Perugia's inimitable journalism festival - Why you need to be there

Perugia - tucked in the clouds

Just what is it that has made a journalism festival tucked away between Rome and Florence, situated on a hilltop, a must-go-to festival?

Perugia's cultural resonance - art, paintings, and architecture - is explicit on arrival. The town appears as an interconnected canvas bridging a kaleidoscope of frescos.  Unsurprising when you read its history.

To the odd news hound, this rustic town is where a contemporary mystery has brought into sharp focus the legal systems of the US and Italy. That is the unsolved murder of British student Meredith Kercher.

On my way to Perugia, after a 2-hour plane journey from Stanstead, I share a taxi with two behemoth speakers, Fusion's Felix Salmon and Joanna Geary, head of news Twitter UK.

Felix suggests if you're going to stage a festival, the more the location is as far removed from a city, the better. Attendants become absorbed in the area, with little 'city-like' external distractions. 

David presenting at SXSW

Utah, where Sundance stages its film festival, conjures up images of canyons and dust devils; SXSW where I have spoken transforms Austin, Texas, into one giant tech jamboree, and Perugia?

Perugia, if you love retreats, is an idyllic busman's holiday. It's compact, facilitating active mingling between delegates, and the speakers and the audience.   

In a relatively short space of time, the festival's indomitable driving force Christopher and Francesca ( and their staff)  have created a phenomenon. 

It's intriguing to know how the idea came about and then sold to the town, because it is now a cultural event with shops, restaurants and the tourism center playing their part. 

Notwithstanding the influx of international journalists, students and free-to-attend sessions for the public, in the short space I was there, it was obvious Perugia is also a cultural tourism hot spot.

Coaches arrive and offload swathes of tourists; yesterday was labour day and the evening was capped with a pop concert.

Videojournalism talk
Scores of sessions addressing a wide range of journalism topics makes Perugia's event a physical wikipedia.  My talk was one of the earliest presentations and because of that I had little idea how many people would attend. It was billed as New Narratives in Videojournalism - a title designed to provoke curiosity.

Fortunately, we had a good turn out. I'm thankful to @journalismfestival for all their hard work and all those who spent their time listening and contributing to the debate. 

I made this a day later to add further context cinema journalism.




Though the listing shows Marwan and I as presenters, Marwan graciously allowed me the bulk of the time to present my thesis. He would be at the heart of a presentation the following day giving inside expertise on Syria. 

The heart of my talk, which is an element of my PhD thesis is that the 60-year old TV/Video news model is not quite up to the job for reporting various events in the 21st century. 

Newspapers have reformed, and adjusted to the times. In the 60s faced with the arrival of television, print journalism adopted a range of tropes. It couldn't compete with the immediacy of television news, so contextual and commentary reportage became a dominant part of its journalism.

Language evolves, as societies and cultures grow.

Amazingly, television news' lingua franca has not changed very much. These aren't my words, but that of  industry leaders I interviewed during my research, such as Deborah Turness, one of the world's most powerful news executives

.  

Play the promo to hear what industry leaders say about news' story form.



My presentation spoke about the methodology of my research. I have worked in the TV News and Radio  since 1990 and on the net since 1998.




Hence, I used my own journey as a research thread called autoethnography / reflective practitioner. I have been with a slew of organisations that challenged journalism styles e.g. Channel 4 News, BBC Newsight and BBC Reportage. Below, I'm reporting from South Africa's landmark elections in 1994.

Reporting from South Africa between 1992-1994

But I also used ethnography, that is studying in-depth two communities: Britain's first videojournalists and some of the world's best videojournalists.  This was then critiqued using expert opinion; some of those figures seen in the trailer, as well as using a wide array of literature.

Cinema journalism, but not as you know it - perhaps

Cinema, the new language of news

The essence of my talk was that cinema, not cinematic, but cinema was enriching journalism when used by key news makers. It doesn't replace current narrative journalism forms, but evidence shows the audience are drawn to it.

Cinema, I explained was first coined to mean factual constructions of events. It was Hollywood that hijacked the term to denote fiction. But even in its modern parlance, fictional film tropes and cues used ethically can enrich a film, while still retaining its journalism.

I showed one of several examples I researched, which Journalism.co.uk included in their report of the event. Often experts state the difference between newspaper videojournalism and Television is how newspapers have co-opted the cinema verite approach.

I disagree. This may appear so because a large number of newspaper videojournalists use cinema verite, but in principle this division is an artificial one. 

I helped set up and run the UK's Press Association's videojournalism programme and often the reason why newspapers did not voice their reports was that they were self-conscious of their own voice. 

Former Washington Post videojournalist Travis Fox's piece, you'll find in the Journalism.co.uk report, is a voiced piece. Something more interesting is going on which explores the complexities of cinema.

Complexities because unlike television news' language, cinema, as the scores of books, 8000 plus in English, show cinema is difficult to define, but you know it when you see it.

Or should that be, my research with audiences demonstrates they can tell the difference between cinema fact and cinema fiction. 

Cinema does not also exclusively imply linear narrative. It can also reference spatial story forms, which is why the web and html is a suitable medium to revive cinema's early incarnation.

This image below shows on the left a zoetrope from the 19th century, while on the right, the cube, my spatial cinema narrative on graduates being recruited the CIA

Similarly, the Outernet, which was displayed on Apple's site for several years is also an indication of where we're going.

The recording of our presentation will be online soon, so you can see what you make of the rhetorical arguments I pose.

But there are wider significant points. Cinema is agnostic to platforms and linear forms, so whether you're a data journalist or social media boffin truly understanding what cinema can do, is worth exploring. 

However, if, as my research shows cinema is a tour de force and the use of 'cinema' here alludes to 21st century styles, then the way we teach journalism generally and videojournalism in particular requires attention.

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David Dunkley Gyimah is a senior lecturer at the University of Westminster, artist-in-residence at London's Southbank Centre and videojournalist and coder. He is next speaking at the British Film Institutes Media Conference 

New Narratives in videojournalism

On Wednesday I present New Narratives in Videojournalism at the International Journalism Festival. This morning I completed the promo which I made to accompany the talk.



It's taken me 6 years to research it and I believe it offers a comprehensive degree to what's happening to the way we tell stories around the world.

The arrows signify the areas I travelled to; the larger the arrow, the greater the region. So in Europe there were several countries I researched.

The actual 360 page thesis is my PhD submission and so there are a number of findings that build upon what you might know or are new.

After the talk I'll post some more details

Videojournalism, past, present and the future, and now the real news... (My 2000th post). The president of the....

This is my 2000th post since I started blogging properly since 2005 - a milestone of sorts, and so I wanted to share a wrap.

In television jargon a wrap is a story that extracts a point from the beginning to emphasis an overall point. It can also signal the end of a show.

Last week, in bringing the Masters in Journalism online module to a close, I took my students  to Channel 4 News, one of the most seminal newsrooms you'll find anywhere.

I worked for almost five years as a freelance producer and videojournalists at Channel 4, at times producing the indefatigable Jon Snow.

Jon to a US audience would be the equivalent of a Peter Jennings. Smooth, unruffled, old skool and new mixed together, and much admired (and disliked by some, ah well). 

Jennings is someone I have met too when he toured the ABC Newsroom in South Africa. He was much taller than I imagined.

I was a producer for ABC News during South Africa's epoch first all-race elections.  

All this paints a picture of sorts of the journey I have had in news. In spite of the number of natural and artificial barriers, journalism morphs from being an occupation into a lifestyle. You live news, you see news.

I was like any other producer in news- the people who make it happen, but whose credits lay under the radar.

When television news adopted cinema positions in the 1950s, the producer role was one too that was adopted. However the reality has been that it does not have the same visibility as producers in cinema - a small point, which has no consequence to this post.

News according to Richard Sandbrook is one of those versatile disciplines which provides knowledge for other careers. What it teaches you I add quickens the mind,  elevates the power of judgement and gives you a window on the spectrum of human conditions e.g. grief, malice, sloth etc.

Conversely, traditional news also sets up a picket fence adjudging what is acceptable  and what is not. To the students of Westminster University, Snow's conversation with them may resonate for a while. They are within a golden age of news,  he said, a rebirth, bringing to mind Neo and his matrix-pod moment.

I could not agree more, but what is this rebirth  and how does that translate into anything meaningful?

Data journalism, social networking, coding, software compliance across AE, Indesign and the lot. And videojournalism.

They all matter in this golden age of share. But to share, you need something to share, and videojournalism is proving to be a much sought after commodity.  Read Peter Preston's piece on the challenges the Telegraph is facing with its web strategy and its 'US' editor being at the helm of a British institution, and the schisms in journalism become evident.

Incidently, if you're a Telegraph reader, you're likely to have £100,000 tucked away in the bank, so it's small wonder , the web is not their buzfeed. 

But there's something profoundly at fault with the present model of videojournalism and its custodians, the power brokers, who framed what journalism was, or is.

And herein lies my wrap. The something that is happening in journalism ignores a fundamental theme to characterise its approach and what it offers.

We hold the belief, that journalism is bound by set values, framed by unyielding parameters, practiced by a professional class with their codes.

That's true, and was during its inception, but journalism is a construct. I repeat journalism is a construct. Its values, its legacy comes from men and women, often self-appointed, who debate and share, at that moment and time common understandings, until they're threatened by another professional class. 

Note I said professional class.  This new age of journalism seeks to adhere to rules, many of which need a reboot, but their legacy is so entrenched, we believe them to be immutable laws.

One of those journalism tools is videojournalism. A practice I have come to know and love for what it does. Videojournalism was supposed to be one of the disruptors, to break open a new dawn, to revolutionise the manner in which we create journalism.

But it's rarely happened. The idea that you can shoot and report your own film, is not videojournalism or a radical departure from news. Ask any self shooting camera man or woman who operated in the 1980s.

The philosophy of this new journalism form was the ability to undo the binary simplification of television journalism. In TV if its not black it;s white - one of the most dangerous premises for judging. The texture of this new journalism reportage revealed something far more discursive and challenging.

Oh and by the way, reporters actually with their gear did try this. This image of ITN John Suchet in the 1980s epitomises the videojournalist ( from my PhD research) and don't be fooled by the big camera. 

 In the 1970s Ken Richter produced the smallest 16mm camera that a journalist could shoot with

So what is videojournalism ( not in an academic way) and why is it so deeply relevant that you know what it is and how it functions?

Gina Deeming tweeted this recently

I responded that the conscientious teacher points you to look, but resists telling you what to see.

That's been my mantra with our Masters cohorts and is the subject of my presentation at the International Festival of Journalism opening up a new, overlooked, ignored journalism that is 21st century.

I presented a weakened argument at SXSW in comparison to my present performance lecture. The reviews were largely favourable from  global patriot ,  technology tell and austin bits and atom.

In the lecture room of tomorrow, the sharing zone for future masters students, new fundamentally different pedagogy should align with new social journalism practices.

The ... And now the news, is not just about reform in the way we look at the creation and outcome of stories, but how our cultures, our individualism plays a bigger role.

It couldn't before because journalism as western model, was practiced by a homogeneously same culture, and colour set. 

Remember when news practised parachute journalism, or that the attitude to journalists who were not of the same cultural pool was akin to Farage shouting "bloody foreigners"

In the West in the 1960s/70s, the UK was predominately white. In the Ghana of the 1960s, Ghanaians were influenced by their own values of what made them Ghana, in spite of a legacy of British influence.

The views of say a Ghanaian therefore play little role in the understanding of journalism in another culture. 

It's a related reason why, often on the tech circuit of high flyers the speakers tend to emerge from a particular cultural milleu. Does this matter? 

When we speak of social news and its impact, in the West we're only now coming around to a different idea of news. But as a baffled Ghanaian student of mine, Daniel Kofi, from 8 years ago recounts, news should be something else, than what it is at present- social news.



Well founded sociological research tools, such as semiotics or even cognitivism make no allowance for the culture, race and beliefs of the storyteller. How could they ? 

Both purport to be scientific models to evaluate research, so beliefs and thoughts are not permitted to be part of the person's story form.

News companies that seek to simplify stories are intellectually ill- equipped with the tools to understand  that a take on a story may be influenced by the fact I grew up in Ghana. but can still be truthful.

That wonderful moment when the late BBC journo Komlu takes his shirt of to decree his Ghanaianesss is an example of this.



Only now, through social news are we beginning to understand that who you are, where you're from, your likes, dislikes can be collated to give meaning to readers about you.

We've come a long way from  the traditional journalism that was apt for its time, but in the transition to a new technological flattened culture, we're still perpetuating beliefs that ill-suit the potential of story telling.

That's what I will be sharing in Perugia at the journalism festival. Hope to see you there.

The reality of London Live - how to launch a station in London

And then it came to pass. London's newest TV station was launched writes former Newsnight and Channel 4 Producer David Dunkley Gyimah.

Here's the catch 22. If you're launching a station you have to big it up. You need eyeballs on your product to make advertisers open their purses.  

Trouble is in that traditionally English sporting tradition of "knock- the- TV- of- its- peg", you run the risk of creating expectations so high that unless you're shooting stardust from the TV it's not going to cut it.

It's a delicate win-win.

Success of a kind though can be measured by the fact the station launched. I watched the opening and it reminded me of youth show BBC Reportage and the Mirror's Live TV.

That's not a criticism but a semiotic reflection of the product, as seen by a critic who watches and analyses television. I chair the jury for the RTS News Innovation awards this year and I used to work on Reportage.

Julian Raesmith commenting on BBC Radio 4 about LondonLive compared it with Network 7 with its cool speak and talking at the audience, er somewhat patronisingly. 

Mark Lawson was complimentary in sections for his piece in the Guardian, praising the diversity of the panel: three women and no white metropolis male.

Ellen E Jones of the Independent gave LondonLive a resounding thumbs up. However, the Independent is also owned by Evgeny Lebedev, who also owns LondonLive. Jones says: 

Londoners often wistfully observe that even with so much culture on the doorstep, they never seem to find time to be a part of it. Well now, with London Live delivering all the good stuff direct to your living rooms, there really is no excuse

The ghost of Network 7

picture Saj Idranizovic

Network 7 in the 1980s was an influential programme for a generation of youth. It launched the careers of several uber slick TV people, at a time when, do you remember Davina McCall's late night dating show "God's Gift" and cooking show "Get Stuffed"?

Honestly, I used to stay up to watch this after a night in the student union  (Leicester) watching Terrence Trent D'arby and some red haired bloke daftly calling himself Simply Red.

After the launch party
The dynamics at LondonLive look interesting. Having been involved in the first 24-hour station, 20 years ago, here's what's going on behind the glam.

You've launched. Whehey!

The reality is now, keep going. However, having worked up to the launch with rehearsals upon rehearsals you mentally begin to feel tired.  You don't have a BBC staff quota so it's still all hands on deck.

Management are in celebratory mood. Nothing has fallen of air. Pitches will be devised for new advertisers and sponsors and the metrics from viewing habits will be combed over.

The approach to the 18-30 year olds needs to work. However because LondonLive is new and they have a mixed constituency: experienced managers, youthful staff, and the suits, at some point conflicts arise. 

As one manager said of Channel One's videojournalists, we created prima donnas. It's natural. Londonlive is still finding its way and is experimenting. But as soon as the younger staff become confident, what works with 18-35 year olds - their target audience - begins to rub against what a late 40-something manager says.

This is the time to hold your nerve and build alliances. When it's not working, it's usually because the audience are getting used to the grammar. All TV station's go through this e.g. BBC. 

If you want to create new TV, don't employ TV people who've come through the system is the radical thought. This thinking is more prevalent in cinema. Tarantino, Soderburgh, Lee, Fincher came at cinema from the side with a vengeance. They were not industry bods.

London's special TV
London  is such a diverse community, that it almost requires a different metric to measure audiences. 24-hour TV is what is known in the industry as a "dip-in service".

Audiences will rarely stay for a long sitting. For the networks, strategic devices like tent-pole programming come into effect.

This is where you create an exemplary programme e.g. The Voice and you dovetail it with two lesser well known programmes. The effect is a spill over from the tent pole programme before a portion of the audience leaves.

In the mid 2000s when Al Jazeera launched, its lead creative designer used my site Viewmagazine.tv to create their website. Last week one of the cleverest former BBC's techs Erik Huggers, now the president of Oncue spoke about the primacy of the web to develop programming. I agree.

What's the next generation of web that will pull in the upwardly mobile? Because the perennial problem of 18-35s sitting down to watch TV will not go away.

So far, with flat design all the trend, Londonlive is yet to use the net as a strategic portal.

But it's very early days. Television is a bummer. News drains resources and just when you get better, other networks are breathing over you e.g. Vice - a network rather than a London-based network. 

London's new station will provide lots of intelligence for how to launch a station, but don't expect to read about anything negative in the press. Jeremy Hunt who launched the local TV programming will be watching with interest. If it works, it debunks all the intel that local TV in the UK can't replicate the US model. Let's wait and see.

End+

Post script added September 2014. 
As I write this additional texts, London Live is struggling financially and from a lack of viewers. Its appeal to the commission to change its status, so it could ditch its London content was rejected. In all likelihood, the station will either down size or fold within three years. The group brought this upon themself. Rather than solicit advice from executives behind Channel One which launched London's first 24 hour station in 1994, they chose to go it alone believing they knew something many TV executives do not.

David will be presenting at the international journalism festival (april 30th 2014) on producing a radically different approach to 21st century news story forms from his 6-year-PhD research. (See what Apple say)

International Journalism Festival: David Dunkley Gyimah presentation of future of videijournalism

How do you update a 60-year-old television news story form, news professionals refer to as the news package? If we acknowledge language evolves over time and video journalism is a form of language, how has video journalism evolved?

In his 6-year global doctorate research, International award winning video journalist David Dunkley Gyimah  unveils his findings that show what audiences are appreciating and exemplar video journalists are producing.

In 2005, before Youtube David showed how embedded video within the body of an article was a game changer online. This and his work in viewmagazine.tv won him the Knight Batten Award for Innovation in Journalism.

In his latest work he focuses on how in a digital age awash with video, experts are making their products distinguishable from others and concludes by challenging current conventional thinking about what constitutes videojournalism.  

David Dunkley Gyimah is a senior lecturer at the University of Westminster. He has previously worked for BBC Newsnight, Channel 4 News and ABC News South Africa. He was one of the UK's first videojournalists. This year he was the chair of jurors for the RTS innovative news category. He completes his PhD at UCD this year. He is presents at the International Journalism Festival. 

Standing on the shoulders of giants rewriting Television News - a moving story

We stand on the shoulders of giants. In this case Ken Mallor with a microphone standing outside No 10 Downing street. It is the golden age of the crew.


In the age of plenty, where everyone is an expert, it's often difficult to separate spectrums of tacit knowledge, opinion and expert knowledge.

That is unless you come across a giant like Ken, who has lived through the arguments regularly wheeled out on the net when discussing television news.

For instance, as uber thinker Jeff Jarvis asks recently in a post, what's the point of the television stand-up?  This may seem like a puerile question to those who believe there is an obvious answer.  

Yet, if you've not worked, studied or critiqued the form professionally e.g. Jarvis, what you might end up is transient knowledge,  anecdotes and second hand material. 

Not Ken, and his is a touching story I'd like to share. 

You know Television - How?

Ken knows television, just as Bo knows football (famous 1980s ad). Ken started with ITN in the 1960s as a soundman, and armed with a stills camera took countless photos of that era.

Now at this point you're likely to think what the 1960s has to do with modern digital TV and the world. Well, everything.

Mallor saw how TV evolved. He even remembers how a miffed reporter tired of getting his stand-ups/ PTC chopped  because ITN had ran out of time, decided to put the stand-ups in the middle.

The stand-up, by the way, was television's answer to taking on cinema. TV and cinema could both make extraordinary films, but hey, television could create "live".

Reportage ITV's London Tonight from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.
I'm reporting for ITV's London Tonight in the 1999s, trying to add something to the Stand-up

In some of the first presidential elections filmed in the US in the 1950s, and the coronation of the HRH in the UK, the presence of a live reporter was one in the jacksy for TV.

At ITN, the bridge was born. The networks could no longer cut out the reporter. If anything following the inverted pyramid model of newspapers, the editors would still cut 15 seconds of the end of the report, but the reporter was safe.

How do you know what you know about TV? Many of us read books, lots of them. But the problem with books is you can't interrogate the author, but then you find a living book like Ken.

Five years ago I put a note in the UK industry magazine belonging to BECTU. Ken Mallor answered my email.

He knew TV because he was there and over the five years has selflessly fed me with information that has startled and shocked me.

I was so enamoured with Ken, his pictures he sent me, the information he has retained; he is a young 80-something year old, that I mentioned in passing that he had a book in him.

A year ago, he sent me a forward for a book, he was about to publish, and in that forward was a thank you to David Dunkley Gyimah - me. Why? I shook my head in disbelief.

Somehow I was one of the catalysts to him publishing. I was flabbergasted.

This morning Ken emailed to ask if he could send me a copy, and if I wanted it sighed. Yes bloody please.

I don't deserve the mention. It was ken's selflessness that has got me to the last mile of a PhD which questions the style, form and existence of TV. 

David with nAlbert Maysles

I have been hugely lucky Ken and several others more than 100 experts have contributed to this thesis, such as the original team behind cinema verite. It is their words on display, which I have threaded into hopefully a coherent narrative.

In the thesis there is the mother of all howlers which turns common knowledge over so much, that scores of articles will have to be rewritten.

What a bloke Ken is. If you thought the idea of social was born with web 2.0, Ken shows it was alive and well and for many characteristics like this, and to him, I salute Ken.

I receive the book this week. Wow!

End
Yesterday's post, as London gets ready to launch its second 24-hour network, I provide an insight into what could go wrong and right, based on working for London's 1st 24-hour network.

Blog author David Dunkley Gyimah, as a videojournalist and occasional newsreader at Channel One. Videojournalism was more than the sum of news' individual productions

David Dunkley Gyimah is a senior lecturer at the University of Westminster. He is the recipient of International awards in videojournalism and the Knight Batten for innovation in journalism for his work on viewmagazine.tv. This year he was the chair of jurors for the RTS innovative news category. He completes his PhD at UCD this year. He is next presenting at the International Festival of Journalism inPerugia next month. 

How to launch a 24-hour station live in London - an expert editorial

London Live, which launches next week, will be a success writes former Newsnight and Channel 4 Producer, and Knight Batten Winner David Dunkley Gyimah

David will be presenting at the international journalism festival (april 30th 2014) on producing a radically different approach to 21st century news story forms from his 6-year-PhD research. (See what Apple say)

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Success for Londonlive however depends on how you measure success. At the very least the channel will introduce us to the next generation of TV stars and journalists, who can expect to be poached by the networks. Whether it will make good on its estimates of returns, at £25m, as highlighted in Greenslade’s Guardian article is a difficult one.

The degrees of excitement and mix of fear is palpable as the station nears its last countdown.  Some twenty years ago this November, 30 young journalists, including myself, experienced similar excitement. The article above from 1994 reads:

"150 people will have worked themselves up to that pitch of excitement which comes with  new TV channel Launch."

We were part of a newly launched station called Channel One, ironically owned by the Evening Standard, though in 1994 it was under different management then. Today, some of those Channel One’s graduates are household names or  respected industry  figures e.g. Chris Hollins on BBC Watchdog.

Channel One launched with the drums rolling to a newly acquired discipline called Videojournalism heralding a new beginning in storytelling. Before then there had been no documentation of videojournalism as self-shooting/storytellers in the UK, until an advertisement appeared in the Guardian in November 1993.

From the euphoria of its launch, to the hard reality of the keeping the dynamism afloat, Channel One lasted four years. Its little known legacy to videojournalism, multiskilling and trying to rewrite the rules of news hides a rich pedagogical history of successes and failures.

If you knew, in hindsight how to launch a 24-hour London station, would you not want to know how it ticked with Londoners?

Launching a 24-hour Network in London

The similarities between Channel One and LondonLive are evident, if not unfair. In my research I make no direct comparison. How could I? So it would be unwise to rely on trend or comparative analysis to compare the two. They are entirely different animals – in many ways, but share attributes.

For instance, Channel One started of London-based, LondonLive is based in London. Both recruited young media workers with diverse backgrounds. 

Channel One sought to rely on cross-pollination of broadcast and print journalism, which Londonlive sees as being its strong suit, and whilst LondonLive looks to spend 14m a year, Channel One, according to its Managing Director Julian Aston, spent 12m a year.

Channel One was spending a £1m a month. When you break down £12m, it can only buy you so much, even though Channel One was instrumental in driving down costs. Documentary forms normally costing £20, 000 were slashed to £5000 and less. 

With that kind of squeaky-tight budget, being innovative comes with the purse strings.  A reality check, however is how Channel One and LondonLive inhabit different social, technological and cultural ecologies.

STORIED Videojournalism, Past, Present and the Future from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

Channel One launched during the nascent period of the Internet, and a burgeoning cable system that promised so much but never delivered.

Londonlive launches in the ferociously competitive world of digital, where  anyone’s a publisher, and young audiences have no allegiance to a brand, for brand sake. In digital, hyperlocal outfits and newspaper groups have proved they can amass viewers with the appropriate strategy. 

Premium information, which is free and readily sharable, as the Guardian explained its strategy at its Media Summit 2014 appears to be the name of the game, thus far. Green shoots indicating audiences will buy content appear to be breaking ground.

Videojournalism appeared to be the panacea for Channel One, and similarly has been lauded by LondonLive. The research I have conducted illustrates an interesting phenomenon regarding what constitutes videojournalism. 

A person with a camera who shoots and reports? Not really, there exist a matrix of issues that frame the form and hence, importantly, what you get from videojournalism. Otherwise, there is little distinction between one-man bands and videojournalism, and hence the final product.

In 2005 and 2006, when I was asked if I could help launch the Press Association’s Videojournalism programme, one of the hurdles to overcome was to reboot videojournalism from its predictable offerings. 

In my research I interviewed scores of newspaper videojournalists to uncover what worked and what didn’t. Then I took that study globally, and some interesting patterns emerged.

Like, Greenslade and I would like to see LondonLive succeed. The ingredients, the environment, the wherewithal exist. But for me the truly interesting apsect is whether LondonLive will kickstart the next TV evolution by producing a new form of television, or television news for that matter, or deliver credible programmes in the television we all know.

Presenting the new language of videojournalism at the International Festival of Journalism

Television teaches its audiences the grammar they need to decode ad enjoy programmes. Play it safe in a competitive environment and you’ll win audiences, but become indistinguishable in brand identity.  Opt for innovation and you have to ask the question, what’s your staying power?  

 Firstly, the audience needs time to understand what you’re doing, and TV like the premier league gives it managers too little time to show how bold they can be. Secondly, if you are looking to reinvent the wheel, how do you maintain this? 

Television, like newspapers, breed spoilers and copycats. If you're successful, the other side raises the stakes by pouring in more money into their venture (Sky vs BBC). Or otherwise stealing the talent team. That's the threat LondonLive faces. £14m a year soon become £24m to safeguard ideas. It's a poker game you win by looking nonchalant with your chips.

Television, according to a former Channel One producer Julian Phillips, who became a BBC executive, requires teams of innovative collaborators to continually test ideas and probe for distinctiveness. 

Greenslade, who contributed to an article on Channel One two decades ago points to a discursive behaviour pattern amongst Londoners, why local television doesn’t work. 

Kelvin Mackenzie put put it another way saying: 

"A house fire in Peckham is of no interest to people in Ealing. In fact they would be secretly pleased".

Unlike the US, where cable and independent programme making is a billion dollar industry, with big profits at stake, in London that market place is yet to break.

Londonlive however could prove everyone wrong.

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Getting into your pocket - Changing media Summit @Guardian

Comments from the session of the Guardian Media Summit. - the memorable bits

We want your money. But we're having a pretty damn hard time deciding how to do that.

We've tried web ads. You're all ignoring us.

We're going after you via moble, but we know it's not working, as well as it should. 

 But you don't like it when I ping you ads everyday cuz you visited Amazon. Wait a minute actually Amazon's ok cuz you can inform the level of granularity. That sell was a gift so stop targeting me, so don't hit me up again.

Lori Cunningham from the telegraph believes in value ads. We know what our users want. But value added for the advertisers or the consumer?

Who cares? Well a question from the floor said users are getting more savvy and will eventually turn off from ads that target them. [ heard this before]

Furthermore, what the *** do you mean by Value-added? Hayes says it's got to do with emotional engagement. And what does  emotional engagement mean??  

The metrics seems to clear by Haye's standard, but I am still loss. 

One thing emotional engagement is not directly proportional to clicks and shares via social. See this Times Piece. Total Time Read on a page is one of the new metrics. But how does the Ad lot measure that?

Paradox from punter. You want the ads, sometimes, particularly according to Ben Huh from cheezeburger if they're funny, but you don't want that ad bots knowing everything about you.

Programmatic ads therefore suck. What should work is personalisation, which according to Paul Hayes from  News UK, is the way it's going. He quoted the daddy of big data, Tesco's Sir Terry Leahy. Leady was behind Tesco's successful club card

Question from the floor. The implications that ads are losing huge revenue cuz no one's clicking. So do you go down the route of the Guardian and have your data open and share or do you continue with pay wall model?

Prognosis after the session. It's a confused market. No one has the answer. The metric works for specifics groups, based on sociological and Tech reasons until something else comes along with another./

Lively session, none the less curated by Jeff Jarvis. 

Buzzwords of the session: Subject-experts. Editors are needed because they are subject-experts!