Are websites like Buzzfeed the future of journalism?

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

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Are websites like Buzzfeed the future of journalism asks ABC's Mark Colvin?

It's a question many professional journalists are asking. 

Yesterday I had a meeting at the innovator of newspaper journalism, the Guardian and the question came up again.

What about Snowfall from the New York Times revelling in the art of the long form and html5. Is that the future of journalism?

The simple answer to any of these questions is no! That's not to belittle the efforts of the NYT and Buzzfeed, because they represent A future of journalism.

Unfortunately, being dismissive of anything innovative is a favourite sport for bloggers and critics. 

I don't want to do either. But if Buzzfeed isn't, what is? I'll come back to this at the end of the piece.

In 2005, one of the America's august institutions, the Knight Batten Award, handed me 1st place prize. I built a site and created an experience that used video in a manner that was not being deployed by major publications.

I addressed some of the America's leading newsmakers at the National Press Club in Washington DC. It was frightening, as well as great fun. I croaked several times :)

The US' news innovation standard

The Knight Batten juror called my work:

This interactive magazine foreshadows the future with its use of hip new story forms and highly video centric web tools.

- 2005 Batten Advisory Board Judges.

But viewmagazine.tv wasn't the future of journalism, though it has given me an insight into determining innovation. 

More recently, my PhD I am completing addresses the future of journalism. But that's another story. 

Here's the story that makes present sense of Buzzfeed and Snowfall.

Firstly, there is no definitive future of journalism. To ask that question is the equivalent of asking whether impressionism is the future of art.

The reason why it still gets asked is the illusion that the western model of journalism is still sacrosanct and stolid. 

Ah! a Guardian journalist said, there is no Western model of journalism, there's simply journalism. Er ! wrong. 

In the same way there are different forms of governance, there are different forms of journalism. 

I spent my teenage years growing up in Ghana and then in the 90s was asked by Ghana's director general of its state television to help relaunch their  morning shows and news. 

I learned then that they had a different understanding of journalism. And then I came across this on TED. The under cover journalists says at 09:54 "My kind of journalism may not fit in other continents".



Truth is, for the historians journalism was always contested. Pulitzer, whose name adorns the coveted Pulitzer award was reviled for what he was doing to journalism. 

The future of journalism before the 1994 revolution of the Internet and before The Clue Train Manifesto and the Dotcom boom could not have fathomed that anything filtered through the net would decompose classic journalism.

Who would have thought, as this video of me presenting the news in 1995 captures a nascent Internet and newspapers scrabbling to get on board.

Clue Train Manifesto showed us the web was social, before Social Media became a social norm. You need to read it.

Before the web, you could read as many text books and ask as many professionals and they all returned core values about journalism. 

Of course they would. Journalism was then an exclusively professional practice.

Art and Journalism
However the parallels with Art and painting are striking.

Before the turn of the 19th century, the Art establishment at the Academy de Baux in France ruled what was art and what wasn't and who could show their material in galleries sanctioned by the academy.

Then a new movement spawned. It took its cues from realism. To artists who would previously only paint kings, queens and the gentry, realism dared artists to paint peasants and ordinary folks tilling the land ( the Internet, you and me).

Impressionism went one step further. It was the buzzfeed of the 19th century. Interpretation was now down to the artist. The sky that was always pained blue in classical art was now painted green and the green pastures of classic painting became blue.

The Academy de Baux ridiculed and ostracised the impressionists. If anything, sadly, they  Hitler who saw impressionism as degenerate, according to this BBC report two days ago, agreed with the Academy.

Impressionism really took off, according to David Hockney in a BBC programme on his exhibition, when the easels and paints became mobile (small cameras).

Art could no longer be contained. It was set free and many other movements were spawned e.g. cubism, surrealism and pop art.

Today, amongst the the most valuable pieces of art happen to be impressionist paintings. See here for the list

This is where journalism is now. Buzzfeed (pop art) is no more the future of journalism than Snow fall (magic realism).

In an era of plenty, made possible by you and what you want, there can never be a singularity of journalism. We passed that point. Interpretation, appealing to our sense of fairness, joi de vivre, and immersivity. 

These are becoming key factors. The purists and generalists may not see these as integral to journalism. Frankly, it doesn't matter what the academy says anymore, it's whether you can appeal and sell stories retaining the difference between fictional and fact.

The future of journalism lies in the past. What we'll see is a cacophony of media forms -- which does not bode well for the academy if you're looking to turn a buck.

In speaking to the executive at the Guardian, my parting comment was that there are any number of technologies are vying for journalism's future e.g. data, videohyperlinking, glass, presence reality, iphone, and my favourite the outernet.

What makes any of these relevant to the future is their mass adoption for social needs. And while it's difficult to spot this, the approach is always cognitive.

Technology that simplifies the process of story telling, which itself is changing.

David Dunkley Gyimah is an International award winning videojournalist and news innovator. He is the chair of the jury for innovative news at the RTS Awards in the UK, The UK's highest TV News awards. He is an academic and artist in residence at the Southbank centre.

Reputations - David Dunkley Gyimah

A few experts who have spoken about David Dunkley Gyimah's work.

1.

2. Jon Snow is one of the UK's leading news anchors


jon snow on david from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.



3. SXSW is the largest creative gathering, which happens in Austin Texas. Getting to present at SXSW is a rare and huge honour. Here's what some of the delegates said below.

4. NewsXchange is a crucial gathering for the world's news media. David spoke there as a panel. Below is what the organiser said about David's contribution.

5. Invitation to speak to the BBC's leaders.

Dear David  

We are currently organising BBC Worldwide's annual Leadership Conference in October which is aimed at the top 150 senior leaders across the company. We would like to invite you to speak at a session focusing on 'Creativity and Innovation: Creating the Winning Idea' which currently has speakers including Innocent; Ten Alps and Bebo. 

The session will run on Thursday 5th October from  11:20 - 13:30. With your fantastic experience in both old and new media and your insights into next generation TV both in the UK and US, you would be a valuable addition to the panel. Your slot would be around 20-25mins, followed by a 60 minute Q&A panel session in which you would jointly answer questions from our staff.

About the Leadership Group Our Leadership Group consists of around 150 of our senior staff from across our seven business areas: Global TV Sales, Global Channels, Content &Production, Magazines, Digital Media, Home Entertainment and Children's. They are a lively and talented group of people who would greatly enjoy the opportunity to hear you speak and we very much hope that you will find the event interesting too. 

Head of Communications
BBC ( name with held)

6. Four-hour presentation to National Union of Journalists in Denmark

Hi David, Just want to say thank you for your performance at VP. The VP-thing was better than we hoped it to be, and all the reactions were more than positive. Danish jouranlists go to a lot of conferences, so they are not just being polite, and they - and Søren and I - were overly happy with your performance. Hope you have time to come again when we do it again this summer?! 

Kind regards,

Martin Ramsgård 
Video Play, Denmark (NUJ)







7.  

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 10.  Michael Rosenblum is the father of videojournalism

About David

David has won or been nominated for several international awards in media, journalism and innovation. He has worked in the media for 27 years and combines consultancy with his work at university.
This year he is a chair of the jury for journalism innovation for the Royal Television Society. (RTS). The RTS is one of the UK's most prestigious bodies for media, journalism and communications. You can contact David at david@viewmagazine.tv or via tweeter @viewmagazine

You can find out more about David's work from Viewmagazine.tv and this blog viewmag.blogspot.com

The Human Cyborg, Videojournalism, and laissez-faire

David in Tahrir Square February 2013

I'm often amazed at the number of videojournalism courses or documentary courses I come across, which attempt to neatly package these various media forms. 

Often they're littered with dogma, offering quick and easy solutions to a dialectic language that is anything but simple. When I helped set up the Press Association's videojournalism programme that would train legions of regional journalists from 2005 onwards, this was a primary concern.

There is a fundamental reason for the lies of a quick fix. It mirrors film making at its inception when the camera's scientific purpose, its ability to capture an image was paramount for Lumiere and co, and furthermore the commercialisation of the process trumped any aesthetic representation.

To make money from the process charlatans learned to deliver an intoxicating ikea- assembly formula, which appealed to its recipients.  After all how could they make a living.

This, however, obscured the wider point. Telling you how to do something as the only mode of comprehending film making obfuscates the discourse of this fantastical medium and its ability to invent language.

In essence teaching videojournalism, documentary or film making is not a formal process, but an artistic one. It resides in the power of thought, in the lecturers' ability to stimulate how you think and for the students rationale at refluxing those thoughts, returning them with interest.

Behind every great director of filmmaker you've ever known lies a student once who pursued the craft with an intense curiosity.

In Detachment (2011) Brody's character,  a supply teacher to problematic children sums it up when he says, If I give you the images, where is your power of thought.  He adds you need to be constantly assimilating knowledge.



Dampening our senses

That's problematised because we've entered the era of the cyborg, the human cyborg, not a computational being of prometheus power, but one which requires an ecology of byte-size command signs. Here, quick fixes, gibberish and physical tasks mimick heroine's quick hit as the norm.

The power of thought is reflexive and in generations to come, 140 words, a singular manipulated image, and a point-and-shoot camera will probably give room for nothing else. It's not your fault, that's technological progress of sorts.

But if those that teach negate to tell their charges the other world, the one which offers an alternative deep richness that require meditative attention, then we have wronged a society. Bordwell captured this as the implicit (hidden) meaning lauding Hitchcock as the master of thought-film.

In Cairo, while addressing the Arab league summit, this was my message. Film communicates to us in a way that the signification of verbal language cannot and vice versa. When the conversation tipped to the acquisition of knowledge, western knowledge, I was firm in pointing out that the answers to cinema journalism in Cairo rests in their own literature and the likes of Naguib Mahfouz.

David speaking at the Arab league Summit in Cairo

Meanwhile to talk of digital now as the new collapsible economy, blurring of boundaries, and multiple disciplines, wholly ignores the golden period of the early 90s which Tom Gunning refers to a Cinema of Attractions.

Cinema journalism, that I practice and teach, is itself a well worn path, but we can certainly tease out strands that have a specificity about them in the millennium. That's the power of thought.  And that power , as witnessed by Malick's "To the Wonder (2012)" can become so intricate that in the end  words, the signifiers, will not do.

In Malick's world we're invited to think within thought, a philosophical quest that pushes the language of film to its extreme, careering towards Sigmund Freud's  psychoanalysis. Confusing, perhaps, but it's the one thing we must nurture through debate, discourse and trial.

On viewmagazine.tv I'm about to post a trailer from Tahrir, as a follow up, to Tahrir Memento. It features no dialogue, but as Dirk Bogarde would tell us, the camera's ability to portray thought.

It's the thing that we cannot afford to let go.

David Dunkley Gyimah is completing his PhD into the documentary making process. He has been a journalist and filmmaker since 1987 working for the BBC, Channel 4 News, ABC News and WTN. He is the recipient of the US Knight Batten Award for Innovation in Journalism, and an International Award winning videojournalist from the Berlin festival. lectures at the University of Westminster.

Beyond News and Videojournalism

Innovation fuels ideas; that much is in agreement.

And innovation is determined by technological advances. We require it and in so doing run to the next show with its clear label of techno-fetishism, where everything we surmise about video and videojournalism is about equipment.

Watch online as bag after bag is opened to reveal its camera-porn contents. Its proclamation is "You too could be a great video maker".

Sometimes our ideas must marry with the latest camera technology to realise our dreams; James Cameron waited ten years to make Avatar, the equipment had not been invented.

And then there are others when technology leads us to play, like a kaleidoscope, and through serendipity, we make a find, dramatic or otherwise.

American film makers dumped Edisson's Zoescope for the Lumiere's Cinematographe more than a 100 years ago to make movies. Serendipity is how Laforet might explain his ground-breaking film which launched a generation to DSLR filming.

In 1994 Sony could not have predicted its 3 chip consumer camera would be gobbled up by professionals; the price rose overnight, just as Canon never saw the rush for its DSLRs coming. There will be new ones soon; technology is cyclical.

Yet innovation is not wedded to technology; it is about ideas. And ideas are about the philosophies of thought, their complexity and simplicity.  Ultimately whether you're using a super 8mm or Hollywood-set Arriflex, it is about how you translate a concept to something that has meaning - for you and the audience.

For Heidegger a part of that thought lay in Dassein; where for instance we need not have experienced flight to the moon to be able to conjure up lunar imaginations. Yet also the complexity of thought relies on the nutrition of experiences.

These experiences can be experiential; you went through them directly, hence the bragging rights on your CV about travel or years of doing, or otherwise epistemological - you learnt by reading, and looking and are a grade A student.

So knowledge, broad knowledge, is desired and knowledge is not fixed. What was known yesterday, is not the same now.

This was one of the enquires within hermeneutics, which is increasingly why I argue against the notion of the expert's knowledge, and as former students will testify to a "wisdom of intelligible crowds" approach.

The solutions sought for this generation must be a fundamental overhaul of corporate News, the biggest of impostor of our times as a naturalised construct.

Because corporate News as I call it still holds sway to our thinking, a thinking instituted in the 1960s, and that is in spite of the Internet.

We require new voices to explain the ramifications thematic events e.g. European elections, against the backdrop of the destitute, the Rosettas (1999) the Dardenne's award winning Cannes film about a young girl looking for a job; or Le Fils (2002).  And we need to reflect unsighted themes that interrogates societies such as Asgar Farhadi's movie Seperation (2011).

The test for beyond news is tilting audience's expectations to matters that concern contemporary audiences in a braver syntax that challenges the present construct called News.

Because at the moment few seem to care.

DSLR Cinema videojournalism - a personal view from research study

Presenting at the University of Reading last Tuesday gave me the opportunity to précis a four year PhD study in videojournalism across a filmic expanse culminating in DSLR videojournalism.

It was followed up yesterday with a great meeting at the Southbank Centre where I'm looking to get creative with one of the most exciting movements in modern times - Simon Bolivar Orchestra

In itself there's much to talk about, but my thesis slants towards a lived experience (phenomenology), which enriches the research data. I have been a dedicated videojournalist since 1994 - one of the first official ones in the UK, but have worked in the media, starting with the BBC in 1987.

Below I give a visual history of my work and some of my thoughts -some of which I shared last week.

Undoubtedly DSLR opens an interesting chapter for videojournalism and film making. It is both seductive and functional. Here I'm in Tahir Square shooting an elliptical piece on Egypt's uprising. The trailer's showing on viewmagazine.tv at present

The shoot suited the style of camera and look, which is ultimately the point. Art philosopher Gombrich's well known dictum of "schema plus variation" posits we are always set to improve upon what we do, yet the choices we make are as stylistic as they are functional.

The DSLR was the appropriate choice; just as an artist might choose different paints, easels and strokes to express themselves.

Below's film was with Heavyweight boxer Lennox Lewis in the period he was gearing up for his unifying fight with Mike Tyson in 2002. I was one of only two film makers allowed into his camp for two weeks and in this case the only film maker allowed into the ring.

The DSLR lens' clarity might have been welcome, but I could still achieve a shallow depth-of-field with a BVW camera. I did however double up with a VX1000 which drew quite a lot of mirth during the press conference.

I shared this shoot giving one of my talks at Apple Store. What has been a requisite in all story formulation has been news training which provides the ability to think fast and often shoot a piece with no fat. 

This isn't a given in news production. For instance at Channel One TV we the videojournalists couldn't afford the time for twenty questions, like the network journalists, so four five questions in we made a decision and would end the interview, often telling the interviewee what quote we would use.

On more exploratory shoots, what might be termed documentary, though this term is loosely used as well as there are several genres of documentary, we would go 'fishing', looking for meaning.

DSLR Cinema Breakout

Yesterday I had the good pleasure of speaking to Dr Kurt Lancaster behind one of the unique books on the market DSLR Cinema. He gave his insight into the shaping of DSLR form and we shared some parallel thoughts. He alerted me to this link Dan Chung's disco where professionals were expressing this general theme.

This methodology of cognitive shooting in my case comes from a combination of working at Channel One TV - the UK's first and only dedicated videojournalism station, where myself and 29 others often shot 3, sometimes 4 pieces a day, written and voiced. 

And, working at the likes of WTN which would become APTV. At the point that you're watching four monitors of feeds and three clients are on the phone to you requesting dope sheets (notes and shot list) and footage, if you can't turn around fast copy....

So the skill is to "kill what you can eat". If your piece is three minutes, then you shouldn't be shooting for a documentary. A test we did in Norway showed how to shoot a three minute filmed interview and then edited and load in 9 minutes. Furthermore, I carry out a test on clients that tests their confidence in what they observe and what should be on tape. 

Novice videojournalists start from shooting around 20 minutes for a three minute shoot to 12 minutes in the next.

Meeting one of the greats in Cinema Albert Maysles was one of the rare moments, but I also had my Schneider super 8mm camera with me. The look regarding this doyen of film making is exactly what I needed. Super 16mm with a bolex would have been even more preferable.

 At Channel One, news presenting was one of the skills we were opened up to, which concentrated the mind. A previous job in radio presenting on the London station GLR slotted in between Vanessa Feltz and Chris Evans, and at BBC Radio Leicester in the 1980s meant the ability to synthesis ideas and rework them became habitual.

When we talk about videojournalism we often negate its cognate fields e.g. radio, writing, presenting - but these are important assets in your arsenal that gives you choice. I have preserved some of my favourite interviews which include the late Eartha Kitt, Mario and Marvin Van Peebles, and James Brown's saxophonist Maceo Parker.

The combination of VJ shoot and Radio was highly beneficial when producing for both TV and Radio. In this piece here diving with Turkish and British Navy to find a wreck in Gallipoli, I could sell the radio to the BBC World World Service.


This is one of my favourite cameras and probably expensive, the Digibeta 900. At the time it costs, with lens, about $50,000.

I used it on a number of videojournalism stories for Channel 4 News, particularly in South Africa 1999 on a follow up story called the Successor Generation.

The three photos show off that workhorse of a camera - the VX1000. In the mid 90s this was the camera of choice, and the image below is of the first generation of Macs for editing.  I actually took a flight to the US for 300UKP return to buy it which was still cheaper than buying it in the UK.

One of the most memorable pieces was the runners-up piece for Channel 4's competition Unleash the Talent - a multimedia piece which still stands the test of time. See what yout think?

A measure of how good the VX1000 was comes from this shoot below. We're returning from a Nato War Games exercise in HRH's private plane. The cutlery is silver and the royal crest is everywhere to be seen.

During the exercise all the cameras we had were ruined because of the high salt content of the environment. The VX1000 though did not buckle.

On our way back at 40,000 feet we were tagged by this Tornado to escort us part of the way, or shoot us down, if we ignored their call sign.

At one point we were so close to each other I could clearly see the face of the copilot. He obviously saw me too as in  the footage I have of this event, he quickly closes his visor.

So we end with Soweto, 1995. I had lived and worked in South Africa as a freelance foreign correspondent working for about four outlets: BBC, ABC News, SABC and a couple of magazines - entrepreneurial journalism 1992.

I have worked with several cameras and I presently have four including the DSLR, but it really is horses for courses. My PhD thesis reveals a more fundamental issue which has to do with the interpretation of reality and how it's codified through the image.

The cinematic has the ability to innervate the image and suspend judgement, but that's a more philosophical post for later.

The upshot is how you extract meaning from the story and how you perceive an intended audience will do so without taking the eye of the prize - that takes experience. As my next post will argue when technology is levelled, and there are no advantage to be accrued from aesthetic excesses, you go back to the fundamental cognitive element, the story.

And this intangible - the story hides a number of cues that require excavation, that won't always work.

Dr Lancaster's book on DSLR Cinema places Hollywood's ability towards the motor sensory experience of film in the hands of a new generation of film makers such as Eliot Rausch - who spoke to us a couple of weeks ago - and some old hands pushing the form such as Shane Hulburt.

David Dunkley Gyimah is a senior Lecturer at the University of Westminster in online journalism, and multimedia projects. He runs a module in Television, Docs and Videojournalism and is an Artist in Residence at the Southbank Centre. His PhD is a phenomenology of news making. 

IM Videojournalism - videojournalism and site build methodology

Anyone involved in research, particularly Masters and Doctorate will recognise a deductive-inductive methodology illustration.  Methodology is one of those scary words for non-academics and is often confused with method and has core values in videojournalism.

Simply a methodology is a workflow consisting of many methods of doing something, Remember Apollo 13 the film, when they're trying from ground control to get the disabled space crew back to earth and there's nothing in the manual.

They make up a methodology, which consist of sub routines of various methods, turning things off in sequence and trying until they get the right amps to get them safely back home.

However, the world of philosophical thinking seeks to contain methodologies broadly under scientific or non-scientific (social science) routes and each yields different pathways. Understanding this allows you to devise a methodology realising its strengths and weakness ( all methodologies have flaws)

I have changed some things in the above illustration to reflect the practice of IM Videojournalism, which is the making for a film and the site build combined, which bleeds into the contested cinema-journalism.

Each sector involves further branches and there are some things, such as Literature Review, or in film terms an artistic-content review, that you can't cut corners over.

For instance, the idea of providing a POV of a horse racing, which a number of modern videojournalists might have executed, was first performed by Abel Gance in the early 1900s.

Similarly narrow, or short depths of field as it has previously been referred to is evident in early Japanese films around the mid 20th century.

A good work-flow is one that can withstand various tests. If you've worked for a media organisation e.g. the BBC, ITN, ABC and WTN TV, Channel One TV, several independents in journalism, design, advertising and the web, as I have each possesses a unique workflow to accomplish a task.

The award winning BBC 2 series Reportage, which David worked on featured on his website viewmagazine.tv. Thus far no other programme has been able to catch the zeitgeist of MTV style reportage with strong journalism

Now if you combine that with say my background working for BBC Radio, domestic and International, they too possess defined workflows. Now what if you could take from that and build your own methodology for a new constituent.

Effectively you become a walking library cataloging tried and tested methods that can be passed on, which facilitates, if you're that way inclined, creative thinking.

Creating thinking also has methodologies, which my PhD colleague Alison is researching which defines how and the best places to come up with those innocent excited finds.

For example why do companies place the water hole, or should, away from the desk configuration, because the act of walking, specifically movement creates liminal thinking. How many times have you left your desk for the cooler only to rush back saying "aha got it".

David interviews James Woolsey - fmr Director of the CIA

Take this interview I conducted as videojournalist a decade ago. I return to it, because the interview unveils a methodology to interviewing executives, which I use in training programmes and my Artist in Residence programme. You can see the interview on Viewmagazine.tv

Depending on the reception of the interviewee when we first meet; here its more about visual clues, I can determine how long I have and how what I want from the interview can be richer.

Here's a simple method I used in this case, I asked questions that reversed the chronology on events.

It's a simple technique used by psychologists when interviewing. If you ask questions in sequential order interviewees will often resort to automotive answers. If you ask questions that reverse time sequences, the interviewer has to work harder and you should produce a much more in-depth interview.

Incidentally the technique is widely used to catch criminals who are telling lies and good talk show hosts. Try it next on a friend. Let them invent a lie and attempt to unravel it.

Exploding myths through experiential learning
Take this simple observation of the double-headed presenter in news, pioneered by US TV, which is now a staple of TV across the world. But why two?  In the UK, the solo presenter reigned in the 60s until that is the nature of newscasts became complicated.

There were so many things that could go wrong, the idea of having another hand nearby, who was presenter material, but could sort out glitches before the next item, drove ITN to have another presenter. These are the words of Geoffrey Cox, one of ITN's most illustrious editors. How did I know that?

1. Experience - from once working at ITN where someone told me that story
2. Confirming it through research 

And going back to Apollo 13, the fact that the third earth-bound astronaut was so experienced, helped him to become creative to devise a new methodology to save his friends and crew.

One of the main planks in turning around practice into theory into practice and sometimes vice versa are added constraints I place on the process.

1. It, website or film, should be at a reduced cost
2. It should have an impact
3. It should be made quickly

Anyone who has shot on 16 mm film on one spool of film and worked for a major organisation will spot 2) and 3). 100 ft, a mag, works out at about 3 minutes of film time, which many news people were taught to shoot in or were shown the door.

As  a film maker first and now a researcher, I have been able to rework and adapt various methods for clients and corporates I work for.

I'll explain more of this over the next few weeks. This week I'm off to Dublin to meet with my PhD cohorts at the SMARTlab on campus at University College Dublin. Here's the Dean of the school explaining SMARTlab and this link goes to my page on SMARTlab talking about the experience



p.s btw, I'm using a specific technique, which should be invisible in writing this post  - a method that feeds into the total sum of site buidling.

Creative archivers- Videojournlism's legacy

Some of them set the tone; early creatives undeterred about what you or I said, because frankly there was no standard.

No wait, what standard did exist they made up. But these weren't whims or wild guesses. They were gudied by their own strong sense of design and creativity

In the last 15 years I have been charting their progress, from subscribing from the first editions of Computer Arts International, Video Age, to attending some of the first One Dot Zeros.

And now? Why now, we've got all formulaic. Going back to basics and with a new look and feel to some of the videos and projects coming up here and on Viewmagazine.tv

See you soon.

Breathing creative air - a new chapter

It is a humbling experience to be sat at a table surrounded by people who excel in their own fields to be told "why don’t you show your work".

This morning's meeting with some of the artists-in-residence at the south bank yielded such an occasion.

Humility is a word that often loses respect; we tend to forget this at conferences and the like.

There was Martin whose meme diagrams are works of fantastical scale and art; and Martin's new deal of the mind seeks to be the 21st century blue print for how creative talent can work us out of austerity.

Meeting people whom by dint of their presence may challenge sometimes your own epistemologies can be an experience. In the commercial world it can easily degenerate into bear bating.

You said videojournalism is better than broadcasting. what the *** do you know?

But in an artistic setting you’re allowed your space. Indeed the criteria amongst the gathering AIRS is to be nice.

Being nice helps, certainly for the newbies, but it's about being afforded creative space to say what you want and when.

An important lesson my alma mater share is everyone is addressed as senior, irrespective of the year you graduated. And if you know the lesson of the first captain and crew studies in the 70s, then enough said.

In ten minutes it is both futile and in my case an exercise in linguistic slaloms to tell my story, but it is an invaluable introduction to initiate further dialogue. For it’s through shared space and talk that we begin to pick out areas of interest and mine deeper.

And there's the theme of reciprocity.


Creative Audits
Call it an audit; there is value in that, yet commercialism would sometimes have the quick fix.

Taking time out to explain is something I feel is done less well nowadays, and when it is it’s obfuscated in meetings about meetings and the power card: "here's my card... call me"

A couple of years ago my father passed away. I remember hurtling down the stretch between Kumasi and Accra, a section of which is known as the road of death for good reason, when our driver found himself sandwiched between two articulated trucks, as we all let out wails and screams.

I was being taken to see the queen mother of the village my dad had grown up in and indeed I’d spent some of my formative years.

Why were we going?

In part to pay our respect, but also to find that space to talk. And the queen mother, one of the humblest people I had ever met was a good listener and talker.

We sat on her balcony and she offered us water, which she retrieved herself. Yes she did have servants. And we spoke about the world, this and that, and left.

I often find myself reflecting on those times and others when in a big spacious place.

I left with several impressions this morning, a sense that I had found the queen mothers balcony, closer to home.

And for that I’m grateful. Grateful that I felt invigorated at a new chapter in learning and that it was not my story that mattered, but that I'm looking to engage in with everyone else in this new space of the mind.

Drinking the most expensive beer in the world

One gulp would probably have you reaching for an aspirin. Not because of the price per se, though that might be the case if anyone was serving, but the taste.

That slosh across the palate at one point tasted... "am I allowed to say exquisite", but today clouded by impurities and well past its sell by date, this brew really has returned to a museum piece.

Tutankhamun ale, not your average Budweiser saw the light of day somewhere in 1995, from being in the dark for 3000 odd years.

Some archaeologists unearthed the formula from scraping old pots; science, the kind seen on CSI and actually while I was standing behind test tube , using gas-liquid chromatography did the rest. Et voila, this is what the Egyptians drank way back when.

Then Harrod's, London, decided to sell some 500 or 5000 bottles, not sure, on the day. Folks came from far and near for the purchase. The first one went for more than $7000.

Oh please if you're out there and you want this, I can go and fetch it from my uncle.

The beer of beers
Back during its launch, I was dispatched by my editor to do a VJ piece. On Harrods' hospitality balcony I sampled one and then picked up two. I later handed out glasses of it at a party - dem days huh!

But show me a reporter who doesn't like a jar and I'll show you a banker who can tell the difference between pyramid selling and banking.

Harrods' PR as I remember pleaded with me for an eternity, not because I wasn't turning my camera on, but he wanted his boxy thing back, or to the historians the wooden sarcophagus.

He wasn't wrong, as they've become a bit of a collector's item - which brought about this tale in the first place, when over Christmas I stumbled upon said great beer and a friend asking me if I knew what the box was worth. %$£@*!!.

I mean I always knew it was somewhere, but like an old letter bringing back memories, I picked it up reminisced, scurried up stairs for my camera and did a vlog.

I thought of doing a straight cut but having travelled to Egypt and brought back some video, I have a different idea. I'll post on viewmagazine shortly

This morning it was announced beer served in pubs in the UK was being reduced to 99p a pint. Chirpy cheerful huh! That should alleviate us Brits from the credit crunch.

Mine's going back into the vault, spirited away to a good friend who likes the idea he can tell his friends, "beer 99p? You wanna try this - the most expensive beer in the world".

He'd better not flippin drink it.

Viewmagazine video journalism meets online design

Following, a series of front covers from Viewmagazine.tv and charting online design starting with above, Viewmagazine.tv's first cover.

I art directed this shot, taken on a Canon Eos50, of Anita Asante, one of the UK's foremost footballers. Viewmagazine.tv's raison detre is to report popular stories that rarely see the light, and Anita and Women's football was indicative of this.

Before that in 2001 the site UnitedProductions, Viewmag's precursor hosted this.



In 2004, the menu evolved into a series of animated images which triggered a series of sound files and video. A theme I'll be returning to in 2009.





The quad face design was an opportunity to feature around 200 of the video pages on Viewmagazine, including

• an incredible operation in Ghana to rebuild a young boy's face
• and the new intelligence officers following a graduate recruitment drive in langley -an interview with former CIA chief James Woolsey
  

Viewmagazine.tv takes on the ubiquitous newspaper colour - white. The top band is a strip of 950 by 200. The screen window on the right reveals more of the sites menu. But the symmetry of the site is lost.

A meeting at the BBC between members of the Online News Association (london). The BBC announces its first trials of embedded video.


I'm standing in the corridor when this shot is taken. Prince Charles meets Jay-z. Five minutes later I found myself with one of my students standing within arm's distance of Jay-z.

She wanted to know what to ask him. I told her. But frankly I couldn't, doh, think of a one-on-one myself. Sometimes it just isn't the moment.



One of the attributes of online design which will increasingly become a feature for TV display is the televisual look. All the content appears above the fold, because frankly there isn't one.

The three screen grabs come from a new site I designed for the Arts. Unfortunately it's built exclusively in Flash- a mistake I made with viewmagazine.tv, which was rebuilt with xhtml with allowances for SEO.



Series of front pages. Top:

• Arsenal's Anita Asante, now a firm fixture with England's football squad
• Top Right, Hedonism on Greece's Falaraki - where young Brits flock to lose their virginity.
• Bottom right, Brix2Bronx - a group of young Londoners gear up for a trip to the Bronx

A film, BBC Radio story, flash -multimedia, Director Multimedia, blog, photomontage, and story in a magazine. Whatever happened to director? Flash killed it off and CDs/ DVDs are no longer de rigeur for exlcusive multimedia. Use DVD pro instead.

IM6 - integrated multimedia 6 ways lets me strip a story and devise a number of ways of producing. This shot of me 50m below the Dardanelles is one I won't forget in a hurry. Couple of minutes later I get hit by a current which sends me tumbling into unexploded ordianates.

Then I run out of air...

Viewmagazine - David postits - end of year

First day out in a long while. Really should be twittering this. In an Apple store in Kingston, Surrey looking at the macbook pros. Nice!

Just walked into Waterstones book store and picked up Blink, Tippin Point and Wisdom of Crowds.

That's my Christmas read done.

Picked up the jury notes for the Royal Television Awards. There's a meeting in Jan. Meanwhile in Berlin, they've started their judging for the International Video Journalism Awards.

Actually we're doing it online. I have started casting my votes and comments on a range of films.

Yesterday, pitched up at Uni/ Varsity. Paul, one of my colleagues on lecturing in "Principles of Journalism" pitched too. We were going through the marking regime for the 40 plus International Masters students.

Some good stuff. Some more to get through. And then second semester modules to dust off and get ready. Next year we're going hyper multimedia.

Trying to work out finances et al for getting to Miami for the Wemedia Game Changer event and then looking at my Phd Module got a couple of 3000 word essays to hand in on research.

Probably the best news to end the year, well, if getting rid of my cold is one of them, is a publishing deal from one of the big US publishers.

You know what these few days off.... actually I can't wait.

I'm going to go cold turkey on blogging etc. so Happy hols, a merry Christmas and may your new year be more special than the last good one.

Now how do I resist getting out of the Apple store without spending... arrghh!!!

Digital Journalist versus Integrated Multimedia Video journalism which one's the future?

It's a fairly provocative statement: Digital Journalist versus Integrated Multimedia Video journalism, which one's the future?

But it sits at the centre of the new debate about journalism and video journalism and in an age of multiplicity, contracted tech changes, journalism's loose footing, and the odd fad, it's worth considering.

To start you could fold integrated multimedia video journalism ( IMVJ) into Digital Journalism - which is a broad church definition, which also suggest Digital Journalism's supremacy.

The future of media is digital as opposed to analogue, so to the digirati, just like Cypher in the matrix, it's all just code, ones and zeros.

Some outfits however interpret digital journalism as video journalism so on a pedagogic level herein lies a crux.


What is video Journalism and how you build a VJ outfit from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.
Extract from the World Association of Newspapers shot by Robb Montgomery at VisualEditors.com

And then there's the brand name in itself; the word "digital" envelopes a profession, a magazine, a movement and its cutting edge, as in photography.

So where is IMVJ placed in all this? Video journalism is implicit as is multimedia, but the strong ideal is fathoming how they link together in myriad ways.

MTV's Pimp My Car might help explain:

There's the car, a vague name check of its creative team include: the designers, the engine's engineers, the body work specialist, the electrician's hotwiring one function to another e.g woofer bass to indicator, and then the car tester. Does the damn thing work better?

What if you could roll those into one?

We've seen it done in video: the editor, camera operator and reporter have become a single entity.


What is Video Journalism? from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.
Wonderful succinct deifintion of Video Journalism from a Cairo University lecturer, whilst David was touring hte region

But the 21st cycle of news dissemination embodies more than the legacy of TV.

The web, photography, multimedia, data, mash-up, coding, industrial vs minamilist design, public interfaces, mobile, blue tooth: these are just a few of the things affecting an evolving vocation/profession.

There are many who would argue, "Hey video journalism is difficult in itself where does it stop? "

It doesn't.

If you manage to pull out any of the newspaper cuttings from Vj's 1994 entry into the UK, the press and commentators then were vituperative to say the least.

How Michael Rosenblum must be allowing himself the last laugh.

And I don't believe anyone would say Journalism is a dead profession because it's always moved with the times.

Addison and Steele and their equitone language - a renaissance in journalism writing in the 1700s is testament to that.


Journalism's changing timeline
If you look back on Journalism's timeline you can afford a hearty chuckle, because at every bend, every crossroad where change is talked up, there has metaphorically been blood on the floor.

What we're doing now, a debate about what it is and isn't accompanied by civic and the odd perturbative comment is merely to confirm we are

a) creatures of history

b) Nothing's new

c) We indulge these debates; it's part of the learning process.

But as I say all the while in these debates: we have choices.

Future student factual media maker

What I'd like is for one of my ex students to be in a queue of candidates for a job and when his/her turn comes, they exhibit how to integrate, mash- up a single story into multiple strands and have a working knowledge of how the creative systems work.

I have seen many students take the reigns, and Tamer Al Mishall, now working for Al Jazeera is a firm example.

When he arrived from Gaza he'd already had a working knowledge of TV as a BBC producer. But what he took away from our university's program was a rounded knowldge of integrating multimedia and video journalism, and a passion and hunger to continue to learn.

When he left us the term hadn't even finished but he competed for one of the top jobs in the BBC's new Arabic Service, Gaza Correspondent, and piped correspondents and reporters twice his age. Tamer is twenty five.

An IMVJ approach has as part of its DNA a strong emphasis on pushing video journalism - the language - and if you were with us at Camp VJ in Chicago realising there are no rules in this visual medium.

Every single one of them is a guideline meant to be broken by you at some time.

"Tagging and Blocking" perhaps offers the most aggressive form of video journalism, understanding the arc and the subject-verb within a frame.


IMVJ Project

An interview with the BBC's Head of Multimedia News, Peter Horrocks, offers an idea of an IMVJ approach.

Here's the question: you've secured an interview with Peter, what do you do?

Here's my IMVJ approach, which encompassed FCP, After Effects, Dreamweaver, CSS, Photoshop, illustrator, Flash and some action scripting.

Since making this I have since learnt how I can give you more control using a custom made player. ( I'll change that soon)

And there are many many more examples, which I have come across on that awe inspiring site MultimediaShooter - now sadly defunct. I can't say whether the pieces I marveled at were made by one person and if they weren't that isn't ultimately the point.

The IMVJ way suggests an understanding of the work flow enough to comprehend the basics of what the chain is doing.


Specialism 1 vs broad knowledge 0
In 1999 I had lunch with a BBC exec; I had been referred by another senior figure. He mused over my CV and said: "Yes we must get you in".

It never happened, because of one overriding statement that would follow me into interviews: "What exactly do you do?"

In 1987 I started at regional BBC, leaRning to make packages and driving a Mk III desk when presenting.

IIn 1990-92 I was doubling up radio with TV as an AP producing reports.

IIn 1994 -At Channel One I turned to videojournalism and the web, building sites.

IIn 1997 - whilst doing any number of the aformentioned, I started working with an Ad design agency as a creative director creating interactive ads made with video and Flash. Remember quicktime hotspots.

By all accounts to many execs my CV back then was a mess: being a specialist was much more preferable.

Today? Well there's another debate!

IMVJ attempts to roll in disciplines from TV, Video Journalism, Radio, pod making, web writing, print, magazines, motion graphics, web and interface design within the ethos of sound story telling underpinned by fairness, accuracy, objectivity and ethics.

And that's just one part carved out within this expanding realm of digital journalism

The future of journalism from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.
Extract from The Outernet, David peers into a future of video journalism in this film shown in Berlin