Over to you from the BBC - Reporting Egypt, the African aspirational view and what to do next?

David Dunkley Gyimah at Aggrey House Prempeh College

I can see myself now, getting ready for lights off 9.30 p.m. and quietly turning the dial of my portable radio to the short wave of the BBC World Service. The din of the crickets suddenly became inaudible.

The photo above cryogenically preserves those moments. Memories as Barthes professed at photography's ability to evoke the past and present it to the future.

Today I listened to Richard Sambrook presenting Over to You at the BBC World Service and that special transatlantic relationship I developed came pouring back.

Years later I would freelance for the BBC World Service, whilst reporting from South Africa. Who would have guessed? Certainly not my dad because abandoning all efforts to become a doctor strained are relationship for 15 years. We never spoke. The media was no match for doctoring.

And if it means anything I took the sciences as far as I could in a BSc in Applied Chemistry before fulfilling an ambition.










Over to You
Richard's  programme touched on two areas I feel passionate about sharing.

Firstly, and it was the last piece on his show, an African rang in complaining that there was too much African material on the BBC World Service.

Over to You

Certainly when I listened to the World Service (WS) those years back, I confess I certainly wanted to be transported out of the dreary surroundings of Ghana's coup de tats and harsh standard of living.

Yesterday in my blog I spoke about journalism as a cultural construct, purloining American academic Michael Schudson's argument in the Power of News.

Africa is one of the BBC WS' most important regions. Letters from Nigerians and Ghanaians are a mainstay of the postbag. So it's reasonable to consider how reportage is geared towards the continent. The Africa Service, whichI freelanced for alongside Rageh Omar brings back fond memories, but this was about the WS in general.

The caller from on Over to You, sought from the BBC a window looking out onto the rest of the world. Is this cultural? Somehow, there's something in this. The media when I was in Ghana was in Vertov's words 'cinema' with its ability to transport me to new mental territories.

My sister today would hardly read the Voice Newspaper-- targted at Black readers  but give her the Daily Mail any day. Aspirational media and stories of celebs have more currency.  When I spoke about journalism and culture yesterday it was to advance the idea that audiences ask different questions about their journalism.

In this media below, I asked a group of my former Master students if they could change one thing, what would that be. Listen to Daniel Kofi from Ghana speaking about the media.





In 1997 we tested a hypothesis of Africa media with the first ever co-production between SABC and Ghana TV using videojournalism

The next segue then. Egypt and its reporting, which is by no means an easy feat. The country as Richard stated in Over to You is polarised and striking a balance in reportage is increasingly problematic.

Two areas struck me. How event-based journalism -- sort of dramatic cinema verite reportage brings to the listener news as it happens, but runs the risk of being interpreted as symbolic of a grand narrative.

The BBC's Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen is one of the BBC's finest, but it's not his fault that the institution is not articulating the argument of the challenges of executing balanced reportage more effectively.

I interviewed a former BBC foreign editor last year. Vin Ray reminisced how during the Bosnian war when he was producing another big hitter reporter, replaying a context piece ever so often would have helped the audience understand the complexities of the war.

Over to You's much respected editor, Joanna Mills, missed an opportunity here to explain. These verite reports convey news' dramatis. As Robert Drew would have said, giving you the feeling of being there, but this is not a substitute, which the audience can be benignly ignorant of, for contextual themed reportage.

However, to the audience if it's on the BBC, it must have been thought through for its balance.

The Egyptian caller from Canada was suggesting the Brotherhood was monopolising the news and the BBC was not being as effective at countering this.  Editing is a nuanced job; it comes from years of experience and a feel of the audience, which is truly difficult in a social media age.

However, either the Brotherhood's PR machine is doing its job of staying in the headlines,  or difficult but transparent decisions could be arrived at by the BBC that limits their exposure and pursues wider contextual reportage. Otherwise is it fair to use the Net to solve the temporal fixed-amount-of-time problem?

Grand theories or otherwise universal themes will always be difficult. You couldn't please all the audience in the analogue age, whilst in digital, really! Good luck!

Last year at NewsXchange, professionals were advancing the idea of more metric-based data that would strengthen broadcast reportage. That needs to be considered. Meanwhile greater transparency with the listeners about the task faced could be aired.

The hegemonic model of news is only so because no one dare tinker with it, but is there an issue in a news bulletin to explain why today you're running a piece that does not take account of the Brotherhood.  Of course that opens up editorialising, which for the BBC's defence is what journalism does all the time.

The caller also stated a high percentage of the population were against the Brotherhood. If there was ever an opportunity to marry journalism with pragmatic academia this was it with the BBC commissioning its own poll to substantiate or disprove this.


Inside Egypt

Inside Nile TV making a documentary about journalism

Seven years ago, I was invited to train journalists, videojournalists in particular, at Nile TV - a job that continued up till 2011.

When I was invited back to speak at the Arab Summit earlier this year, my host explained. It wasn't that Egypt doesn't have a wealth of media, joined by online news sites, but that reporting had degenerated to internecine combat.

Being open about the intricacies of attempting grand narratives was something we discussed with the audience. It's a first step I believe the networks, in spite of all their might, could do.

Remember Dan Gilmor's oeuvre, which served as a manifesto for many traditional media in 2006.

Gilmor acknowledged his audience knew a lot and that he no longer had all, small "a", the answers.

Reporting in the Social Media age is problematic. Given the tools and fresh discourses, we journalists could do a better a job at explaining.

By the way, in response to my article yesterday, a promising social media networker Q has responded in a feature-length post here.

The original post I wrote can be found here.

Next week, how one of my posts in being featured in a popular publication concerning safety in filming in Syria. I share the experience of Master students at the BBC's hostile reporting event in November with my assignment near the Turkey- Syria border training videojournalists.

The footage has been made into a trailer and is part of my PhD submission on videojournalism with films I made in China, Tunisia, Egypt , US and South Africa

David Dunkley Gyimah runs the award winning viewmagazine.tv

Young people don't do journalism - a Social network shaker Q responds

Recently, Indie journo David posted in this blog about young people and journalism arguing young people did their own journalism. The day after  Q - a social network shaker responded with this. The piece has captured the attention of a wide number of people. You can follow Q here


David will be presenting at the International journalism festival on producing 21st century news story forms from his 6 year PhD research.

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Q writes,  Go 2 the audience

I feel like a digital media snitch as I answer or add to this discussion, because, we would like to keep the mainstream or traditional hierarchical models of media power, believing they have relevance, which can only be to themselves, and their declining newspaper and journalistic industry.

Young people do journalism. Oh yes they do, by creating their own new models, raising their own bars of excellence and eliminating and reducing the traditional models.

I have to start by saying I have NEVER seen so many young people in the 15-30 demographic of all colours and creeds engaged and passionately making and shooting, their own content, even on smart

phones and uploading them online. I switched on twitter this morning and saw a discussion and said

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TOP DOG AGENCY @topdogagency

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

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After a bit of silence an answer finally came.

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@topdogagency @viewmagazine @DSLRinformer my line is usually 'anything

that is topical and of interest to your target audience'

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I replied (please note I have broken the 140 character twitter rule to condense the conversation. I have not changed or edited or punctuated my online grammar or language)

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TOP DOG AGENCY @topdogagency

What if now in social media we find what is topical and of interest to our own target market and get financial news like Bloomberg. If we are online and can get culturally specific news from normal people do we need journos?

I mean traditional journalists were people we trusted to bring us news stories for a price. It is free now We can make our own. There is a lobby out there in social media world that feel we don't need traditional journalists/news anymore.

I better get 2 writing my article. Financial info is different. But I logged on 2 twitter 2 get my news from sources I trust.  when we old disenfranchised people look at traditional news/journalists. We say, with the Internet we don't need them anymore I shall put my case as to why trad. journalists and even some bloggers are not needed anymore in my article. GO 2 THE AUDIENCE

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david dunkley gyimah @viewmagazine

@topdogagency Brill look forward to it. Dare say a few other journos may enjoy reading what the Socially Networked think

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TOP DOG AGENCY ?@topdogagency

@viewmagazine It is not we think. It is what we had to do to survive. We had to eliminate and reduce their importance. The internet helped.

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I asked the question What is news,  because I wanted to know how a journalist or his or my online community would answer.

Of course the news of a mother breaking the death of a family member to her son, I understand. The family member receiving the news trusts the messenger.

Why in this digital age should we trust traditional media? We had to eliminate and reduce the messenger's power and continual negative stories.

Traditionally, when the young black community switched on the news or opened papers or glanced online via traditional platforms. The news about them was always weighted against them. On the justice scales of light and dark, they were shown in the stereotypical dark.

I have to ask? Now, I know what a journalism lecturer and geek answer to the question ?What is news? was it news, is it news this because that was/is the only side of the black community that is topical or of interest to traditional white audiences by white owned media?

I am not going to snitch on these young black people and show or tell how they are creating in some areas companies and intellectual property worth a lot of capital. It should remain unseen and allowed to flourish.

If traditional media are out of touch, so be it. If they have the business sense to employ the black talent or buy out their enterprises that is an option for their growth and survival.

The young black people doing journalism online are not asking for acceptance. They know their audience, where to find them and create topical content of interest to their target audience in the UK and aboard via the internet thus crossing cultural boundaries and gaining new audiences, and creating an income at the same time.

I think this has been a direct result of institutional racism, and also the traditional hierarchical models, knowingly or unknowingly, upholding an injustice.

So we have to thank that old injustice #RIPMANDELA that has brought about out of need this new online content creation from young 15-30 black audiences.

The young have become creative online. Some feel in the traditional system, a lot of stories created by that traditional media was negative and stereotypical. With, no or very little good news.

So, with the aid of the Internet they have created an alternative, and can now be in control of their own stories and imaging, and get that to their own audiences.

They can also now decide the balance or weighting of a story with a good or bad light, and the checks or control on them is via the social platforms they are serving. If the audience doesn't like the content, it takes seconds for the content creators to be notified and contested. 

Of course within all of this there are online haters sitting behind keyboards that hate anything posted online. However, now the content creators are also the audience or very close to them this once again leads them to feel that they don't need the support of traditional media, which has misshaped and wrongly defined them in the past.

Also, one has to question the fact, why very few young people even read the traditional media and their journalistic stories?

In the case of movies, where in traditional media, a print and advertising backed campaign, for a movie, with a marketing budget can get a four star review in papers or an appearance by the star actor on a prime time TV chat show could mean a good opening weekend for the movie.

The young people don't care? or rarely see these reviews or chat shows, and if they do, are not moved to engage in a night out at the movies, leading to a box office flop.

If however, they see media created by social platforms they respect by content creators they trust, and their friends reinforce that on social media, they will engage in conversation and might even SHARE the good news to others.

The 15 - 30 demographic is vital to advertisers.

Dead Meat

Buy Dead Meat here

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

I would like to finish with two stories.

I recently got a DM on twitter, from a journalist from the guardian newspaper, with a landline number to call.

I had previously introduced him to alleged gang members for a videojournalism story he was working on about stop and search.

These alleged gang members were from http://www.usgent.com the guys had provided music for my movie FEDZ, with other artists from various post codes and areas in the UK.

I had even got some of these guys into the channel four series TOP BOY, here is

LEFTY (USG) - SHOWREEL

LEFTY (USG) - SHOWREEL (@LEFTYUSG) from usgent on Vimeo.

Anyway, the journalist said, Hey, I was wondering where you think we should go next?

What do you mean? I asked.

With gangs, he said. What story should we do about them?

You're asking me?

Yes, because you know them?

Excuse me, I said. I am right in the middle of talking to my lawyer. Vimeo, just took down my site www.fedzmovie.com and we are talking to IAC, the parent company. I paused. Do you think I have got time to talk about gangs that don't exist as the media created them I have spoken to these guys, and do you know what they say to me about the media?

No,  he replied.

They say the media created gangs, they are just friends. One carnival a newspaper published a map of London with different colours in various boroughs and post codes, and named various gangs. 

The guys looked at this article, and were surprised because they saw themselves as friends, now they were suddenly pitted against guys they knew in other post codes. 

I added, alleged former gang members like Jay Z and 50 cent can turn themselves around. If Jay-z can stand next to Obama, chat with Prince Charles, why shouldn't these guys be given a chance? Why should they be continually demonised?

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

I continued. I have been on the phone to my lawyers, we are talking to Michael Cheah, the grand counsel of IAC, he reports directly to Barry Diller, do you know who they are?

No.

Well, if you want that story, I will be happy to tell that and how we have made a hit from our indie movie FEDZ by finding our audience via social media, with no traditional press, radio, TV, and how we sold out Genesis Cinema and smashed the Vimeo server with VOD sales. 

To be honest I don't understand the fascination of middle aged white men,

with alleged gangs that don't exist. You have done very well? he said. But what we are looking for is ...

I cut into his sentence.

A story about a single mother, a gangster's moll living on an estate, with three kids by three different fathers, with a hungry bull dog. If you're not writing positive stories, good news, don't call me. We don't need you. We have our own media, our own audience.

OK He said.

HRH Prince Charles and Jay-z at Prince's Trust 

The point about this story is, he had no news and was obviously in the office trying to justify his wages and come up with something. He didn't get that something from me. 

However, it is so dangerous to have responsible journalists without a story, what will they publish the next day. Is that how those stereotypical stories get out there?

I started with a twitter conversation and I shall end with this twitter story, of course it is out of context, but echoes the message that young people do journalism. 

Oh yes they do, by creating their own new models, raising their own bars of excellence and eliminating and reducing the traditional models.

On twitter Chuck D said.

Chuck D@MrChuckD

I wish I could convey HipHop & Rap in 1977-1979 to y'all. Pictures, tapes, stories don't do the justice. NOTHING afterward compares to that era

Retweeted by TOP DOG AGENCY

My thoughts were like wow, look at what businesses and great products deals came from and are still coming from that industry. Like Jay Z's Samsung deal, I will include Beyonce?s surprise Christmas album as part of this, and the great music from a thousand other artists from 1977 to 2013

Later Chuck D said, and this is also out of context.

Chuck D@MrChuckD

Black youth NOT being taught Black culture & music history is a USA crime.Thus getting it from CORPlantation radio TV& records is criminal!

My reply was:

TOP DOG AGENCY ?@topdogagency

@MrChuckD I agree, however, I got all my news from PE. No, I got a good portion of my education from PE records. still do. #fightthepower

Take a look at the music promo

Public Enemy - Fight The Power

HipHop/Rap music have been the newspapers on the street, for years, that is where I got and still get my news, and business models. A lot of ish is spoken on these records, fuelled by competition and ego,

but, that is the same in any art form. 

However, there a lot of MC's/rappers who are great social commentators, great journalists, also, with social media, smart phones; instagram etc they are in control of their own propaganda/news, and it is online to be shared in a heartbeat.

We don't trust your traditional, hierarchical, unbalanced, racists media we got our own media.

Fight The Power Lyrics

Artist: Public Enemy (Buy Public Enemy CDs)

Album: Fear Of A Black Planet

Elvis was a hero to most

But he never meant ---- to me you see

Straight up racist that sucker was

Simple and plain

Mother---- him and John Wayne

Cause I'm Black and I'm proud

I'm ready and hyped plus I'm amped

Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps

Sample a look back you look and find

Nothing but rednecks for 400 years if you check

Don't worry be happy

Was a number one jam

Damn if I say it you can slap me right here

(Get it) lets get this party started right

Right on, c'mon

What we got to say

Power to the people no delay

To make everybody see

In order to fight the powers that be

(Fight the Power)

If you can find the right artists like PE, a lot of sense and education is also there, and the hiphop/rap industry still continues imparting knowledge...

Jay-Z. Zane Lowe. Part 1: Magna Carta Holy Grail

Kanye West. Zane Lowe. Part 1.

Eminem. Zane Lowe. Part 1.

But I need to post this too

My Philosophy | Dame Dash Says Good Business Means More Problems (Part 2)

This why we are using the same models that have worked in America for FEDZ MOVIE and why the soundtrack and the music of UK hiphop helped us use social media to GO 2 THE AUDIENCE.

Listen/Download FEDZ MOVIE Award winning OMA Best compilation mixtape

Watch http://www.fedzmovie.com  DVD/BLU-RAY/CD MUSIC SCORE AND FREE

MIXTAPE/DIGITAL DOWNLOAD COMBO RELEASED 2014

#TRUSTNOONE

David filmin Lennox' training in the Pocono Mountains before his fight with Tyson

This piece by Q has proven to be a hugely successful from a wide constituent. To read the piece Q responded to written by David  ( An indie videojournalist at viewmagazine.tv and one time Team Lennox Lewis' videojournalist)  go here. 

Young people don't do journalism. Oh yes they do but not your model

[Scroll down to the bottom for Q's response and the Twitter-debate this morning
Late mention VICE does journalism like the networks wouldn't know. I mean the risks]

The statement: young people don't do journalism is incendiary in itself, because it assumes all young people are the same. Urrchh!

However, attracting the young, and addressing ethnic groups in the UK is a perennially vexing questions for journalism makers.

Adding ethnicity to this debate complicates an already insoluble situation. You could separate a black Brit, an American and Ghanaian on as many issues conceivable. None of them is the same.

At a micro level on a small suburban street in South London with an extended Black British family, each family member is different from their sibling.

Sharing the same skin colour has provided a convenient and erroneous monocle that black people are the same. As they became inhabitants of Elizabethan Britain, yes in 1600, the concept of a black community - a oneness took shape - which was made popular in modern society.

So for this argument and it's still a facile generalisation, I'm going to be talking about 15-30 year olds, who might use terms such as "on road" and "brethren".  Many are black youngsters, but not exclusively so.

Even then I'm on a slippery slope, because the fact that ten or more people can be categorised by their association with Jamal Edward's SBTV, does still not make them a community.

They may not have bought The Voice newspaper -- a paper targeted at black people in the UK when it was in circulation. They may not have listened to the Today programme, or watched BBC Newsnight, but that doesn't mean they are no less interested in journalism.

WTH is Journalism?



The question becomes what is meant by journalism. It's a healthy debate for our times, as the institution known as journalism atrophies and dies of a thousand cuts.

The venerable journalist, Professor George Brock, from City University tackled this very question in an address to students.

We can't talk about journalism without understanding what it means and going back to its source. This is a crucial lesson for anyone seeking to add to the debate. Thankfully, several accessible texts exists, such as Andrew Marr's My Trade and Bock's recent book: Does journalism have a future reviewed by another stalwart of journalism, Nicholas Lemann.

Whatever journalism was and still is in the pursuit of fact or truth is not denied. Read the Elements of Journalism, but the digital age has revealed the sharpest of schisms. In Simon Blackburn's Truth, the history of "fact" is contestable. It still can be and is the reason why we have a jury system to determine who is telling the truth.

In Journalism it would take Daniel Defoe in the 17th Century to be one of the first writers to aspire to verify and validate events - this was fact-checking in its nascent form.

While many experts attest journalism is in trouble, and some blame the business model, the reality (dangerous word) is more obvious. Journalism, broadcast journalism in particular, as an export of a universal truism form does not hold.

Fact, as a mathematical model is more stable. The square root of 4=2. In the social sciences of journalism a man weighing 145 pounds is fact, based on evidence. Whether he is described as heavy or light becomes culturally-bound.

The biggest myth that journalism ( the establishment) peddled to scores of journalism students, particularly in the analogue age was how journalism consisted of exclusively fact-based reportage and was immutable.

Before the arrival of digital it was a FACT as many journalists would tell you that no one else other than a professionally trained journalist could do journalism.  But in 1994, myself and 29 others did something called videojournalism.

Revolution is not videojournalism from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

In my PhD research,  one of the UK's most respected journalism executives Stewart Purvis states: "Until Channel One came along the myth was we (professionally) trained journalists said no one else could do journalism, but Channel One shattered that myth".

Saying journalism is fact is the same as saying a photo never lies, and if you think that then you need to read Barthes.

US academic Michael Schudson argues that journalism is a social construct. It is in effect story telling, but a form of storytelling that is dependent on a host of variables: objectivity, impartiality, balance, truth....and Schudson's factors such as culture, society and literary values.

What we often categorise as fact in social science e.g. journalism boils down to the homogeneity of group thinking within that culturally same group. Before I could work for the BBC I had to tacitly demonstrate that I thought the same as the journalists I would join in my interviews. I did.

Don't misunderstand me. I am not knocking journalism. But the lid has come off and we need to be more transparent at its strengths and limitations. If you consider yourself decent, law abiding and are cuturally and societally- sensitive, then you have the certain values that strengthen you as a journalist.




Now, the sort of journalism that our 18-30s are interested in becomes apparent. It must be something that is attuned to their culture, society and literary values.

The Chancellor's budget speech dealing with structural deficit may have little value. DJ Spooney's profit margins and how much tax he's paying is the dog's b****cks.

Back in the early 90s Janet Street Porter's Reportage, which I was a part of as a reporter tackled what the 18-30s wanted head-on. We were the storytellers talking to our target audience.

BBC Reportage from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

Today, Journalism's universality is crumbling. BTW it's not just journalism. Any grand theory about anything is crumbling ( See Lyotard).

Young people do journalism, but a journalism they know. In a socially mediated digital age, the evidence is there to show that you can produce powerful stories -- journalism that aspires to be fact based and objective, but it requires a shift from the hegemonic-laden, A, B, C1 market-orientated approach adopted by the institutions.


Socially mediated 'ournalism [ CORRECT]
Back in 1992, I co-hosted a show on the BBC called Black London where I met a young entrepreneur called Q. Q had produced a book called Dead Meat that was culture personified. Its language was teutonic, A UK Wired years before the US smash hit show.

Another book Yardies delved into a world so alien to the police that Scotland Yard requested its officers read the book. It was a fictional script so close to the bone of the notorious Yardie gangs, which were said to have become a feature of the British crime scene.

Several years later Q was telling visual stories from his prescient examination of UK society. His film Fedz may be fiction, but Q knows a thing about how his target group ticks.   You don't need to use the socially-loaded word "journalism", but Q's comprehension of stories reminds me of something Scorsese said.



For Scorsese fictional films was based on interpretation whilst documentary was about facts, but he could move effortlessly between the two. Another filmmaker Paul Greengrass of Bourne Identity fame is the same. He is a documentary maker who brought his aesthetic to fictional film.

In the 1930s one of the the most important russian filmmakers Vertov was greeted by his critics with the understanding that whilst Hollywood created cinema, Vertov detected it.

I understand this statement well as a videojournalist.  I can look at an event and apply a factually news- based style or one that is cinema driven, based on Vertov's understanding and is still aspires to be factually true.

When I worked with young videojournalists from Annahar newspaper in Lebanon, which wanted to attract younger audiences we were able to distinguish between the traditional model of journalism and that of the social-media age.

Q is a storyteller whom I wager could be the 21st century model of the story teller-ournalism.

Young people do journalism but one that is predicated on their cultural and social values. Journalism's high-minded attitude that it has to inform us may be somewhat misplaced in the social world of digital.


PHOTOS

• David with fellow juror Becky Anderson of CNN at the CNN party in Madrid
• David being interviewed by Christiana Amanpour
• David in Cairo on the eve of an Arab Media Summit where he was speaking about new journalism
• David as an Associate Producer at ABC News in South Africa in the 90s.

David Dunkley Gyimah has been a journalist for 25 years working for the likes of Newsnight, Channel 4 News and ABC News. He was a freelance journalist based in South Africa between 1992-94 for the World Service. He was one of the UK's first videojournalists. In 2002 he was Lennox Lewis videojournalist as Lewis fought for the Heavyweight championship with Tyson. He completes his PhD into news and its future in 2014. He is behind the award winning site www.viewmagazine.tv . This year he is the chair of jurors for the RTS Awards in innovation in broadcast journalism.

So this morning Q - a social Network mover and shaker responded from seeing a twitter debate. This is his response and deserves a good read

Viewmagazine.tv - The New Cinema Videojournalism of 2014: a different type of media - cinema comes home

Viewmgazine had been redesigned.

And David is really excited to bring you the new layout and  approach it's taking in 2014. This will  combine a return to my core roots of filmmaking, but bridging it with the innovations of cinema and social from the results of my six year research.

Whilst the carousel effect is no by new, we hope your like the way viewmagazine.tv has laid out its themes and the design.

Carousel 1 
Features the big theme of 2014. Cinema is coming home. It was always the intention of some of the brightest minds to bring you the zenith of storytelling e.g. journalism, through cinema, but the institutions fudged it.

They did so for various reasons, but in 2014, viewmagazine.tv and David through his work will explain the approach. Elements of this led to awards in the past. e.g. Knight Batten and Videojournalism and this year is also partly responsible for me being made chair of the UK's highest television awards in the category of innovative journalism.

Carousel 2This shows one of the biggest stories that was started late 2013 profiling some of the most courageous young people in Syria who supply stories to the international networks. Today, when I heard about the death of seventeen-year old Molhem Barakat, like many I was deeply sad and also angry [see his pictures here].

Sad that a promising photojo should lose his life and angry that whilst many are paying homage to him, there's a debate about risk assessments that is happening and should. A couple of weeks ago I attended a BBC event about safety. One of the popular news sites in the UK is looking to run that story.

The group I met near the Turkey-Syria border ttake incredible risks and they eloquently lay out the issues that we, outside of the war take for granted.

Take this pic above. A young videojournalist is taking a photograph of a camera, but there is a deep history behind this camera. Up close, the next shot shows the scars of the camera.

The camera belongs to the brother of the videojournalist taking the pic. The brother has been abducted by either the free Syrian army or government forces. But on the cameras chip may be clues to this mystery. The scars on the camera come from an explosion.


Carousel 3

Back in London, and the absurdity of segue way from war into the prosaic of music. One evening I was invited into a house of a friend of a friend. If you've heard of living room restaurants or underground restaurants, this is the underground gig.

But there is one significant difference, the host is an Ivor Novella award-winning singer/ song writer. Her friends e.g. Heidi Vogel,  like her fill out huge venues, but they're going local and intimate. Why?



The reason why this is significant and will have a meaningful effect in 2014 is because of what Beyonce did a couple of weeks ago. Friends, fan base, call it what you want, but by going intimate with your friends you raise social to a cool new meaning.

And in the UK, South London, the home of cool, this social matrix will revolutionise the music industry. As one friend, Q put it, why does Jay-z come to London all the time and quote Magna Carta in his records?

When Prince Charles met Prince Jay-z

Carousel 4

We are Social. Some months back I attended a BBC social meeting. Anyone who was anyone in the world of Social was there. Look carefully and you might just spot me.

But here's the question, why is it that most journalists don't have as many socialees as non journo types. OK, whilst some journos have huge followers, I am making the point that there;s something inherent in appreciating social networks that most journos need to unlearn.

Journalism is hierarchical, Social media isn't in that naked way, though by default the share acquires social power. I'll explain more of this in several projects I'm involved in. One of which is working with one of the UK's leading comedy houses to find out what makes different cultures laugh.

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This is the film that started it, back in 2005. The first UK newspaper videojournalists, who I trained and then turned this into a film. Since then, the same methodology has been extended to Egypt, Lebanon, Chicago, China, South Africa and the Financial Times UK.

So what have I learned and what can you learn from the interviews I have conducted?

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I dug this picture up from back-in-the-day. +ILICCO ELIA one of the UK's leading mobile technologists said recently "come back 2007". I took it to mean in 2007, as the industry was in stasis, people like +ILICCO ELIA were turning it upside down. I shot this below when he was at Reuters.

They pushed hard with their ideas, but institutions, Foucault stated in one of his philosophical musings that big business has a way of bending creativity to suit its own needs. He called it discursive formations.

In 2007, I had strong ideas myself and was invited to speak to the ONA about videojournalism. Those pictures were beamed to Time Square.

Seven years later my exhuberance has not diminished, but I am bound by a different type of curiosity. If I thought I knew what I did then the way I do now, my future would be different. In 2014, my PhD draws together. Six years of intense research comes not just from contemporary knowledge, but an understanding of the past.

Wow! One of the biggest revelations was to learn that what we're going through now is akin to what our grandparents went through in 1920. Technology was on the verge of breaking in a big way. It was a carnival of ideas.

If anything between the period 1930-90 could be argued as the destructive in terms of creativity. It's the period when the artisans give way to convention. When the suits came to dominate creativity through structure and finance.

I'll post more shortly, explaining other new structures to viewmagazine.tv