Will free media kill journalism

A post picked up from here Tom Burton talks about the future of journalism

...and threaded by Trevor Cook, whom describes himself as a comms strategist with the line below, led to mu musings.

Yep I'm lost as well.

Trevor Cook says:
"Moffett argues online video consumers will only tolerate about two minutes of advertising per half hour and when a like for like comparison is done between TV and online video, web producers will need to produce content at 1/8th the cost of traditional TV to make the same returns. The question he asks: "Are content producers prepared to reduce production costs…by 88%? Moffett is pessimistic about the ability of Hollywood to make this transition and it is a question equally relevant to magazines and newspapers, as news organizations around the world seek to re-size and re-make their newsrooms and sales forces to fit with the new order.

I think the larger point here is that the web won't be able to do what mass media can do well and that is aggregate the large audiences that are needed to fund expensive content. Every medium finds its niche."

++++

Hello Trevor

Re: your last point, if outfits with strong content, who want to bypass the costs/insurance inherent in Terrestrial and Satellite distribution, see the Net purely as a transmission source then we may probably not see the end of social grouping around the tele.

It's not the future we're promised by experts but. . . we'll watch television, it's just that the content will be coming down the web and with streaming data rates one day matching that of television, live transmission will make some economic sense. Livestation.com shows a slice of that future now.


Though, I agree with your broader premise about the web and aggregating large physical audiences... My pc, which at this point and time I predominantly access the web, is like my toothbrush - a selfish piece of harware.

So yes we won't probably won't gather around a 17 inch screen in the same way perhaps we do with TV, which knocks ad costs, but we'll increasingly share community space online whilst watching the same prog.

A family in the same house, in different rooms, watching the same prog whilst chatting with each other online and only gather together in a room for dinner ? Perish the thought.

Cheers

David

Video journalism Timeline and World Newspaper Association

On viewmagazine.tv, with the help of Sav, a friend, I've placed a number of key videos from 1994 to present marking a personal take on video journalism.

I'll be adding some .swf files, effects and short descriptions which link to longer articles over the coming days, plus the doc on Channel One TV I mentioned in earlier posts.

Lots of photoshop comping...

The more I play with LiveStation.com, the more its appeal as one facet of future TV seems so abundantly clear.

It opens the prospect for uni-casting. ie everyone becoming a live broadcast outfit.

Also this week I'll be at the World Association of Newspaper gathering in Goteborg, from where I hope to be posting a series of reports on the newspaper industry and presenting at one of the forums on the video journalism digital newsrooms.

In a year where there's been an onslaught on the industry from many sides, what's the state of health of the industry?

Is the decline in sales, you've probably read about elsewhere symptomatic of a real trend?

Is it the overall downturn in the economy which is exacerbating the squeeze felt by the industry.

These are big questions, nay impossible to find answers to, but Goteborg should provide plenty of scope to examine the causes.

In the meantime, settling down to watch a stunning documentary: In the shadow of the moon - quite simply an outstanding film on the space race.

video journalism survey - interesting feedback coming in

One of a series of questions put to newspaper videojournalists.

11 how would you describe the reception to VJ from managers?

They are very keen I think and see it as another way of providing news,
but seem to have little understanding of how time consuming it is. Eg
reporters still have to write the copy up for their story - which always
takes precedence over editing because the paper is on a deadline and
people still see the web as secondary - (it will get done when it's
gets done kind of attitude - by some)

Questions being gleaned from the many VJs, I have come into contact with spread across regional newspapers in the UK.
Full one posted at WAN

Suffer for your Video journalism art - Students!

He was bedridden with malaria, thugs beat him up on the street leaving him badly bruised and his companion in need of medical attention, he was twice arrested by police.

At the airport he says official tried to bar his departure claiming he falsely entered the country as a journalist.

All this for the sake of a final postgraduate film project.

My trusted ex-student, now a dear friend, and occasionally behind-the-scene shooter on VJ assignments Don Omope had an idea for an assignment.

It was bold, but if he was careful, followed a few cautionary procedures he might be alright.

On the night of his departure he dropped by to see me.

'Be careful", I advised, "it's a bit ambitious and the subject will make people wary".

Don was going to Nigeria. Don, who is British, lived and schooled in Nigeria. That wouldn't mean a thing.

In fact he says officials viewed him with disdain, an enemy amongst them selling the country down.

When we spoke today, it sounded like something out of a teen horror flick.

He acknowledges that everyone told him what he ought not to do, but that was cold comfort. He was set upon and beaten. His driver intervened and had to be taken to hospital where with what little money Don had was used to take care of his companion.

"Don't film in he streets I said, you'll get arrested". He did and got arrested.

Don starts editing his film today. We're all holding our breath to see the footage.

This is one student who has definitely suffered for that video journalism art.

NB You'll notice I haven't mentioned what the film is about yet. I'll reveal that with his first draft edit.

The future of TV and media - or one of them

I'm sitting at my laptop outside a cafe having picked up a wifi spot watching live TV in high definition.

So what you might ask.

I'm not sitting chained to my TV, and the news is not coming through a browser.

Actually I have got several browser windows open.

The chap now sitting in his office is watching the same stream on his Iphone.

TV, the furniture that sat in the corner and brought us all together has had another nail in it.

Meanwhile, the VOD model, we're all wedded to has had an internal makeover here at Viewmagazine.tv so I can go back to a theme that I originally used on viewmag.

Take this animated menu here. They consist of .swf files which can easily call other swf files.

That's eay way of Flash working - a swf file is one of the export files, a bit like quicktime or .jpg

But then .FLV's became all the rage and things were not so straight forward.

Why use a FLV file. Well I can attach any array of play controls included this cool one I have unearthed and it can stream from my server or any other number of variables.

FLV files also have superior compression for video.

It's a far more tricker if not near damn tiresome with swf. because for one attaching a player ain't so simple.

So another problem solved, thanks to my good mate Sav - A Flash expert.

Even though I was barely audible I caugh people looking at me on the train as we discussed whethe the action scripting should be on the frame or lens itself to a preload.

Gobledegook huh! Sorry

At WAN I'm going to walk through the costing and points to set up a videojournalism station.

The final part of the chain has always been distribution and so far you either rely on a streaming server or you adopt the VOD approach.

Playing out live changes absolutely everything as you'll see from the video I'm making.
______

Very good friends, who I call cuz presents on WLIB same station as Chuck D. who is now in the UK celebrating Public Enemies reunion.

Yes I'd love to interview Chuck D, as he's got a lot to say, so some work to do. Kim could you do me a favour......?

10 things I would do if I were a researcher/multimedia assistant for BBC Radio 4

Richard Brennan, A Masters in journalism student who blogs at Newsjiffy, also admired for his posts, tells us what he would do to bring areas of BBC radio into the mash-up age.

3. Each edition of the BBC in-house magazine Ariel should have a column entitled "From the Blogosphere" where a staff member discuss the reactions to the BBC on both BBC and non-BBC blogs. I would be able to write this column as well as other duties.

4. Blog posts that are pertinent to a news story could be linked in current BBC blogs like the Editor's Blog. This would involve me keeping BBC Online staff informed about the content of the BBC Radio blogs via e-mail.”

Astute thinking.

Richard's CV is here for you to peak.

If I were a BBC manager I'd take a look and ping him for a chat.

I suppose the fact that they're not doing what Richard suggests will bring some comfort to the commercial sector e.g. radio stations.

The Guardian's Emily Bell made the point on Today of the BBC restraining itself from tramelling the commercial sector with its ballooning online presence.

The BBC's Trust report reviewing the corporation's services and distinctiveness in its online activities will be available on BBC.co.uk later today.

Future journalists - I'm bi media, hahahahaha

It was a sure fire way to get laughs.

What are you?, the production manager would ask.

Oh you're bi-media ( pause) 10.9.8.7.6... RAUCOUS LAUGHTER FOLLOWS.

Of course you might just as well have walked the corridor with toilet paper trailing you.

So you never said that.

This was the BBC of the mid 90s, when until then radio people did radio, and TV people thumbed their nose at them radio lot.

Never the twain did they meet.

Often the term of reference used for someone who'd moved from radio to TV, was that they had graduated.

GRADUATED!!!@£$*&

Less laughs here, more scowls from the radio set who considered their craft far more superior.

Yes, there were many who walked the line between radio and TV, even before this watershed of the 90s during the era of Director General John Birt and job swap.

One of them whom I stood in awe of was Jerry Timmins, who now effectively runs the BBC World Service.

He'd report, produce on Newsnight circa 1990, I was a researcher then, and then go do radio.

Ahah so it was possible then.

So early in my career I had a break.

BBC GLR, the BBC's London Station gave me a co-presenter/producer position for a wednesday community show, whilst tuesdays and thursdays I researched on BBC Newsnight.

Of course this was never going to last. It didn't.

But radio offered you a chalice without all the gold plate. You just picked up your Uher, Marantz or Sony recorder, found a story and then rang an outlet and made your case.

TV? fat chance.

So in 1992 after various jobs at BBC radio and TV and the domestic job market drying up, I rolled a dice.

South Africa it was then.

[severe edit of text - words to be used for another post sometime]

South Africa during that era was incredible and there's lots I can recount, but one of the things I'm most drawn to, which gets me going, is a 40 min radio doc made with an award winning radio 4 producer Joy Hatwood.

It was called First Time Voters and for six months gave me the opportunity to follow 4 talented South Africans voting in their first election.

And yesterday I found the doc.

It's so distant a memory to imagine a country where laws governed the movement and lifestyle of blacks.

On the cusp of change, this doc provides a sample of the anxieties.

I was fed up, fed up of always hearing a group being spoken for, of the mass appeal slant being pursued.

This is young people talking way above their age.

And here it is.



First Time Voters (the pic and Flash multimedia project here) would later air on the BBC World Service and with one day before their historic election the South Africa Broadcasting Corporation.

But really that's not what this post is about.

In the digital age of media, it's all ones and zeros really.

Are you sept-media?

No one's laughing at you now are they?

What the news would look like ?

The Delphi principle, Trend extrapolation and Simulation modeling provide some clues.

Then there's the unexpected.

What would news or video look like beyond 2012 is a mug's game many will deride, for no one knows with any degree of certainty, but there are some visual clues from which a whole slew of interested parties are crunching ideas and figures.

In an article for viewmagazine.tv, I'll be pulling together an array of interviews and material I have gleaned from talking to many people, combined with my media and academic career which includes more recently research notes from my Phd and a feedback survey.

Apple, very kindly featured some of these views on their site: the Outernet and public digital displays for calling up the news.

The notion of accelerated news or even video hyperlinking which had a wee shout in The Economist gives more control to users: deep linking video in real time deconstructing the idea of the self contained news package.

Much of the video journalism paradigm today played out 14 years ago with the launch of the UK's first and only dedicated videojournalism channel, and the rare footage I have located gives some perspective for media and academics.

And in the vaults of the BBC from the 60s, more interesting stuff.

What the news and media will look like - I'm just finishing off before the World Association of Newspapers congress

An entangled web - redux

Affordable Anti-Retro Drugs from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

Couple of days ago I spoke about Minority reporting or the lack of its presence in kick starting and revving the agenda.

Yes there are lots of sites that give a long tail to up the ante, but...

a) They're not all networked. Why, many are in competition for the same eye balls.
b) Now, this is interesting, their sites are not professionally produced. But why should this matter?

At the new new journalism gathering speaker Julia Whitney, who's Head of Design & User Experience, Journalism BBC Future Media & Technology, (mouthful huh!) said something many of us knew along.

That teenagers and possibly many of us respond to sites according to the level of production and design aesthetic.

It coexists with the content.

Minority Reports
Minority issues do not necessarily have to be about race and culture, though given the skewed politics in he UK, this wouldn't be a bad thing.

I believe it has to do with shared values, finding common ground, for issues that receive scant or little attention.

The world around us is slowly dying, or not, from catastrophes strife and pestilence and big business blithely marches on to swell profits.

Gordon Gecko's "greed is good" is back (it never went away) and quite literally, as a city friend tells me they're shooting Wall Street II in his area

Di Caprio's 11th hour shown on Channel 4, a doom-laden affair, is something we could and should pay more attention to.

The environments imploding, but hey who cares we're all be gone before something cataclysmic happens. You know run out of water.

anti-retro virus drugs and compulsory licenses is another, which makes generic drugs cheaper and affordable for developing countries.

I shot this short whilst attending a meeting at Chatham House.

And then there are the social issues surrounding old aged health, youth crime, etc, minority issues because we groan, sigh, shrug only after hearing of another death.

That's not to say there's sterling work going on in all the aforementioned fields.

I came across this on Project Michelle: Only 3% of all Asian Americans are registered as bone marrow donors.

Michelle is desperately looking for a bone marrow transplant, but the former stats work against her.

Why are there so few bone marrow givers?

Because, you could deduce, there's been a lack of innovative campaigning, educational films, more time given to minority issues etc that suggest when you do turn up for a test you're not going to have a needle the size of a cattle prod shoved into you.


A social story
Last week on my way to Uni I came across an elderly woman howling in the streets. I passed her by before I stopped and doubled back.

She was locked outside of her house. But the door was wide open.

She just couldn't walk back. After a couple of minutes of figuring out and helping her back into her house, I called the police.

Their immediate response was there was little they could do.

Uh refer it to someone else, would have helped.

So I rang social services. After a while they rang back, also at first slightly flummoxed.

"Er I don't know this woman from a bar of soap", I said, "but she does need help".


Web social 2.o help
The web, touted in the late 90s was going to tackle this. Correction we were going to tackle this and more.

Info flows that would open us up to anything and it has, but the dominant issues of the old: power and money have stayed.

An item on BBC radio's PM news programme revealed survey on websites offering UK small business enterprises advice showed there were hundreds giving misleading information.

We've got competitive again with what was a free gift to us, the ability to share info and look at ways of solving some of these seemingly intractables.

Somehow we're getting tied up in an entangled web, which we might just have to disentangle, if we're to know what makes the other person standing next to us tick.

Video Journalism Survey at Viewmagazine.tv

Nothing beats a qualitative survey, with facts to chew over, which is why we love em so much.

I have had the opportunity of sharing thoughts and ideas with way more than a hundred UK regional newspaper journos, turned VJs over the last three years and I'm hoping they can provide some answers for a presentation.

About half a dozen have already fed back.

Their names/backgrounds will be kept anonymous, so if you are a VJ and our paths have crossed I'd love you to get involved.

Some interesting data from the ones I have read already.

I'm hoping to corral all the feedback into part of a short powerpoint at WAN, in Sweden next week, before putting it out.

Earn dosh VJ training over two days VJ

If you've experience of VJ training, live in the London area and have this Saturday/Sunday 31st may - 1st June free, then this might interest you.

A university colleague needs someone to train up some of his third year undergrad students getting ready for a foreign trip, where they'll be posting daily.

Drop me a line David@viewmagazine.tv in the next day or so if you're interested.

The fee? Well it most likely ranges from 200-350, but you can sort that out with the client.

Video Journalism Revolution on Viewmagazine.tv

Video Journalism Revolution is a personal and fairly comprehensive account of Video Journalism in the UK.

It includes:

1992 BBC Reportage - we shot with Hi8s but did not call it Videojounalism

1994 Channel One TV - in which I have located the doc

1997 Channel 4 News where I did some Vjing and made some international stories

1997 Taking Video journalism to Africa ( Ghana and South Africa)

2000+ Speaking at the BBC's Nations and Region's launch of videojournalism

Training the first newspaper VJs in the UK and the Telegraph's super multimedia VJs with the Press Association

to advising the Financial Times.

In between I have used video journalism working with Lennox Lewis the heavyweight boxer, Making ads screened on CNN International with John Staton Productions ( ex Saatchi head of TV), a deep wreck expedition in the Dardanelles, conflict reportage in Ghana and for Nato.

And recently Camp video journalism in Chicago and soon in Virtual Platform worlds.

There are aspects of news making that directly feed into Video journalism's swift turn around and editing on the fly, which I learned working at World Wide Television News agency, now APTV.

They had the formula for packaging down to the second. I have recently located some of those foreign stories and will post.

Meanwhile on Viewmgazine.tv it's the 1st of January 1996 and I have drawn the short straw. Channel One was so about multi skilling that many Vjs also presented the news.

There's no one behind the camera by the way and you controlled the auto cue with your foot.

On this package Jon Gilbert, now a much respected reporter on ITV gives gives a good illustration of a videojournalist on top of his game reporting from Trafalgar Square.

See what you think?

The Video Journalism Revolution UK - Watch this

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

90 second clip shows Michael Rosenblum in song mode, with Vjs Tricica Adudu and Marcel Theroux commenting on their experience, rounded off with one of the station's news editors Peter Brookes whom would go on to become managing director of Manchester United TV.

If you're interested in video journalism, as a newspaper, broadcaster or citizen journalist, you will absolutely, most definitely want to watch this, the video journalism revolution in the UK.

The title was Birth of a Station, a play off from DW Griffiths Birth of a Nation 1915.

It is the documentary about video journalism's entry into the UK in 1994.

How thirty video journalists came together and what they made of their new skills, the training and views of Michael Rosenblum, and how a station costing 50 million UK pounds was born.

I was thrilled to bits when I stumbled across this in my archive, even if the quality leaves a lot to be desired.

It features, among others interviews with the late Sir David English - the newspaper editor's editor, managing director Nick Pollard and the CEO Julian Aston.

The doc has academic as well as real industry value.

It is a snapshot of a piece of broadcasting history emerging from a blank canvas.

Video journalism had never been practised in the UK. In fact no one knew what it was.

But after the launch, 100s of broadcasters from around the world visited the station to see how it all worked.


The VJ family
"You join a group of about 100 vjs around the world...., an elite bunch", Michael says on tape back then.

Well 14 years on, so much has radically changed, but so much also remains the same.

The anxieties, the fears - how will television crews react to us, the excitement it's all here.

Many, many of the faces you'll see have become household names, award winning documentary and acclaimed TV makers and a notable MBE.

Among them Marcel Theroux, brother of Louis Theroux and son of American travel writer and novelist, Paul Theroux; Dimitri Doganis, an amazing film maker and winner of several awards for films such as 'The Tea Boy of Gaza'; and Rachel Ellison MBE, behind the BBC's Afghan Woman's Hour, which promoted human rights.

Those are a just a few.

Channel One was able to recruit 30 trainees from 3000 applications, so it could do what many newspapers can't - pick their VJs.

This isn't on the film, but some of the filtering techniques included observing how you handled a camera placed in front of you.


Video Journalism vs TV - not a them and us
This doc gives a real sense that wherever you are with your video journalism ambitions, you will prevail, if you persevere.

Whatever the debate about rights and wrongs of video journalism making, a new generational crop of talent will emerge pushing film making much, much further than anyone could imagine.

The future of video journalism, is almost a throw back to the ghost of Channel One, 1994, when it won't be about news any longer, but a whole production cycle.

Channel One had a film review with Karen Krizanovich, an interactive show about the Net and was the first to broadcast down cable in which viewers could respond via the net.

Remember this is 1994.

It had a car programme testing the most recent releases, a cookery show, a travel show and the rest - all made by one, sometimes two person video journalist teams.

The truly most interesting aspect of video journalism will be regional and national newspapers commissioning and making programmes:
mysanantonio.com, mercurynews.com, thisiscornwall.co.uk The Hull Daily Mail, and so on.

It's already happening with some outfits e.g. The Telegraph and the BBC's plans for local broadband news looks like a contemporary version of Channel One, sans cable distribution, which is what ultimately led to the station's demise.

Birth of a station coming soon.

Blog author David Dunkley Gyimah, was one of the thirty video journalists at Channel One. Today, he still practises video journalism and is now a senior university lecturer and Phd student, where he lectures on integrated multimedia video journalism (CSS site building, multimedia and advance video journalism) and advises a number of newspapers such as the Financial Times.

Video journalism's anti-aesthetism short from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.
You can contact him at david@viewmagazine.tv facebook or skype: daviddunkleygyimah

An entangled web - the minority report

An entangled web - web 3.0 stalls

The one major emerging travesty of the web, in spite of its free-for-all, low entry point, is the dearth of dominant accessible news featuring events and people packaged well enough to bring us closer to understand this world.

That's not to deny millions of sites exist for every conceivable subject, about minority issues and the disenfranchised, but that they are elbowed down by existing and emerging web behemoths.

The dash for cash and supremacy in this new comms age, has made the playing field more stumpier.

Social network sites may be the answer, but even they need a kickstart, someone, a group to move the issue up the social-google-ladder.

Much was promised about the web's democratic leanings, though if you knew better you would not have held your breath.

Television could not feature this or that because, well, no one gave it any quarter on TV; pathetic viewing audiences, and the numbers-cost-quotient did not add up.

The web would solve that problem. Space and time were irrelevant.

In a post I wrote for Journalism.co.uk, Broadband it would be a shame to waste it, I said about television on the web:

There are echoes of satellite TV's grand arrival where an opportunity to broaden the news agenda and perhaps even diversify simply turned to the broadcast economics law of recycling for the sake of advertising returns.

Broadband's ever-expanding capacity offers scintillating prospects for innovation - it would be a great shame to waste it.

What's changed?

At several conferences I have attended or spoken at revolving around majority packaged by others as minority issues, there's been hair pulling about how they find a voice.

The Africa Summit at the University of Westminster was one of them.

WeMedia Conference two years ago was when for me it was apparent this was a "child care" issue.

We talk about it, pay attention to it, but then settle back into our own dominions at the end of the day, whilst the real parents get on with the up bringing.

In years to come, a generation may well look back on this era and becry what we did with all our massive comms power, which could have save the earth, or saved a people from their government.

But we had other things in mind.

An entangled web builds up on this - something some very talented film makers I know here are looking at.

The Uher- Media Objects of Desire

My Mp3 dictaphone may fit into my mouth. Hey I might even be able to swallow it, if I'm in a bind.

The Marantz and Sony may be blinders for pulling in good ol' fashion radio quality sounds, but nothing, nothing comes close to the Uher.

Here I could go into chapter and verse about its background but that would only bore you.

Suffice to say, it occupies a very nostalgic and sentimental place in my heart; a bit like my LPs.

The Uher weighed the equivalent of a small baby: awkward (you had to sling it over your shoulder); cumbersome (you had wires trailing you); yet durable, you could drop it on the floor and it still did its job.

Well.....!

With a small plate that accompanied it, you could slice and dice your reel to make your package on location before using crocodile clips attached to your phone to send it down the line. I know that because I remember doing it.

Later on I took the much easier path and sent the package over ISDN.

The Uher. Built like a VW. Dependable and reliable, using up 6C batteries a go, and reels that make us all seem rather ancient.

It is my media object of desire.

Now if only they could make the digital version.

Video Journalists' cook book

Nato War Games and in this picture, the Videojournalists' cook book emerges.

Terms such as 2-stepping, swarming, arcing, deep linking etc dance around.

The occasion is an ENO, military parlance for an Evacuation order.

In the film preceding this photo, people are fleeing a hostile and being evacuated by choppers outside of a make-believe country.

The commander in control, refuses to give interviews until he feels everything is in order, then he's swarmed by video journalists.

Swarming
As editor in the field, I could see four obvious stories that arose from a briefing.

1. Interviews with evacuees.
2. series of package of the whole evacuation process
3. Reporting from behind safe lines
4. A one-on-one with officials.

Trouble is we only had two operational cameras, a pd150 and vx1000.

The more advanced cameras could not cope with a previous operation at sea, so with only two cameras what could we do?

We swarmed.

Very swiftly, in shoot to edit mode the different teams gathered their reports and then handed their cameras onto another VJ.

Part of swarming also meant picking up sequence shots for colleague's packages.

Job done.

On the awaiting evacuee ships, various teams were on stand by awaiting the choppers.

Within four hours the time it took for the complete ops, we had as many packages as our ten personnel.

The swiftness of turnaround meant on one ship, the few minutes that lapsed between an interview with a senior officer and videojournalist where he made a statement that needed correcting, was too late.

It had been sat'ed back to "mother" ie base who had it in the running order.


Tomorrow, more on the Video journalist's cookbook in conflict conditions, plus what was the news on January 1st 1996, the archive zone from the UK's first 24 hours video journalism station, a recording of transmission with now familiar faces on British TV.

Euro-song contest vs American Idol

While the US gets fixated on American idol - serious stuff with pots of money now in line for the victor - here in Europe ( we are in Europe) we get this thing called
The Euro song Contest.

It is the equivalent of a lobotomy on a weekend, whilst your head's being dragged through cow pat.

OK there are some meaningful tunes being hammered out, but this, the whole affair, the Marx brothers would have given their souls to produce.

Funny, Noooo. bl***y hilarious, that is also if you count the subversive Sotto voce of one of our national radio heroes, Terry Wogan.

Terry Wogan is the Casey Kasem of BBC Radio 2, who's contribution on the night oscillated between piss-taking and dry humour.

OMG at the time of writing, the United Kingdom with 14 points is at the bottom of the 25 list pile. Oh no they've come last.


Singing and politics
You see this is a political contest which includes a bit of singing.

Er that's right, nations pay suffrage to each other, trade points for favours, perhaps in lieu of the following year's passport controls, or pending trade deficit.

Russia incidently came first. Hey it was a great song, but btw where is the contest being held next year?

R-U-S-S-I-A.

Oh no they're now giving the acceptance speech. Shouldn't be so cynical, but the point where the countries were given their votes a slew of beautiful men and woman bordering on mannequins had me reaching for a bottle of salt tablets.

"Hello Euro song contest. You guys were great, you gave us a good show and we love you, we love you. We want to have babies for all of you. In fact look I can sing. I'm going to sing again. ooowwwww woooooo eeehhhaahhh"

"This must be the voting of guess-workers" muttered Terry Wogan followed by an endless stream of biting one liners.

Can television be any more painful?

I did, I did pull up the chair and hide behind it.

Aaargh.

There was a time when the UK used to walk this, but that was before Europe had more than, er three members and it was still seen as relevant.

Those were Thatcher's days. But alas those halcyon days of a deferential Europe to the UK are far behind us.

Terry Wogan concluded on air that Western Europeans throw in the towel, pull out of the competition as they don't have a hope in hell of ever winning.

This year's national hopes were carried by ex dustbin man, that's waste collector Andy er, something.

Andy, actually was the runner-up in the UK's version of American Idol and he can hold a tune.

But this Euro contest is about the club, about a type of music which might baffle contemporary artists in the UK and perhaps the US.

That doesn't make the UK any more special.

But why oh why each year artists clamour to represent the land of hope and glory is anyone's guess, particularly when in all likelihood they're going to com last.

Couple of years ago, one act (where are they now) sang completely out of tune.

Anyway the contest is now over and more, far more, important news beckons.


Top story?
The top story

Britain's Prime minister Gordon Brown is in a tight spot, losing popularity amongst voters like er, Andy at the Euro song contest.

There are, it appears, mounting pressure for him to change his ways.

I wonder if he can sing?

Video journalism's anti-aesthetism short

Video journalism's anti-aesthetism short from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

Here's the one minute short cum motion promo from my morning run in Chicago.
I shot about 7 mins, in a shoot to edit form, on my Sony A1.

List of related links

More from two days ago posts.

Images from shoot

Video journalists cookbook

The other side of the Video journalism manifesto

The Digital Hub enters Academia

Exclusive pics from The Financial Times' Digital Hub, published in Viewmagazine.tv in March.

The hub, a contemporary feature of the modern newsroom is now making forays into academia.

Whilst most academic outfits feature lecture rooms equipped with the latest gizmos in presentation, the layout has preserved the hierarchy of the lecturer with students facing on from one direction.

Now news emerges in the UK of a university creating a digital hub, not unlike the FT's.

In this case, it's a sort of throw back to the ampitheatre of Aristotle's school - with a digital upgrade you might say.

Is this the first?

I can't be absolutely sure, but from my involvement in the BJTC, I have broad knowledge of developments, though I welcome your comments telling me how this or that institution is ahead of the curve.

I'll keep you posted with what I know as this may have wide ramifications for other institutes.


Universities of the Future
I have always felt the role of universities is to be where industry would like to be.

And occasionally it succeeds but perhaps not as much as it should.

However because both must fit like glove and hand, academia quite often mirrors the industrial world.

How else would it recruit an able workforce.

Couple of months ago, I produced a package on the University of the Future, which I think is ready for an update.

Super African Video journalism

african videojournalism - USA from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

Above, clip from The United States of Africa. Six part Video journalism series made by Africans, Ghanaians reporting for the first time in South Africa. Here, reporting on immigration. Series produced David Dunkley Gyimah

It happened here in the UK, an influx of Ugandan Asians and boats of Africans and Caribbeans would cause alarm amongst some of the populace.

More recently it's been Eastern Europeans, who've exercised the thoughts of some Brits.

What's happening in South Africa is no more alien the world over, e.g. Australia, Netherlands etc.

In times of economic crisis, when jobs are scarce to come by and a government seems paralyzed to explain the dynamics and results of an influx of people, or that their policies do nothing to absorb the bigger count, there will be clashes.

A clash of ideologies, perhaps, even at times violence.

What's happening in South Africa is symptomatic of this social issue.


Super VJs
In downtown Hillbrow, a place compared to the Bronx of the 70s, we came across Africans of many nationalities looking for a new start.

The clip above provides a taster, but later we would follow one group.

We arrived at their flat,11 young men in one room, at 5 in the morning and trailed two immigrants from Ghana.

One claimed to have had a doctorate from Legon University; I had no reason to doubt him, but he was in South Africa selling tomatoes for a living.

We followed him to a produce warehouse, where he bought his goods and then hung around with him on the street as he plied his trade.

The money he made by the end of the day was barely enough to cover his rent and food, but he was grateful.

At the end of filming he expressed a desire to go to China or Italy. Life in SA was becoming difficult.

"Oh yes! Britain would be good as well", he quipped.

Later, we acquired an interview with a senior government official in immigration.

Off camera, during a break in the interview, he floored us by speaking of his childhood growing up in Ghana; he could even speak Twi, one of its native languages.

And that's the rub. Many ANC officials in government have a list of African states to be thankful for providing them with a surrogate homes in their time of need.

There is a debt they own, one today's youth, where memories of Apartheid are receding, will not understand.

And for a people promised so much following the collapse of the segregationist regime, their anger and frustrations have found the weakest outlet: non South Africans are the cause of the woes.

At the 1994 historic elections, many commentators marvelled at the unique way South Africa changed overnight, but there was also had a sense that there was a sleeping giant that needed to be assuaged or even, forbid the thought, kept asleep.

Footnote: The United States of Africa was made in 1997/8 - a week spent in South Africa which yielded 7 1 hour programmes. I'll be posting whole programmes soon, which includes what the Ghanaian journalists made of South Africa and interviews with music maestro Quincy Jones.