recorded Rodney Marshes beatings.

But the innovators can only innovate once, the next one is a has-been and the technology - now available to citizen and professional - risks redundancy as we search for the next best thing.

It's absurd and it's not because I fail to understand Raymond William's theory of technological determinism but that the phenomenological inquiries; the raising of our consciousness, are crucially abandoned in these moments.

Because what journalism or its many actors should, now that's bold David, be striving for is what Arthur Koestler, a former journalist and celebrated author writes in Act of Creation ( and take note Inception fans when he says: "humans are most creative when rational thought is abandoned during dreams and trances..." is:

"The measure of an artists originality, put in the simplest terms, is the extent to which his selective emphasis deviates from conventional norm and establishes new standards of relevance".

We need the iPhone as much as we need blogs and twitter, but the quest is to radicalise their functionalities for new emergence of new cultural habits and find a lasting source of creativity can be challenging - more so if they are seen to be simulations of an antecedent object.

When the next person launches 'lync' - an app that culls twitter feeds so your feed cojoins with others to form a coherent stream of essays e.g. this blog would have been constructed from a series of tweets bound together, how will we use language and social networks any differently?

If the next iPhone allows me to composite and post-produce incorporating basic apps such as Cinema 4D and After Effetcs we might regale in this feat of miniaturisation, but how might it affect us beyond the conventional of a desk bound object?

Here's where we pound our noggin for the underlying emergent epistemology - and it rarely is a simple process. Of course serendipity will also play its part e.g. Dyson took a cyclonic windflow to create a revolutionary type of vaccum cleaner that would not lose suction.

How does this affect and exact what might be different? Otherwise we might suggest, as some have, that whilst we might be more technologically savvy, we're not growing in knowledge.

To unravel that we need to be more critical, enquiring and contextual of what we're privy to today. Living in the now fails to take note of powerful antecedents that could better inform us to push forward. In the end it's the technology that is subservient.

David Dunkley is a senior lecturer in digital media and is training professionals in the "Illogical Rationalist". How to see ideas when they're conformist

Inside Viewmagazine.tv

Redesigning viewmagazine.tv I wanted a look that reflected something of a magazine format and not overwhelm as criticism of the last front page had done.

So over the course of the next few months, I'l be refining more sub pages.

I have in my library more than 2000 tapes which give a clear inidication how media has changed. And next week I look forward to visiting ITN's archive to research landmarks in radio and television news.

I won't be able to show any film, but I will hopefully bog with pics. In the meantime if you get the chance do log onto to this page on viewmagazine.tv, where you'll hear a track from the forthcoming album of singer songwriter Nancy Ginindza.

You will not be dissapointed.

Videojournalism - It's so much attitude

It is not broadcasting.

Neither is it a new thing, squeezed to the chest by new journalists.

It's not a discipline and goes beyond the technical.

Neither is it a motif, a badge that makes you feel one of the new cadets of journalism.

It is difficult to measure, in as much as it is to define.

It embraces all media, and favours none.

It holds faithfully to a dictum that it's not what you see that counts, but what you feel.

And its interpretation.

That is to be disruptive, but construct fresh palettes

To be individualistic, yet seek collaboration.

It is not the shooting of the event

But the event, unrehearsed that leads you to shoot.

It can be taught in name, but lives through pained search.

There may be many kinds of videojournalism,

but I only know one.

It is the one that imbues a critical, artistic and fearless temperament at creating artefacts.

Artefacts that hold true to an aesthetic that gives renewed meaning to answers we sometimes seek.

Videojournalism, you'd ve forgiven for thinking it's about film.

But in truth it's an attitude.

So much so that the name is meaningless.

What's in a name?

Only for those that seek the comfort of inclusion.

When you're an artist, such labels are meaningless.

It is an attitude.

Call me a charlaton.

Call me a visualist

Call me confused.

I don't care, for in my head

Videojournalism - It's so much an attitude

David is due to present at Apple Stores in the next couple of months and will be revealing new works in his role at artist in residence at the prestigious Southbank Centre

Importance of Video Analytics and Customer Service - Good web hosting

Video professional and academic David Dunkley Gyimah takes a personal overview of how important analytics has become and the value of web hosting customer service. Here presenting at the World Association of Newspapers - a gathering of the world's top newspapers


Thousands of miles from my terminal, someone is accessing an article.

From the moment they enter, the time spent on the piece, where they're from, where they go next, data is recorded.

It's probably a mark of how society has changed that we accept such digital sleuthing, for in today's market place such data is crucial and we've come to accept "cookies" and "analytics" as a necessary way of business.

Some of these delegates would later listen to David talk about targeted media.

In the mid 2000s I would often speak to young journalists and executive on the talk circuit that attracting you, meant we'd have to learn to write for the human eye and robots, traversing a middle road.

The inverted pyramid that prescribes journalism's craft has become a truncated set of trapezoids strategically littered with key words. Video, much the same.

The circle is complete. You have a website whose data tells you where your readers are; you in turn learn to write strategically to gain greater traction with those readers.

In June, a visit from a senior figure within the BBC illustrated just how important analytics has become embedded in journalism. Indeed as a video feature I made at Sky News clearly illustrates their content e.g. video and articles is driven directly by their analytics. Now writing for the web is becoming elevated to an art.

This point was aptly demonstrated by a former student of mine now at Sky, who emailed me ecstatic that a lecture on analytics had resulted in her producing the most viewed article that day.

This video soon to be posted shows how seriously Sky News takes its analytical data

The true value of analytics

I study analytics examining data on what pages work, how long they're accessed and how the site is entered and exited ( see figure on the right), except in the last three weeks I haven't been able to because the given software has ceased to produce such data and try as I might to politely point this out to my web service provider, Fasthosts.co.uk, there's been no satisfactory outcome.

So here's where this article takes a different turn, from not just the primacy of analytics, but to that of the relationship with web hosters.

My web host is Fasthosts. I have been with them for almost a decade and over that period as the Editor/Web Master of the School of Media Arts and Design, University of Westminster, and conference speaker have either directly of indirectly helped set up accounts probably more than a 100.

Recently, as a delegation we returned from China, Chongqing, addressing professors from some of the country's respected universities on "audiencing and analytics" (See Viewmagazine.tv)

I host my own sites with them and have recently overhauled one of them. Earlier this year I transferred a glut of accounts from web hosters Easy Space, who I felt had lost the ethos of customer service.

I have found Fasthosts agreeable and customer service advisors rather pleasant. I could say more kind things, but I'd rather my comments were not lifted out of context.

So what's my issue? My analytics are down since the 22nd July as the figure (a snapshot of
Fasthosts matrix data) on the right illustrates. I'd really like them back.

• What have I done about it? Emailed them over the course of the last three weeks
• What's been done? Nothing yet, other than an email saying this is gone to second tier level, then the trail goes cold.

You could argue there are other anayltics you could bolt on, Google for example, and you'd be correct, and I might use that, but it misses the point.

When I first went online in 1995, there were only a few web hosters around. I signed up with Easyspace's predecessor. It's fair not only to say today web hosting is a lucrative business, but perhaps has produced the unwieldy situation of how businesses address volume.

When customer service becomes too much of a business
It's a dervish circle. The more popular a business comes, the more volume, customers, it handles, the more front-facing customer service it needs to meet problems that may arise.

Most web hosters have a 24/7 telephone service. With Fasthosts I have often got through fairly quickly. This morning Yesterday at six I finally decided to ring Fasthosts. The person who answered (not fair to give his name) was pleasant and I set about informing him of my issue, which is where I'm now taking another and final turn, in this piece: customer satisfaction.

"If you're not recording this, please do", I asked. And if management from Fasthosts are listening please note.

Partly just common sense, partly an acute interest in communications from a background in broadcast media (BBC, Channel 4, ABC), good communications is important.

I'm not an expert on servers and have no idea how long it takes to go underneath the bonnet of of one. It may be that indeed my issue is being investigated alongside the 1000s of others with their individual issues - a question of volume.

But what's relevant is the passage of information.

If, as a car owner, you sent your car in for repairs and failed to hear anything back from the mechanics, you'd be forgiven for being concerned.

If your mechanic, as mine does, rings or emails you at the end of the day to say, your valve injector's packed up and it's going to take them two days to order a new one and another day to fit, perhaps you'll feel more relieved. You're in possession of new information.

So the questions in my conversation became?

• Is there a problem that can be solved?
• Can you please keep me informed by the end of the day?

These answers allow me to make further informed choice. Like many, I'm a creature of habit so I don't feel put off enough to haul my custom elsewhere, but it's not just courtesy but a professional pre-requesite to talk to customers.

Customer Context
I'm not dissatisfied with my web service provider, and as such this post isn't a critique, but a chat to management or someone understanding my predicament puzzled, yet committed to "offering a satisfactory customer service".

It's important, as she or he will agree, that when you're paying for a service, it's right to have realistic expectations of what you should be afforded and resolutions and good communications is one of them.

And yesterday morning my Fasthosts advisor agreed, so the issue is being prioritised I was told and that he would email me by the end of the day with an update.

"That puts you in an invidious position", I said, "as, if there's no update you'll have nothing to report".

"No", he answered gently, "I will get back to you".

If you're reading this piece, then it's because he didn't get back and I am no more wiser at what's going on.

A footnote: Yesterday after tweeting I did receive a survey to fill in, but I declined thus far on this basis:

"Please note that we will not be able to respond to support enquiries via this survey.
If you do have a support enquiry please visit www.fasthosts.co.uk/support, where you will find a comprehensive knowledge base containing hundreds of easy-to-follow quick guides, commonly asked questions, and a facility to submit your support enquiry online".

I have but can't get any joy. I thought that's what surveys are made to address - issues.

Some days later the matter was resolved.  And an email from the service informed me of the fault. Hope this helps you. For more issues on the web and video go to my main site  http://www.viewmagazine.tv

David Dunkley Gyimah will be presenting at a number of conferences on video analytics.

The idea lab - China students

Its nearly 3 O'clock and we're 15 minutes away from presentations.

It's been another enjoyable period with Chinese undergrad students in the UK for 3 weeks.

I had them this afternoon for what I call a Matrix lecture - a multiple strand lecture involving documenting the production of ideas.

It's based on a theory that we need to be more illogical in the creation of ideas.

As a test, I usually on slide 10 of 20 have students line up a group of their friends. The line will be straight and involve some form of hiearchy.

Too logical I gently say afterwards. The next time around, someone had the students sit down on the floor in a circle. Artistic!

Wisdom of crowds and the nimbleness of a next generation illustrates we should let our young foster their ideas unfettered.

We, lecturers then curate these. It's not a hard and fast rule, but I do believe that we should give room to students to be more illogical, though not irrational.

I have got to get back to supervising the room, but hopefully we'll see the fruits of their creative ideas in a while.

Not so different after all

On my way back from China, I encountered two vignettes, at polar ends, which made me reflect on my journey.

From Shanghai where myself and Geoffrey ( Head of Department) had finessed our networking, culminating in a whirlwind tour of the Expo, I was to find myself on the 8.50 plane bound for Beijing.

I had the outer seat to the window and next to me was Ms Dominatrix, abrasive, loud mouthed and coarse. I was to experience part of this, as she elbowed me, put her drinks on my tray without asking and seemed to summons the air stewards every five minutes.

When the pilot announced some breaking news, she went into Miss Unbearable mode. She may have had a point, because by the time the translations made their way to us non-mandarin speaking, we would be dutifully informed that there was a three to four hour delay in our flight.

Meaning, we would have to sit in the plane for the said duration. My background in boarding school seated in the guard room doing nothing can prepare me for an assortment of mundane tasks, but the prospect of firstly a wait that could end up with me missing my connection, and secondly seated to Miss Urgh filled me with dread.

Still Waiting
At Oneish, having boarded the flight at 8.30 we were due to move. By now I had been reduced to a pulp.

At Beijing, a litany of mis-communications and bad decision making, to me very unChinese-like, would eventually lead me and others to our connecting flight- also delayed.

When we did board, I would be sat next to someone, the equivalent of my mother. She was unfussy and collected. We nodded at each other and then the flight took its course.

It's a long haul so to amuse oneself in -flight entertainment is a pre-requisite, unless you have a good book.

And while I feasted on film after film, I couldn't help but see how abject the woman next to me was.

I finally plucked up the courage and without a word said navigated her through her menu. She seemed amused and surprised.

I'd flick through a range of options and she'd gesture by pressing the icon on the window of the screen. We got it down to a fine art, except almost all the games she pressed were not working.

I found her some music, a Chinese Opera. It seemed agreeable, but she then gestured in the soft manner she had, to move on.

Eventually she gestured with palms open that she'd had enough and I repaired to my own space and another run of Avatar.

Experiential Learning
And then something nice happened which I caught with my periphery vision. She picked up her tuner and begun to navigate herself; she'd been studiously watching me as I tried to help, to the point I'm sure it wasn't that she couldn't find any programmes, she was building up her knowledge of how this tuner contraption worked.

I had tried to show her, but perhaps just like my mother she had not wanted to come across as a nuisance.

Minutes later I had a gentle nudge on my shoulder. I looked around and she, smiling gently, offered her headphones and nodded.

Chinese Classical Music, soothing, arresting and had I not kept my manners about me, might have held onto her headphones.

She smiled triumphantly as she took them back and for the rest of the flight I would notice a content look about her. Occasionally she'd change channels.

After landing, in the baggage room, I would see her again; our confined space now expanded, I swept pass her thinking how much my last encounter with China, embodied something I had witnessed all along while I was there.

A quiet deference and respect... and then just occasionally from earlier on an utterance of intemperance. Perhaps they are one and the same, but the truth, I thought reflecting on my own foibles and mannerism is that really we're not so different after all.

Xie xie

Journalism as it travels along modern art

Michael Rosenblum posted this

"Modern art – Bathers by a river by Henri Matisse 1910

Yesterday we went to see the new Matisse exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in NY.

(As we live on top of the museum, this was not so hard to do).

The exhibition has gotten rave reviews, and not being such great art historians, we took the audio tour, which makes life easier and far more interesting.

Last week we went to see RED, the Broadway show about Mark Rothko and the Picasso exhibit at the Met.

It’s been an art-packed week..... More here

Here's my response.........

And therein lies the rub.

It’s a simple enough argument with a powerful antecedent, but, as they fought then, the wise men from the academy le baux, so they fight now.

History and time will perhaps show how evolutionary changes over a continuum viewed in say 2020 as a snapshot of 20 years of change, came to be seen as dramatic change.

That when the pinhole, camera obscura and any no of devices encouraged the faithful reproduction of the image, the impressionist tired with it all took up a new course lending towards their interpretation of events mimesism ( Journalism abandoning forced balance).

But we know they paid initially with barbed critiques and being ostracized by the “wise men”.

The new journos look like being the Cezannes. Their work make’s no distinction between factivity, narrative and art. But alas for a legacy generation, the lines between journalism and new journalism, and art, must remain distinct.

And that is a shame.. but I rather think Darwinism might win the day.

Michael you might find what Jude Kelly, Artistic Director of the Southbank Centre says in this I-Videojournalism – design site I created for my artist in residency portfolio at the Southbank Centre Viewmagazine.tv

NB Apologies for the intermittent posts I'm looking to port over to a new blog system soon

and then more new journalism

Viewmagazine's refocused brief and design.

Sorry, if you're a follower of this blog, that there has not been much forthcoming lately.

I'm planning on switching to Wordpress, but have a few more things to sort out.

That should come soon after a redesign and complete overhaul of viewmagazine.tv including its brief.

A lot has changed in terms of personal branding and storytelling, with for me an emphasis on process and ideas rather than actual articles.

And these ideas will now tend to come to either nearer where you are or farther from this blog's place of origin.

I've maintained for while that this slow evolving paradigm takes its cue from everyone, not necessarily involved in the media and visual arts -a fundamental shift from the 90s when broadcast media or newspapers executives designed for us.

So look forward to seeing you and engaging in liveky talks.

And so to the next journal

I arrived at SMARTlab - PhD gathering on a high, having just flown a 16 hour journey from China. The Tuesday did not disappoint as Nigel, Errin, and Bobby mapped out their direction in deconstructing autism.

The contents was comprehensive, its delivery clear, their ideas engaging and their methodology a revelation is crystallising ideas within the realms of videojournalism.

It's often said, by whom, I can't recall at present, that the generation of new ideas invariably involved transferring concepts from one discipline to another.

You might ask then the relationship between a lecture of autism and film theory, but the common ground was staggering.

They spoke about pragmatics, gesturing, expressive language and receptiveness. It sparked a theory of the mind in disseminating videojournalism film making undertaken in Chonqing.

In a nutsell it involves prefixed perceptions, observation, initiation, reception, recording and evaluation and a re-evaluation before asking how your perceptions met with expectations.

Zann's elucidation of the collective and collaboration asked questions - some of which still needs answering.

Videojournalism sooner was never the paradigm

If the good people in broadcasting were not so dismissal and protective with video and TV skills we would have realised, just as amateur photographers and film makers that this video thing is not rocket science.

Yes, it involves a number of rules, some made up to thwart vague interest, but it is just like riding a bike.

The revolution we see or will realise is how 5 years on, every kid who learns to write with be taught visual language to communicate in video.

And if they don't, they'll learn it themselves.

But here's my plea, don't stop at video, look to design. I have argued many times in previous blogs that the direction of video is of a cinema and design aesthetic.

Lev Manovic said something in his popular book, which I circled in 1998. That soon spatial video will take its place - a reworked version of the zoetrope and that linear narrative may be given a run for its money.

That's happening, and with video hyperlinking, a radical gamechanger awaits.

I'm looking to a new design of my site to reflect the direction my own path has taken.

• Over the years its been deeply rewarding.
• Training hundreds of newspaper journalists - from the Financial Times, Press Association, Daily Telegraph
• Working with groups in Cairo, South Africa, Norway, the US and China.
• And now artistic work with the Southbank Centre.

There's a lot to videojournalism than meets the eye, and design I believe will feature heavily as a skill set to bolster existing related knowledge.

Moscow journalists visualisation of journalism and an English Summer

What's the difference between the two images below? That's the question I put to 10 students from Moscow State University, studying journalism.

If you want to find out scroll down.

fig 1 Chinese International Masters student Yong Wang working on his team's website www.offbeatlondon.co.uk


fig 2 Yong Wang working on his team's website www.offbeatlondon.co.uk

The basis of this morning's lectures centred on two main strands, which I shared with the group with a brief history of the web, and the results from our own international multimedia student journalists.

That is:

• The way journalism tends to be taught is at stark odds with the way I believe we should, particularly with multimedia journalism
• And that whilst left brain, right brain debates seem arcane, there's something to explore in the way journalists still propagate linearity and sequencing.

Take these set of illustations, which one would you choose.

fig iii

fig iv
fig v

Few of you would pick the first one. In the laws of visualisation there is a reason.

Then there's this image below (fig vi and vii) from a film by Rob Chiu, what's wrong or right with it?


fig vi

fig vii

In fact fig vii is the doctored one, I made. The actual image from the film is fig vi, but conceivably it is a shot that breaks the rule of space - the subject should be looking into space in the rule of thirds. But why does the author use it and so successfully.

The image is dissonant, but then so is the video - about youth angst. As a result it works, and debunks the rule. Similarly in training programmes, I show how you can cross the line and pique the interest of your film and in adopting techniques used by advertising directors.

One of the other exercises I undertook this morning involves various group dynamics, that involve sum zero - everyone wins, but you have to figure out your losses in compromising - and permutation exercises, which serves two purposes.

Physically it gets students thinking about physical objects, rather than abstracts in design.
Its tactile and involves everyday encountered solutions.

And leads to dictums such as this one below, from Gestalt


So to my point at the top and the answer to the two pics fig i and fig ii

The emphasis for the written word in journalism comes in the wake of the enlightenment period, which with 2020 you'd figure was only natural, but interestingly, as detailed by Leonard Shlain, there was a time when the image reigned, and that would suggest we exercised creative and artistic thinking.

And, when we look at where we are now in our highly visual world of the Time Squares, magazines and a maturing web, we're back in image mode. Yet this time uniquely it's an image world in bed with the written.

The question is how adept are we at training to rethink in the image mode? Put simply how can we deploy some of the techniques in art to help push multimedia to its own level, rather than being son/daughter of written journalism.

So, finally according to the students
fig ii limited and focused the amount of data you needed to look at. What's interesting about this interpretation is that in the 1920-50s deep focus was all the rage. Not any more. This illustrates a couple of things.

• The image world is a dynamic medium changing according to cultural and creative evolutions, and something fabulous is going on now.
• That multimedia storytelling has more legs on it, but it needs to break free from its surrogate constrained rules.

This is one of several strands with multiple examples David provides in a future book.

Footballiology - lessons in life

England's woman team often demonstrate how the men's squad should perform

To be an English fan of its national football squad at the moment, is the nearest thing to self-harm.

Nay being in a mad institution of the 11th century is more like it. But, and this is a big but, there are indelible life stories to be learned. Indeed a positive spin on humiliating news.

1. Thinking above ones station.
England weren't just bad, but the belief was their poor performance was an aberration.

We've come to think like greedy bankers that it's our right to be better than everyone else, without a degree of humility, and inward examination of how we solve our problem.

More often than not money is thrown at it, and that wrongly we think is our panacea.

2. Putting faith in institutions.
We the people are run by institutions, footballing and sport are just a few.

Men in suits who decide how you the fan responds. They're unaccountable, elected by the few, interested in power.

The media's wake up call to the digital revolution is much needed in the world of sports. If the fans boycotted in protest for a day to show "we-the-fan-power", the balance of power could be shifted.

We saw glimpses of it in after Rooney's outburst and the FA forcing him to apologise to fans.

3. The individual above the self.
England, where overwhelmingly criticised for not playing as a team.

In moments revealed on replays Lampard and Terry can be seen walking to a situation that demanded urgency. But why blame the team?

Successive political governments have fostered the notion of individualism. You are good, which is why I need you, rather than you're hungry to help the team.

The former ethos is bankrupt and any root and branch change to England and our own psyche has to reward collective wisdom.

Call Germany a young side, but like the USA they play for each other. Our squad will be back to reaping the spoils of their labour in two months time, and we'll welcome their efforts with exuberance

4. Creativity and the technician
Our ability to be creative is fuelled by attributes that court risque and failure, and whether its our national squad or workplace we refuse to engage in this.

Our media won't accept losses from our national team or our politicians endeavors to try new things.

To that end successive governments would only be brave enough to bring us "good news", while the small print deviously hid how they were robbing our back pockets.

We then sacrifice creativity for technical.

Everyone notes the Premiere league is one of the best in the world, some bravely call it the best, but is that in terms of creativity or technical?

For creativity give me Serie A - Italian league or Brazilian League. Yes we need to technically adept but it means nothing if you can't creatively apply that knowledge.

5. Truth and Honesty
Until we're honest about our own flaws, we'll never be able to find a meaningful solution.

6. Flexibility and a willingness to change
Cappello England's manager doggedly stuck to a system of play without a willingness to change.

Pride, perhaps arrogance, perhaps even genius, but we see this time and time again in our own institutions, particularly the media.

And as the digital dawn has shown to the media, those who deny change, will atrophy

The journo educational crisis

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

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

He says:

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

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

More here

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Viewmagazine.tv was conceived by this mashup in 2005.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The turning - what as a student journalist I wish I knew then

David working at BBC local radio circa 1988 as a freelancer

The transition from undergrad to Masters programmes, or for that matter trainee journalists to the long-in-tooth, can be a difficult one.

My own experience offers a story I look to for answers.

In 1987 nearing my graduation, I had joined the BBC as a freelancer. I was getting on well, but then the dynamics in the newsroom changed with the arrival of a new member of staff - also a student.

Things started to go wrong and because of a combination of my impetuousness and hurt at being sidelined, I shut up shop. I stored all that was wrong for an interview for the one staff job coming up.

At the interview things were going swimmingly, but then I was asked: "So what do you think about your team members and editor?"

I criticised them in a manner which I felt fit, offering no self-critique in its place or deference to understanding the process.

The interviewer from Human Resources asked me two questions:

1. If you knew what was going wrong, why did you not intervene in some way and draw attention to this by speaking to your editor or colleagues? Why did you suffer in silence?
2. And if I hire you how can I trust if things go wrong, rather than seeking a collective resolution, you won't look to blame others again?

There and then I knew I'd lost the job. Today I have a theory, which stems from my experience as a student undergrad and the way we are taught and in deeper studies such as a PhD, when you set your own study prog.

Changing journalism
As journalists or would-be-journalists we are blessed with an asset that should, I say should, aid our inter-relations with others; the use of words and methods of communications.

But we are individuals who exercise levels of me-ism that at times corrode our relationships when it shouldn't be so.

I'm certain I wouldn't hire me, if I knew when things were going south, I could not find a means to enquire and help in some way bring attention to how we could look for a solution.

The training of journalists is one that often overlooks life's teachings. But that's not unusual.

In parallel scenes in the aviation industry, it took a wholesale change in attitude to eradicate a huge problem.

The cockpit of the 70s would brook no challenge or advice from the first officer to the pilot. The pilot was the single arbiter whose authority could not be challenged, resulting in a number of crashes that could have been avoided.

So the airline industry fostered a new relationship between its flying staff.

When the web advocated sharing ideas with Linux charging with the flag, it was so anathema that trad media either poo pooed it or tried to kill it.

On the web we don't mind, or perhaps pretend we're selfless. And we've learned to create a nomenclature of how to address problems e.g. don't feed the troll, but in person we still clutch on to antiquated, yet, yes humanistic ideals.

Learning from our mistakes

Davis speaking about creative, technical and semiotics of creativity at Apple Store.

It's possible, and now I'm a little wiser, that we all need to go through this me-ism path, because only after that can we evaluate our own standings and learn about ourselves.

Mine cost me a job, but I believe it made me a better person. It took many things including Stephen Covey's lesson on interdependency - which I read by the way in a book.

For those that know me, I hope I strive to be fair and where things are seen to be off target from my own ideals, I find the means and ways of talking about it.

Many times I have discovered it's unintentional, that I am as much the solution as the scene I look to. It takes two people to have a conversation.

But if 21st journalism is to build on its antecedents, the underlying "real life" attitudes within social networks e.g. respect for oneself and others needs looking at and translated into the lecture rooms and journalism shop floors.

Can we teach it?

We can create artificial environments to test these: group work dynamics, shared problem solving, the wisdom of crowds approach, but ultimately the answers lie within ourselves.

And that may be a matter of you mastering your programme, as much as anything else.