Great! In-person journalism events return. How could they be different?

 

The blueprints there, right there, I‘ll tell the audience. If you want to do innovation and diversity and how they bolster each other, the blue print is 1994.

Back then 30 youngsters turned the British media upside down heralding the change we’re now living. Channel One TV was the UK’s first 24-hour cable news output for London. And another first, it was the pioneer of one-person broadcast units, referred to as videojournalism.

For a profession continuously grappling with how to do media representation, frustratingly, it’s been done, at least for its staffing of reporters. Its strategy was driven by its key management, the Fleet Street titan Sir David English (speaking below), the station’s team of Julian Aston, and Nick Pollard, and consultant Michael Rosenblum. (see fuller film at bottom of page).

Channel One thrived until advertisers squeezed their finance five years in, but as a revolution in media very little came close to it sense of innovation. These two clips, amongst many, from highly respected industry figures, set out that narrative.

As an incubator for talent and diversity it yielded Rav Vadgama, Award-winning Producer and videojournalist for Good Morning Britain; Dimitri Doganis, founder of Raw TV and recipient of many awards e.g. BAFTA; Trish Adudu, now a radio presenter and personality for BBC CWR, the BBC Local Radio service for Coventry and Warwickshire; and Rachel Ellison MBE, now a leading coach in leadership.

Channel One turned around my career following stints with BBC Newsnight, Reportage and the World Service covering South Africa and Pres. Mandela’s inauguration, but a permanent job appeared out of reach within established broadcasters, even with a testimonial from the UK’s leading think tank in International affairs.

New Journalism

Twenty seven years on, media legacies in diversity delivered by Channel One have atrophied. Its innovation was intrinsically linked to its diversity in what psychologists refer to as analogical thinking fermenting “external views”. It sowed a deep seed in many if its participants.

Many questioned journalism, news and story form. Steve Punter, one of the station’s stalwart videojournalists jokingly referred to the group as an assembly of unique different individuals that oddly shouldn’t work. It was the media equivalent of Marvel Avengers.

My head scratch would formally complete twenty years later, following hundreds of interviews and air miles, historical searches, training and debates in uncovering an inevitable form of journalism called Cinema Journalism. It would earn me a PhD and several industry awards.

From 2005 onwards with digital threatening traditional journalism practices I had the task of converting UK regional newspapers and the FT into new forms of videojournalists and platform encoders. Innovation and diversity too was key. It led to the good fortune of speaking at a fair number of conferences in the UK e.g. Apple and abroad (e.g. Russia) around journalism innovation and creativity, collaboration and diversity.

See here for more

Journalism has been wrestling with several often intransigent and dynamic issues on different fronts, such as how to pay for journalism, how to master social platforms and reach new audiences, how to neuter disinformation and bad actors and how to keep the profession honest and hold power to account.

In person gatherings have been an ideal touch point to address these, bringing professionals together to share knowledge, tackle festering issues and build contacts.

Yet, as the end of the second decade drew near, there was a sense you could slide from one conference to another, meet familiar faces, and quite often observe recurring panelists and themes catering for the same-o, same-o. Sometimes it could feel like the conference equivalent of cabin fever — stasis; you’ve been here before.

The totemic events of 2019: COVID and the criminality against George Floyd amplifying a global movement in BLM were a “wake up call”.

A New Way of Conferencing

Within journalism, at least of the professional kind, whatever it was doing before 2019, coming out of it would be different. If you keep on doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep on getting what you get. Journalism was going to be re-birthed; its storytelling and philosophy captured in headlines required surgery, its actors needed widening. Things couldn’t continue as normal.

My first in-person event courtesy of the Society of Editors (SoE) leaves me cautiously hopeful. I had just recently finished working as an advisory board member for the British Library’s major exhibition: Breaking the News: 500 Years of News in Britain, as well as contributing a chapter to their book on Black Lives Matter and the language of News.

A kindly email following on from the exhibition would reach me explaining how the SoE’s conference might be of interest. The title Future of News has been a popular one that often proves hugely attractive. Two years ago I chaired a 250 delegate conference on the subject. It would be attractive again.

Photos: David, DSLR 5D

SoEs lineup, not exhaustive here, was something to admire: Keynoter Ros Atkins, the BBC man who has single handedly revolutionised journalism and explainers; leading figures from the BBC and Telegraph and RTS winner Warren Nettleford of Need to know debated the future of news chaired by Kamal Ahmed, Editor in Chief of The News Movement.

Changing the newsroom featured a panel with Guardian executive Joseph Harker; seasoned war correspondents lent their expertise to the Ukraine war coverage. It was foregrounded by a poignant silence for fallen journalists. Then Alok Sharma MP closed the event with Cop26 in his rear view mirror whilst applauding the robustness of the press.

Yet, there’s a question worth grappling with. Post Floyd and COVID what new role, if any, should conferences be playing in journalism education? How different should they be from their predecessors? Is is a question of greater diverse and targeted programming within the decision makers? Is there a new function for the circuit of conferences from professional bodies yet to be acknowledged?

SoE’s conference placed diversity as an integral conversation in Changing the Newsroom. Harker emphasised the need for an action, rather than an aspiration, and even that. He addressed what he called the elephant in the room, and few would deny it, asking why the SoE took six months to apologise for their position that racism did not exist in the British press.

If, as it’s widely recognised, journalism (not a homogenous discipline) needs to have emerged from the last two years with greater introspection and reflection several custodians are well placed to deliver on this. The SoE remains one of the UK’s most influential journalism bodies and a look at their virtual conference page displays a raft of initiatives.

Conference to dos

Myfirst in-person has me in reflective mood as I think to the several conferences now opening up and how they might build post 2019?

1. Ensuring the growing unease of what was wrong in journalism does not dissipate. This requires concretising new visions and memories in ways that shift thinking. Work at the British Library and as an artist-in-residence at the Southbank Centre typified this sort of brief. Storytelling always circles around culture, but because of how it crystallised as News many years ago in largely homogenous cultures, cultural framing has rarely acquired the prominence in journalism as objectivity or impartiality. It should.
2. Increasing diversity of speakers on all panels and ensuring people of colour are not solely invited to conferences to speak exclusively on race and culture sessions. Nettleford and Nabihah Parker speaking at the SoE on innovation was refreshing. Equally, on a spectrum of issues poignant to older audiences the Black and brown frozen middle should be welcomed.
3. Actioning targeted conference talking points and procuring commitments or pledges from execs. At the SoE event panelists agreeing to visit universities to share knowledge was one. Inviting senior execs to agree to material change in say hiring diverse staff could be one of many others.
4. Physically build the future. In a recent post on this platform I ask why a new wing of solutions journalism, solutions media, shouldn’t engage in physical builds, for instance engineering apps (see here). Media, remember, has no natural borders. If there’s a sense of what’s wrong why not engineer alt solutions.
5. Facilitating exchange hubs, so delegates can find one another to swap ideas. The usual route is after drinks, but I’ve often found they can be hit and miss. I had a highly entertaining conversation with a delegate which emerged serendipitously only when she spoke ( off subject) about Brit School, and I segued into my son Robert who appeared on BBC Young Dancer.
6. Leverage conference talking points via active use of social media and post conference reports, targeting ( Hashtag) specific groups. Greater interactions with universities and students would facilitate this. There’s an integrated debated between academia and the practice of journalism that is yearning to be reshaped.

Short film by David Dunkley Gyimah called The Thirty — pioneers of British Media

About the author

Dr David Dunkley Gyimah is recognised as an international journalism innovator and expert in media and international affairs. A chemistry and maths graduate turned journalist and creative producer his career spans thirty plus years combining media and academia. He’s worked or presented for a number of outfits and international brands e.g. Channel 4 News, Apple etc and continues to consult for major companies. A former Artist in Residence at the Southbank Centre, he’s the first Brit to with the (US) coveted Knight Batten Award for Innovation in Journalism. On Medium he’s designated one of their top writers in journalism, amongst 28k writers posting 68k stories. He’s based at Cardiff University.

The Stories That Shape US

 

Bent over the kitchen sink washing dishes (the washing machine has packed up) my mind drifts. Curse shingles. I now have a renewed healthy respect for work-life balance. Just how does one make a change?

I also dwell on that question. What did happen post the aftermath of last year’s BLM moment? Just how were the incredible array of stories that surfaced to address racial issues curated so they become everlasting epistemologies for future generations?

And then glaring through the floor as if I have Superman X-ray eyes, I think back to the tapes in my garage that have gathered dust for thirty years? Could I finally muster the energy to do something with them? And if so what purpose would they serve?

I’m a university lecturer, a job I love and for several years have swapped ideas and methods with Masters students. In between lectures, I’ve pursued my interests that blend conceptual storytelling in cinema journalism (my practice) with Tech and Diversity creating events like the Leader’s List — an exhibition film of the UK’s leading TV producers of colour.

The art of collapsing cinema and journalism which builds on Cinema Verite is still unfolding and I get goose bumps every time I think of the kind interactions and interviews with the doyens of Cinema Verite and Cinema like Robert Drew, and Mark Cousins who helped me get here.

About a year and a half ago, a senior personnel from the British Library contacted me. Would I be interested in becoming an advisory board member for their exhibition of three hundred years of news — planned to open in 2022 because of the pandemic. Sure. That’s some canvas I thought. Imagine a film that would cover that period? In this case, a book accompanying the event is to be published and I feel indebted to the British Library that I could contribute a piece on language and BLM.

The thing with storytelling at an institutional level is it’s like a virus in that it never leaves you. Since I formally left the broadcast industry working on programmes like Channel 4 News, I like anyone in the do-it-yourself YouTube Gen., continue to tell stories on YouTube and my own platforms.

But there’s something enticing, alluring and intoxicating about presenting to a live audience, or on a big stage. The last two big-staged films were made whilst I was an artist in residence at the Southbank in 2011.

Re: Sounding Motion saw exceptionally gifted young people with music or dance skills being provided with exemplar levels of training and putting on a show at the South Bank Centre. The other was Obama’s 100 Days with the classical composer and conductor Shirley Thompson OBE.

These kinds of works have the habit of pushing beyond self-imposed boundaries with one eye focused on the intended audience that will judge your work. There’s the propagation of critical ideas which consciously marry thoughts accumulated over one’s journey. There’s also equally, in seeking commissions (broadcast or public), the oft intimidating round of interviews to generate interest accompanied by the “Thanks, Sorry !”

When I started in the early 90s I remember how painful they were. I would find my own soul-sating stories by relocating to South Africa where I could roll together all my interests. Today the impact of “Thanks Sorry” (TS) is no less but the years teach you to understand everyone (nearly) gets TS’s. Frankly if creating art was that easy what would that mean? The pain and struggle of creation is a part of the gain, isn’t it?

Afriend offered to help with the selection in my garage. Firstly what if we presented it to the yearly contest that is FIAT/ IFA — a global body that seeks to preserve important archive. Against eight global finalists, the pitch about the archive’s contents was made online and three months later we were informed we’d won.

Jose as archivist producer drove the conversation to digitise the batch; some 800 hours plus of tapes, audio and video, small by comparison of archive found tapes, but no less valuable.

And that’s the point. These 90s tapes are personal but also mark a socially detailed aspect of that time. There is the interview with Nigerian Superstar Fella Kuti that I turned into a story for the Journal Representology — a joint venture between my uni (Cardiff) and the Sir Lenny Henry Centre at Birmingham City University.

There’s the interview with the director of the touring show This Old Minstrel Magic derived from the Black and White Minstrel Show (Black face) who tries to convince us no harm is being done in reviving a show “everyone loves”, he says. There’s the film collectives of the 90s and Melvin Van Peeble’s telling me about the revival in black filmmaking and his own film Sweet Bad Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss. And this, in the depth of South Africa’s belly of turmoil I ride the night with peace activists in Katlehong, designated murder capital of the world.

The archive selection include a ‘documentary lit’ interview with one Reverend Pearson whom in the 1940s would befriend the King of the Ashantis. Their friendship would result in a school attended by boys who would become presidents and Ghana’s political class. The short promo I cut a decade plus ago was narrated by Channel 4’s Jon Snow.

Listening back to them has been a journey down memories, which is all well and good for me, but what interest might they have beyond my garage doors? I’ve been struck by many of the issues which are current today and have their voice in the stories from the 90s. That shouldn’t be surprising. Frankly you could go back further to the 60s and further back still if the archive existed to help viewers and listeners understand current affairs.

Back then there seemed little appetite to log or archive ‘Black’ stories. Some of the stories were broadcast whilst presenting Black London on the BBC. Another presenter and I were paid the princely some of £30 pounds for presenting the weekly programme.

And this. What happens when two of Africa’s respected broadcasters: Ghana and South Africa come together to explore each other? The programme, a six parter, was the United States of Africa. It wasn’t just unique in how the Ghanaians reported on South Africa (newly liberated from Apartheid) but that in 1996 they were using videojournalists and digital cameras way before the BBC or CNN was.

The question is what to do next? A sound installation? A programme that feeds off the archive? A monologue interspersed with archive that gives an account of London circa 1990. One thing I’m certain of is the value it will have for my Masters students; I’m inclined to think the value may extend beyond them. Who knows? If you’re a commissioner/publisher and this interest you, please drop me a line @viewmagazine or David@viewmagazine.tv

About Me:

I’m a writer, academic, storyteller and creative technologist with thirty years experience working across broadcasting, advertising, and academia. I have recently completed being Chair of the Organising Committee for Cardiff University’s global Future of Journalism event ( keynote included Gary Younge) and advising for the British Library, and am due to relaunch the Leaders’ List. More on me here.

How the News returned to Cinema, rendering 70 years of Television obsolete

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 In the 1970s the unthinkable happened. A thriving industry by which the public was informed about the latest news and current affairs was largely proclaimed dead. New media technology, swiftness and style from a relatively new contender, television, made Newsreels unattractive to audiences.

Some years earlier no right thinking Newsreel executive would ever have imagined their days were numbered, even links with a fledgling BBC getting into the TV news market. They (BBC) need us, would have been any riposte to impending doom.

Since 1910 with the first newsreel by the French Pathe called Animated Gazette, and the gaining in popularity in the 1920s, with films from outfits such as British Movietone News, the public were sated by Newsreels.

Wiki — Creative Commons

Features could vary in tone, such as serious news and war coverage in which cameramen used revolutionary small hand cameras, compared to the clunky (Mickey Mouse ears) ones in use in this photo.

The arrival of Black Britons on Windrush was covered by Newsreels, explained here in an excellent piece by Dr Luke McKernan from the British Library.

Then there was the absurd and fashionable and an indifference to news with , jaunty music and jocular mocking narrations, that would earn Newsreels scorn from scholars.

Television News hadn’t been invented in the 1940s, much less refined in the 60s from what is its legacy today. Public arenas designated as cinemas would take to showing five minute features of news from around the world before the main feature. It would be the equivalent of watching, what would now be, a BBC news bulletin before Bond’s Skywalker at a multiplex.

Here’s where the record on history scratches to a stop, and the real relevance of this piece begins, because the shunned newsreel executives from yesteryear may be in for the last laugh. History, does at least have a sense of humour.

No right thinking television news exec would contemplate TV News dying. It’s a multi billion industry, but the writing is writ large on the wall of AI, consumer choice, and new styles.

Just as the threat to Newsreels were technology, style of production, and immediacy, the threat to TV News is the same.

And just as new custodians took over from the old guard, so here too the new contenders will oust an antiquated form of production. This 30 second clip here from a previous senior BBCs News executive sums it up.

I started tracking this phenomena back in the 1990s, when I was part of a UK-wide media social experiment. This piece’s cover photo (thank you David Freeman) signifies the duality in analyses.

Firstly, the experience as a journalist who makes news films and has been doing so since 1994, when as a videojournalist it was unheard off. I’ve since trained thousands of journalist across the world. And before then reporting from Apartheid South Africa for the BBC World Service.

To the executive and academic side of explaining future trends in storytelling, such as here as a keynote speaker to one of the city of London’s dynamic entrepreneurs, The Guild of Entrepreneurs, and News Xchange.

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This week I had the opportunity to speak to staff at a TV station in Denmark about the future. The threat to television exists, from amongst others, technology in AI, public boredom with the status quo, but also new platforms in streaming services. News, but not as you know it, in the same way Newsreels were caught napping is about to have a sense of de ja vu.

“A style of delivery that hasn’t changed… cannot be the answer” in the above clip, says Pat Loughrey, so what is?

Ironically the very thing ‘cinema’ discarded in Newsreels is resurfacing with lessons learned. Cinema back in the 1930s meant different things, a venue and style of filmmaking and not necessarily fictional.

In the 60s one pioneer, Robert Drew with his friends such as Albert Maysles (photographed here at the Sheffield Documentary festival) was transparent about it, giving his way of doing news, a label, “Direct Cinema”.

It survived, albeit in limited form. News executive would be damned if they were going to let a style of filmmaking overturn a business and class model which was gaining ground.

From here to the present lessons have been learned. What will prompt change is happening right now in the shape of new streaming services. Not by taking a style and transposing it on this new form as news executives first did with the Internet. They simply lifted the newspaper onto the web, but by acquiring fresh thinking promulgated by audiences.

At most a decade is the cut off point. It’s easy to sneer. This cutting from 1963 spoke of Mobile phones in the future; something I repeated with a team speaking to the BBC in 2004, when mobiles as they exist then hadn’t surfaced.

The question you might ask yourself, as we have done in our Future Lab, is in the face of change and mergers, such as AT&T’s intended fusion with Disney, what would happen if Netflix or HBO did News?

The future of this revolution, much like the industrial one the shaped the multi-billion pound art industry will involve audiences seeking to come into more contact with new news artists. Expressions will be based on what the artists see rather than what they know. And it will fuel a yearning for new content and innovation from audiences, proven by Netflix’s growth over the last 15 years. People easily forget the past in a hurry even when the provider is one of the News behemoths. We know this by the history of Newsreels.

Dr David Dunkley Gyimah has been a journalist for more than thirty years and a technologist with a degree in Chemistry and Maths. He was an artist-in- residence at the Southbank Centre under its artistic director Jude Kelly CBE. He is based at the University of Cardiff. More on his background here

What is Cinema Journalism and Why it Matters Most for New Generations

 

“The stories have really brought worldly conflicts to the table and have shown the disparities of diverse human views”, 22-year old Steffi from the Phillipines told the Guardian newspaper.

You’d be forgiven for thinking Steffi, like other interviewees, are debating Victor Orbán’s endgame with the EU or the global pandemic but, no. She’s referring to the world’s most profitable movie Marvel’s Avengers Endgame.

“Why is it young people will watch fictional cinema of an event but they won’t bother with the same one in news?”, asks 25-year-old Wenwen from China.

Fifteen years ago I led a team of international journalists through Nato’s simulated war program. It was a high profile project in which we travelled from Northolt’s military base to Sweden on her Majesty’s Royal jet. You can see the insignia above the headrest on my seat. Outside the plane a fighter jet accompanied us in British airspace.

 

 

The military wanted to know more about how the media might cover asymmetric wars. Watch these two short ( 1 min )videos. We’re in a ditch trying to report on a car full injured people. But surrounding us are snipers who’ve trained their laser scope on us. What do we do?

I told the military about an emerging phenomenon in journalism and how a generation related to news through a cinematic experience. “It wasn’t entirely new” I said, “you could go back to Star Wars which represented the conflict between super powers”. But something else was happening amongst the socially media literate.

At the World Editors Forum in Sweden to a gathering of hundreds of people I said the one man/ woman crew as video journalists were driving this, but it wasn’t focused on equipment per se. Video, Mobile, Drone, these are all styles of journalism in themselves but attached to modes of equipment.

 A cinema journalist approaches a story like a director on a movie set. What can I use to best tell this story. It’s a mindset. This was made in 2005 way before TikTok.

 

In the UK working with the Press Association over five years we’d transformed Britain’s regional journalist from writers to video journalists. It was a success in conversion, but new practitioners easily defaulted to styles they lifted from traditional journalism seen on television.

At a summit at CUNY in New York of I joined twenty of the world’s leading media. Vice.com had caught the media by storm and was about to go on Television. I wrote How Vice had become the Voice of a Generation which aligned with this new universe of styles in cinema.

To delegates from world leading tech their London flagship store would become an engaging platform to talk about new styles. It was no coincidence it also emerged during the boom of the iPhone. In 2012 as a judge for the Royal Television Society Awards we watched in awe a documentary, Syria: Songs of Defiance, made by Al Jazeera which was shot entirely on iPhone. For the filmmakers the practicalities of shooting clandestine footage outweighed any aesthetic.

Trust in news over the years has hit low points. It is compounded by news execs telling the same old stories in the same styles as competing media such as Netflix, TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat aggressively compete for attention.

Fictional cinema continues to borrow from an array of medium including news to forge its narratives whilst experimenting with different ways to tell a story. Meanwhile, newsmakers steadfastly refused to see what cinema could offer.

It sounds confusing, even alarming that any mention of journalism or factual storytelling should include cinema in the same breath. Yet some of the world’s leading figures don’t see confusion. Documentary maker Michael Moore says stop trying to make a documentary and make a movie. Martin Scorsese sees the fusion in this short clip. It’s a question of self control.

 

Sixty years ago the pioneer of the mobile news camera Robert Drew posed the question in the overlap of forms. In an interview with him in 2010 he would repeat that whilst TV News people took his equipment they largely ignored his techniques. Reporters, for instance, talk over strong pictures but a generation will uncover future forms that build on his work, he told me (below). Robert Drew was called the father of Cinema Verite or Direct Cinema. He was an out and out newsman.

 

Movements have a life of their own. In 1994 the birth of videojournalism in the UK really took off when five years later the BBC provided it with critical mass. Hence, last week represented a significant breakthrough in the relationship between journalism and cinema when one of the UK’s most respected and journalists Television News’ highest awards in journalism fromThe Royal Television Society (RTS).

The BBC’s Clive Myrie with his camera operator David McIlveen were independently awarded in their respected categories Best Television Journalist of the year and Best Camera Operator of the Year. Clive also won Best News Presenter of the Year.

 

Image by David McIlveen

Working on stories as diverse as COVID-19 and Trump’s America during the election, they produced television that was compelling viewing. It fired up twitter with resounding praise and left some journalists wondering how the team had done it

I saw the news films when they were broadcast last year. They looked nothing like you’d usually see on television news. Through friends I managed to get an interview with Clive whom I’d met at previous events and had been exchanging emails. Asking open questions, Clive provided answers that referenced cinema. That research remains to be produced at large but listen here to what he says as part of three-part question.

 

And here’s the denouement when I showed it to 80 young people I met for the first time studying to become journalists, they too saw connections. From open questions almost all agreed it was cinema or nearer to cinema.

I’ve only scratched the surface in this article in which there is no essence of cinema. There are trends throughout history of emerging forms and practitioners like Clive, David and many others like Raul Gallego Abellan are the ones shinning a light on it.

Ihave been fortunate to have ridden a career that has been rich in innovation, from being one of the first NUJ videojournalist in the UK in 1994 chosen from 3000 hopefuls to 2005 when I won one of the US’s most coveted awards.

The Knight Batten for Innovation in Journalism, which the Guardian newspaper would win in 2011, was for developing a platform before YouTube to show how embedded video, photos and text could work. US judges from the cream of journalism networks said in their words “it foreshadows the future”.

I then followed up my research with an exhaustive study that would lead to a Doctorate. I covered many continents and interviewed some of the most powerful people in news.

It’s not a matter of if, but when, and I wager that Clive’s work, coupled with others I’ve researched will give further impetus to this form, if it’s recognised for its nuanced approach and how it’s accepted by young and mature generations.

 

If you’d like to get in touch with me you can reach me at Gyimahd (at) Cardiff (dot) ac (dot) uk

Dr David Dunkley Gyimah is an international multi award winning journalist and innovator who’s reported from conflict zones in Apartheid South Africa and along the Syrian border. He’s worked for top brands in news and startups. He’s a former artist-in-residence at the UK Southbank Centre and specialises in Human Centred Design Thinking in storytelling running the Futures Story LAB at @Jomec.