How Digital Storytelling revives journalism of the 21st century

 

You know you see what they want you to see. The terrorism in New Zealand; 50 dead, and the manner in which some newspapers and broadcasters reported the event reached a deeply depressing low.

Britain’s Daily Mail’s heavily condemned headline posing its angelic tag of the terrorist demonstrated a leaning to hybrid interference, virtuous signalling and morally questionable standards.

Hybrid interference, or wedging is a strategy writes Mikeal Wiegell adopted by external agents in a society to drive distorting concepts of truth and hence heighten divisions. It’s now no stranger to journalism in liberal societies.

Yet, so far it matters not a jot — at least to the proprietors. Newspapers are privately owned and any public standards to which they might be upheld were strafed by a UK government concealing itself behind press freedom, democracy and self-regulation. You need laws? Levenson 2 (UK press enquiry) was about cleaning up the boil after it had been lanced. The sore has been left open.

The crisis a populace faces in seeing journalism as truth telling has some comparisons with a cultures pre-renaissance when truth and falsehood could mesh. Stories were embellished and accepted.

Gilgamesh, a Sumerian King is characterised by documenters as slaying lions with his bare hands. The ubiquitous heroe’s journey told by Joseph Campbell demonstrates a predilection to myths. Daniel Defoe (1659–1731) is said to be one of the first to practise evidence-based journalism, but it didn’t catch on universally. Today, too in spite of his horrendous actions, terrorism in New Zealand can still, it appears, be re-spun.

The difference now as a generally more enlightened society than our ancestors is we’ve been led to believe newspapers are organs of factual realism truth, when some have grown into ideological frankenstein machines — working against tolerance and liberalism.

Papers with News
The history of populists papers requires context. The Daily Mail (1896), Daily Mirror (1903), and Daily Express (1900) were set up by gentry ideologically aligned with the Conservative Party with the alt view of squashing working class pesky newspapers like the Northern star, whilst filling the void with their own brand of stories, which could be sensationalist.

If you had deep pockets and friends in high places, you effectively stood to control millions of British people, by shaping what they read, and feeding their views, however extreme, to others. By the 1930s, Freud’s psychoanalysis had popularised that people were governed by an irrationality that far outdid rational thought. Gustav Le Bon ‘s The Crowd had shown similar findings in the 19th Century. People would behave en mass and were thus prone to group-think and be susceptible to fear talk that hosted a lie , rather than question it.

As a newspaper baron you could tell your version of reality and hand general elections back to governments-in-waiting, whilst earning free airtime publicity from broadcasters e.g. BBC and What The Papers Say.

Clear impunity.

And for all the twitter storms, flagging dog whistles, outright race batting or stirring divisions, it’s no stretch to believe there’s no such thing as bad criticism. Not being talked about is far worse says Roger Stone. The rest? Who cares. Hence they’ll be another storm of opprobrium soon, and another and another.

How do you manage accountability? Does hitting the papers in the pockets mean anything? According to academic and author Chris Horrie who’s written one of the defining books about tabloids e.g. Stick It Up Your Punter! the Sun newspaper’s owners News International have lost £15m a month (in 1989 prices) since their damning Hillsborough coverage and liverpudlians boycotted the paper. Yet the Sun survives.

Such mass boycott action is rarely successful and the Internet today gives newspapers a wider reach from ad spend to boost profits. The Mail in particular, has shown itself to be innovative. Today, it’s the leading UK online paper — a feat it managed devising unusually lengthy front page scrolls which gamed SEO algorithms and slating click-bait titles with articles psychologically shaped to fuel interest.

Sleight of hand
There’s a game you may have played with a toddler in which you present both hands. One supposedly conceals a ball. The toddler makes a choice. You then open your hand without the red ball, feigning surprise. The toddler puzzled looks disbelieving at the hand again and then behind you, by which time you’ve disposed of the ball. This curiosity, falling for the same trick all the time is a bit like the illusionary presence of Father Christmas. But at some point the illusion cracks.

Somehow in today’s journalism, generally the audience can still be viewed as a toddler, not necessarily in the telling of stories, though this happens, but in the illusion of presenting the “entirety” of an event. What’s not happening in the frame, behind your back hides much needed information.

There was a moment in a BBC political interview programme called On the Record, circa 1990s presented by John Humphrys, when the camera moves away from the a face shot to below the table where you can see the politician desperately wringing his hands. His veil had dropped.

Should we continue to call them newspapers, the free press, or impartial broadcasters at all? A wider debate, but as we head towards 5G and the consequences of ultra low latency, deeper relay remote control, A.I. and what Professor Mischa Dohler from Kings College describes as the coming of the Internet of Skills how might journalism and societies tackle wedging?

Perhaps, as this draft moving image of me presenting news superimposed with data arrays illustrates, we need greater co-creating between multi-disciplines e.g. engineering, neuroscientists to reveal the underlying, which I’ll refer to as the fourth wall. Stats at your fingerprints to debunk human perception, and if you haven’t watched Akala’s surgical delineation of knife crimes in London here, in which the media perceive as a black on black problem, do.

Journalism’s so called higher level of proof is under assault and its response has been exposed as woefully inadequate. Because thus far, so long as you can cite others who support your POV, or persuasively frame a point to massage people’s irrational behaviour (War is good at all costs and repatriating Black brits (Windrush) will bring back a semblances of Great Britain), it’s OK. So long too that you have circulation you can pretty much say whatever you want. And so long also that you meet the minimum threshold of what a news story might look and sound like, you’re quids in.

But perhaps like the toddler seeing through the hand trick, audiences should have the opportunity to see into the fourth wall to gauge the iniquities of hybrid interference. How so?

@ledbyDonkeys describe themselves as four friends minded by the level of hypocrisy in British politician’s rolling back, even denying comments they made. So, they took to first plastering billboards with politicians’ quotes about what they previously said, and now crowd source funds to paste their ripostes. They’ve been successful.

This is activism journalism. It should be obvious journalism. @ledbyDonkeys attempt at exposing duplicitous narratives can only travel so far. And this form too, billboards, good as it is in exposing duplicity, is limiting.

What journalism, the public, and journalism studies requires is a visibility of event’s fourth wall. This is not a semiotic exercise in alternative meanings, but a way of revealing, bringing into the foreground, the outer often discarded rims of events.

This is craft work. Take Luigi Pirandello, a Nobel Prize author and dramatist. In Pirandello’s innovative theatre, the audience is given access to the thinking in the conceiving of the play. They become active participants.

It’s the equivalent of showing the guts of television and its operations at work, the type of transparency demanded in academia. How did you get there? Jeff Jarvis sees greater transparency and accountability within various solutions and social journalism. In 2014, as one of twenty global experts invited to CUNY by Jeff to share a vision of television of the future, I explained a new model of journalism through digital storytelling and cinema journalism. “I like your idea”, Jeff said afterwards, “it’s unusual”.

It’s not uncommon for many a journalists to go out to an event, only to observe it’s not the story the editor wants. All background material, dissent, self critique, out-of-the- ordinary is junked for the spectacle of the performance in mind.

On the rare occasion the fourth wall becomes the obvious story, as when a Trump supporter attacked a camera crew at a Trump raleigh. But watch how quickly the camera adopts the conventionalised reality of journalism again in the clip.

Below, an independent camera catches out-of-the-conventional-frame- material, but the larger spectacle of the 4th wall is also ignored, which includes glimpses of the absurdity of the press operators tightly penned in together — Trump’s target for his charade.

In effect it would be difficult, though not impossible for organisations to reveal their own fourth walls — as all this would be is a continuum of their own agendas.

But what if just like @ledbyDonkeys, a crowd sourced network deconstructed what main hybrid interferers were doing? In Latvia, a prime time show Melu Teorija is dedicated to revealing spins and untruths made up by Russian active measure operators. In the Ukraine their show is Stop Fa̶k̶e̶ News

And this is Lithuania’s attempt to fight Russian Active Measures operators by launching a collaboration between Lithuania’s Military Strategic Communications (STRATCOM) and Elves — the equivalent of trolls.

But what if the distortion is inside, and how much more could you deconstruct a fourth wall to expose what’s going on? In effect, in UK institutions, 4th wall journalism hasn’t much started, and the public and a new generation of journalists are walking into ever complex wedgings.

Furthermore how can you guarantee people will watch/read what you’ve made? Not unusually too that logical argument you’ve constructed may fail to convince those acting irrationally. Perhaps, a friend said, a new form of A.I for irrational arguments needs building. Emotional Intelligence and engagement also is key.

In the meantime, a combination of innovation in identifying new (digital/ investigative) tools, and also in the production of the stories is merited. Story constructs that takes elide within and out of the ecosystem that guardians frame so tightly as “journalism”, taking us into wider realms of Factual Storytelling or Occured Events Digital Storytelling (OEDS), a term coined to delineate from the multi-verse of digital storytelling.

I’ll explain further in the next post. Other observed trends can be gauged from this short video. 

Dr David Dunkley Gyimah is an international award winning innovator.

 

 

Death Marches and Rabbit holes - inside the multi planar world leading new media design

It’s that tingling, numbing sensation in the fingers, closely followed by the perennial fight to keep your eyes open. Focus, focus! There’s a flaw in the code. What’s more there’s another three days ahead of this. The room, intermittently, visited by others, displays cans of strewn cola and pizzas — the diet of start-upers.

Memories like this don't leave you; all part of the lifestyle - death marches and rabbit holes. That  scene in the matrix where Seraph has to fight Neo and declares you don't know what someone  is like unti you fight them. Well, in the dotcom boom you didn't know what a person was really like until they're really tired and find that little extra mile of problem-solving neurons.

Soho 2001 seems a long time ago, but in 2016 a new generation is at it. In 10 contact days spread over 10 weeks in between a raft of other modules a group of students with no prior knowledge of the web and comms will have the opportunity to go from zero to heros pitching their sites at a google exec at google headquarters in London, but first there is the little matter of understanding what it takes to create a site.

There was a time when when there was a clear division of labour: Front end folks e.g. designers and project managers were the presentables, a mix of casual and denims. Back enders, usually coders and system engineers looked like they worked the vice squad undercover, and then there are the intermediaries such as SEO marketeers and data analysts.

In the visceral multiskilled world of millennia with zero hour contracts,  'bait and switch' policies and heightened risk taking, you'd be a fool if you didn't try and understand the mechanics of the whole work flow. This is the era of the jack of all trades and master of all. Paradoxically, that doesn't mean becoming a loner on the basis you can do it all.

In 1998 I learned to code, but was so hung up on the narcism of showing my stuff that I struggled at what to show and how. Agency do it with aplomb attributing success to the team. On your own, beating your chest can come across as self-aggrandisement syndrome.

I took the plunge anyway with this I found on wayback, the Internet archive being one of the first scrawled (2003) designs, using HTML and Flash. It looks awful by today’s standards, but back in the days, it held its own. You can see also my influences from this comparative screen grab of Channel 4 about the same time.

I took the plung anyway with this I found on wayback, the Internet archive being one of the first scrawled (2003) designs, using HTML and Flash. It looks awful by today's standards, but back in the days, it held its own. You can see also my influences from this comparative screen grab of Channel 4 about the same time.

But guess what, whilst Channel 4 had a team of web coders and designers, I was just me.

Amongst some of my top stories at the time, my film work with heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis fighting Tyson, an interview with a former head of the CIA about their new recruiting policy, a diving expedition to the cold waters of Gallipoli and my international work in South Africa and its townships freelancing for the BBC World Service.

In 2003, the traditional route, still employed by broadcasters to get noticed was a showreel on VHS. The VHS has since been dropped, but broadcasters are still fixated on the opening 15 seconds of what you look like and how you sound. I would later find out it was one of the biggest barriers to hiring minorities, on the basis you just didn't look and sound right.

Now, today our media has a place to breath, but what's the skinny on tooling up yourself?

Our students in ten weeks do the following

1. Coding HTML 5 and CSS3 and Java
2. Coding for mobile first and responsive designs
3. Creating the brief that underpins research into the name, and purpose of the site. This tends to be a rigorous exercise employing both working in a team, turn taking, and understanding one's limits.  Members gather data on the exemplars that may influence them, performing their own internal analysis. Referred to as white paper syndrome, more often than not students will struggle on how to get started and will require a series of nudges.
4. Their efforts are evaluated through a systematic approach to critiquing.  Students then must present their work. Self-organise into a division of labour with an overview of collective responsibility. We encourage students to take on roles they would not mormally assume, so they're outside their comfort zone.
5. More often than not here too, by critiquing students come to learn of their own flaws. The knowledge exchange approach is not to indicate what anyone might percieve as wrong, for there are rarely straight cut flaws in this process. After all it's their design. My role is to question why they're doing something and the reasons they got to where they are
6. Back to design, coding to build on their briefs. This becomes a collective process, something akin to a thesis. Their proposition must lead to questions about their aim of their thesis and they'll be picking any number of methodologies towards that process. It is however an artistic approach, so there is flexibility and creativity in building the process.
7. Design principles are re-emphasised, with hierachies and different cognitve design and compositional process. Often I'll use my knowledge of the Romantics, impressionists and classical painters. How did the great masters teach us how to see the world and what conventions do we possess to decode websites. A good point here is that different countries have  different conventions at looking at style. This too is dependent on the audience and the era. Note how my 2003 Mrdot design ( above) wasgood for its time, but is deflating now.
8. Videojournalism and photoshop compositional workflows are introduced, alongside other rich media, but the prompt is partially the student. By now they're taking on so much knowledge that any new knowledge will only be of use, if they have a direct need, so we set up scenarios for that need.
9. Further critiques and presentations. The web presentation must complement a booklet handout they must put together for VCs to read. This critique often yields more testing, particularly with the audience and different operating systems.
10. By the fifth week we hold surgeries to find out from students their concerns. These often yield a range of issues from wanting more coding time, to the use of rich media.
11. The week after is soft launch. This is death march teritory. It's often one of the biggest snags. Design, code and content flaws arise. Here too the content, style and tone can be assessed with their market and students are encouraged to poll, test, conduct qualitative analysis with their target audience.
12. Hard lauch follows with tweets to industry, friends etc about the launch. Another death march ensues. SEO strategies on the page and strategies of writing for SEOs are debated at length.
13. The site is up. Back to the brief. Does the site match the brief, if not it needs to. Students present a pecha kucha - ten minutes or less to sell their site to a VC or expert. Here business plans for expansion and social media methodologies are finessed.
14. Presentation to Industry. In the following years we've presented to Channel 4 News, ITV, senior exec at the BBC WS. This year we're at google.
15.  The next three weeks involves building their own sites, based on the workflow above. This involves identifying who the students would like to work for and how we approach the employer.

 Presenting at the BBC World Service and Channel 4 News

This year's Onliners presenting at Google.

A couple of take aways here. Whilst the emphasis appears to be laid on skills, which is necessary, the main investigations involve cognitive skills at understanding the psychology of websites. For instance, why would anyone come to your site? What's their motive? What do you want from them? How do they navigate your site? How do colours affect them? How is your writing style tempered to the audience?

The issues coupled with the whole concept of web design become the rabbit hole. It becomes addictive. On several occasions students will express at the end of the course that they never want to go near a site again. Many email me to say they are now working in online.

There is one abiding memory that I have which keeps me focused and spurs me on. That if you have the potential, if you believe in what you can achieve, if your dreams keep you excited, then online is not a job, it’s a window into your world that showcases whet you want and others may take some joy from too.

In 2005, I won ( a dream) one of the US' most coveted international digital awards, the Knight Batten for a website that has changed since but was built on these principles. Since then many of the students I have been fortunate to interact with have come close to their dreams.

And all because of Death Marches and Rabbit Holes.

The University of You -Digital's impact on you

It’s no revelation we all want to be like someone. Caravaggio really wanted to be Leonardo Da Vinci. Popes wanted to be monarchs. Ronaldo would like to be Pele and Britain’s Prime minister fancies himself as Margaret Thatcher.

Young boys imprint on their fathers, daughters on their mothers — generally. And you, you want to be like the the person with the best twitter feed, or Linkedin ranking.

On the web, populist articles spout how to get the best social media feed, how to be the best instragramer, how to be this and how to that!

It’s not enough to be you anymore, you have to be her or him — with the nom de plume. Same face different mask.

I’m just as guilty. In my lectures I ask Masters students to look for the exemplar in the field and study their methods. But I add at some point break away; become you — again.

When I started as a broadcaster, I imprinted upon Sir Trevor Macdonald. Clear diction and enunciation and an inflexion that emphasised the power of speech.

I interviewed security chiefs e.g. ex-head of the CIA, created 'Obama's 100 Days' video with a live orchestra at the South Bank Centre, coded and built websites, and recently shot a film on training young Syrian journalists near the Turkey-Syria border -- not enough.

But if our idols where once our guides, today they manifest as nicotine craves. We would no sooner slay those we could admire, because frankly we see ourselves as better than them.

Deference has given way to a maniacal streak of impersonation. What ever happened to you? The English poet and painter William Blake said 'The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance—it is the illusion of knowledge.'

We simply cannot get enough, and the more we acquire, the more humble we should become. Often, we don't.

You with the imperfections, you who gradually and methodically got to where you did. You who knew you could do better, but had values.

On twitter we all want to be heard, we chirp noisily across the canopy. We’re incessant twitchers — looking at our feeds. Our attention spans wane after 5 mins. Video is 6 seconds, and news 140 characters.

The X-factor popularises public humiliation and a gladiatorial baying of blood. Intolerance, unBritishness, is now packaged as de rigueur --for the sake of TV ratings.

Strange constructs become a cultural norm. Where in the human evolution of speech did 140 characters define how to converse? There’s no power in diversity. To be different is to be isolated. I’m black, you’re white, it doesn’t matter — salute Michael Jackson. But it’s also what makes us different.

All these phenomenon are people-made. The Tories bash the poor; Labour sneers at the well-off. In a land of common sense, common sense has become a commodity; reflection, an anathema, foresight and wisdom — a daft concept.

But we can still recover lost ground. An empathy of understanding, a recognition that imperfection exists, if not welcomed, and that time is a friend, we should handle deftly.

Stop, look, listen. Be You! Become the university of you. Become the person in an era of opportunity to be that unique voice — YOU.

David next speaks at an International Business Summit in London. His PhD examines a future immersive emergent story form.

The Lone Videojournalist, has ended - Next its the Super Collaborators.

For sale - the serious side of me

By David Dunkley Gyimah connect on Google 

I have put myself up for sale - a risque move amongst those who will fail to see the point.

Awww! Do I really need to spell it out? So, like, I'm not selling myself, but my attributes, which obviously come with me. So yes, I'm selling but not in that maladroit way.

But I am making a finer point.  If you're the uber digitalist working alone? You shouldn't be. Collaboration is about to get supertanker big, or at least if trend extrapolation is anything to go by, it should.

The videojournalist, YouTube loading, self-twitting individual is dead!  Here comes the epic collaborator. Let me explain!

The title of this post then is a reworking of French philosophers Barthes and Foucalt's insight into the author and imminent death of the author.

Having found their voice in the renaissance, the concept of an author marking their work with a distinct signature had waned for these two towering figures.

Barthes main point was the moment you attach authorship to the text, you limit its potential.  It may sound existential but what Barthes is getting at is to remove the identity of the author and in many ways enjoy the product for what it is, not the name of the person.

Would One Direction's Best Song Ever, be a great song, if you didn't know it was One Direction?  Er don't answer that nearly 157,000,000 have. Barthes obviously wasn't thinking about Boy band branding.

For Sale. I can do the work look. David filming on the Turkey side near the Syrian Border

The Author
However, authorship or identity is a difficult thing to achieve. As Focault noted, everyone can write, but not everyone is an author. Similarly, and this makes sense  - not all twitters, videojournalists and social networkers are the same.

But there's a broader point and its the economic scarcity principle that provides an alternative argument to the death of you, the lonesome twitter dancing, You Tube uploading, Instagram mover and shaker, author.

The more something becomes available, the less desirable it become. Its price, the level of entry removes its mystique.

If you remember the frenzied days of 2000 to 2005. To blog was to becoming, to video was to look venerable. To tweet before anyone else had (circa 2007) built you a loyal following very quickly and was considered outstanding.

David's name tag presenting at SXSW. Austin Texas, about videojournalism and social.

The room all of a sudden got very busy, and very crowded - all for the right reasons. Because, now we're hearing from people whose views could outdo guests on David Letterman or strip Paxman of his king of the media jungle label.

No! Even if you had the world's foremost 500 brilliant people to listen and follow, when does your life begin?

Sea Change in Education
The change from the individualist to a collaborative group happened in education about 2005, albeit implicitly. Lecturers woke up one day to find Gilmor's aphorism of the Wisdom of crowds staring them in the face.

Now, for the first time in public, the combined intellect of a wisdom of crowds of students congregating on Facebook could challenge the pedagogy and authority of the academic. Few institutions had an answer, rather than roll with the punches and devise new methods, the ostrich scenario dominated.

Many educational establishments survive because of their analogue knowledge [see last post]. Some provided a glimpse of new working-educational practices to match the sign of the times. One of those has been a government-run programme called KTP.

The knowledge transfer programme  (KTP) sees a recent graduated hired by a company to drive a project and mentored by an academic. Er, I happen to be one of the KTP advisors.

Meanwhile back in the industrial world, the notion of the videojournalist, twitter and You Tuber being dead then can be viewed as an inevitability. It comes with the dynamic swings and roundabouts of society. Societies change and when they do their needs alter.

One minute in the 1920s the film industry said it was about collaboration. Next thing in the 1960s the French said it was about the auter, then years later we tired of the self-publicity seeking auter to go collaboration again.

The difference today is we're living out decades in a matter of years. Years have contracted to weeks.

The new Authors
Tarantino, Soderbergh, and Spike Lee may sound like they did it themselves when the film trails " a Tarantino film", but even they know it's a collaboration between many workers and that only a sleight of hand seeks to reward them as the progenitors.

The film industry is a good barometer in how to respond to the market place. It is one of the most durable industries second to the arms exports in the US for the money it generates. Throw as many invectives at the studios as you can, they're skilled in the warfare of driving their businesses.

If you were to note an overwhelming change to the movie world in view of the social, digital world of everyone-can-do-this, it's been about raising the bar to a level of super collaborations.

World War Z ( read Rosenblum's take on this) Avatar, The Great Gatsby...Films, have gone epic. The list of collaborators is the size of a small country and eveyone is a winner.

There's evidence of this success in journalism. 18Days in Egypt,  Storyful, and these little known about digital student class in India generating digital heat by bringing everyone together.

Collaboration isn't a new thing.  Ask Brian Storm of Media Storm - one of the new agencies in digital media which is blaizing a trail.

Also, Viewmagazine.tv - my site won it awards for its collaboration, as did another project called the Family, coming second place at Channel 4s Digital Awards.  It's just that collaborations this time has a more visible value in a market where so many people have the same or complimentary skills, and you don've time to read what 500 people continually say.

At SXSW when they said do Epic, they weren't kidding. Now its super Epic

Size matters! Size and quality makes for an even more interesting mix. Admit it, when Michael Fassbender, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diza, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt and Rosie Perez are appearing in the same film - and think of Pacinno and De Niro being featured too, that's epic.

So I am for sale, and you should too. For the potential of the outcome to do something epic. I have done a few, but time to raise the bar.

One aspiration I have is to be involved in a new type of university that marries multi-disciplines in a way that we've far from accomplished at the moment.

And lets start it off in Africa, Ghana, where the difference would be palpable, otherwise I'm good anyone else. email David@viewmagazine.tv


Read The theory of videojournalism - one of the site's most popular blogs.

David Dunkley Gyimah  presenting at the ONA NY relayed at Time Square. David is a senior university  lecturer completing his PhD into a future of media. He is an artist in residence at the Southbank Centre. This year he is a chair of the UK's foremost television journalism awards The RTS.

Why Do U.K. Videos Always Seem to Go Viral? Viewmagazine.tv response

Advertising Age asks the question referencing this brill, quirk viral.


More on the article here. Here's my response below.

@kcorrick thanks for tweet.

Great pts from previous posters, but there's something else in the UK. You've seen it in BYAs (Young Brit Artists e.g. Hirst), Grime/rare grooves(8os), and starting out film/commercial makers such as Cunnigham and Glazer (Guinness Ad voted best ever by Brits); that is an undercurrent, indie-come-good, might even say subversive movement that bangs against tradition.

And viral ad making was everything anti to the methodology of classic ads until relatively recently. The Viral Factory - a major proponent to Brits viral movement was not too long ago wrestling the status quo, now I doubt many Brit viralists will not pay some form of homage.

In 1999 I was working as a creative director for an interactive ad company in Soho (London) re-active.net and most of ad companies thumbed their nose to this new thing called "viral" It was cheap and followed no apt discourse. I recall one of the founders of The Viral Factory explaining their plans to us. Our mouths dropped, but that a wasn't universal reaction.

This creative (DIY) disruption is something the UK is particularly good at. Their indie TV scene is equally something to admire, which has govts attempting to find ways of helping out to relatively little success.

Your title could also have read: Why Does the U.K. Music Scene Always Seem to Go Viral? Semantically incorrect, but no less worthy. I conducted interviews with greats like Clinton, Fela Kut and Roy Ayers who marvelled at what creatives here could do with their sound.

Personally, I'd say there's a bloody mindedness, coupled with that old Brit jape, but yes as many that get made and seen, there are dead virals strewn across the innards of broadband pipes that we'll never get to make you happy, happy, happy, joy, joy, joy.

David Dunkley Gyimah
Artist in Residence, South Bank
Maker, Viewmagazine.tv
Clinton, Fela Kuti and Roy Ayers who marvelled at

Calling all Digital Journalist, ethnic journalists in London etc.

Photo: a couple of years ago Programme maker and academic David Dunkley Gyimah hosted B3 Media's "Breaking, Entering and Staying in the Game" at the ICA Cinema with Nelson George (US' Filmmaker, writer), Catherine Johnson (Screenwriter, Bullet Boy, and author), Ray Paul (Executive Producer 1 Xtra, Specialist & Live Music programming 1Xtra), and Maxine Watson (BBC commissioning executive)

'New Media, Diverse Platforms' - NUJ Black Members' Conference
Will new media mean new opportunities for Black journalists? All ethnic minority NUJ members welcome. Speakers include David Dunkley Gyimah, international award-winning journalist and lecturer. Light lunch. Saturday 7 March 2009, 11.15pm-4pm at NUJ HQ, 308 Grays Inn Road, London, WC1X 8DP. To register email joannef@nuj.org.uk.

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A couple of days ago this (below) was posted on the Press Gazette's website. It concerned a major newspaper group for ethnic minorities folding and then finding a buyer. I'm speaking at the above NUJ gathering next week so felt this post apt and timely. Here's the thread. See what you think?

Press Gazette reports

New Nation saved from closure after buyer is found

New Nation and two other Afro-Caribbean titles have been saved after a buyer was found by administrators.

Last month, the Ethnic Media Group – which ran New Nation, Eastern Eye, and other ethnic titles – went into administration. ......(more - the link is further down).

It led me to post a response, which was replied to by Haile Dube Yaas who said

David, the fact is the mega-websites of The Guardian and Telegraph are loss-makers but are subsidied because they believe that is the future. The black media do not have the resources of these giants and need to break even today, not tomorrow. .......

I then replied to Haile.

The absence of any press which has had a relationship with readers, let alone ethnic, in communities establishing and developing their identities is likely to have consequences. This shouldn't happen I say, so what's the strategy?

Why you need (ethnic) media. In some cases it acts as a counter balance to the perceived status quo. When BBC 3 ran a populist but highly controversial programme: The Trouble with Blackmen, it caused an outrage within the press. I set about remaking my own version interviewing people like Doreen Lawrence. More here

Ethnic Journalism in trouble.

Please do take a look and see what you think. Here's the whole thread on the Press Gazette, but before you link of there, this below provides further chill winds.

From the US from New Media America: No Tears for the Chronicle. and from the editor:

Editor’s Note: The San Francisco Chronicle is teetering on the brink of collapse, if it cannot find a buyer or further slash its staff and operating costs. Bought by the Hearst Corp. in 2000, the newspaper lost more than $50 million last year and its readership has steadily declined. NAM editors asked ethnic media journalists and media observers what life would be like without the city’s major daily.

NAM Staff Comments on News of Possible Closure of SF Chron from New America Media on Vimeo.

What is the solution because there are some damn fine writers here, the US and elsewhere finding it hard. Not because of them. But because the dynamic has changed.

No one would have said the Monks of Valencia circa 1600s were not superb as they handcrafted the scriptures, but Gutenberg's press changed the dynamics.

So what do you do. Just what do you do. Do something or do nothing?

BTW if you're from the NABJ or similar it'd be great to hear from you. I have attended NABJ gatherings on and off since 1994- the Big Unity in Atlanta.

Who would have thought back then of this crisis. A crisis indeed for all, but acute for smaller business and ethnic press.