I want to be a journalist - how do we change the world - a series of blogs - Redux

"So where would you like to be in ... say 5 years time?"

The clocks ticking away. Your palms begin to secrete even more. You're sitting opposite 3 figures. One's fidgetting with a pen, the other gazing at you as if you're about to confess a crime, and the interlocutor is waiting.

"I would like to be an editor"

There's a pregnant silence.

1 MINUTE EARLIER - DEJAVU
"So where would you like to be in ... say 5 years time?"

Clocks ticking. . .

"I would like to be a foreign reporter

Silence. .

OK PEOPLE CAN WE SCRUB THE TIMELINE BACK EVEN FURTHER I'M READY THIS TIME.

'So where would you like to be in ... say 5 years time, David?"

I don't ****ing know. What the **** do you think I am a futurologist. If I said I wanted your job. You'd think I was an arrogant a***. If I pitch myself any lower, you'll think I lack ****ing ambition, so where do I wanna be in 5 years. Truth? Doing something I love doing. Being successful at what I do.. Yeah, not because of you. But because of the hard work, I'm going to put in and the law of averages.

SILENCE

I walked out of the interview room thinking that's what I would really like to say, but I'm weak and feeble. My final answer was average. My clenched fist almost made it past my oesophagus.


There is ambition; what we love doing; drive; bloody mindedness; and the law of averages.

A loose assessment (1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8 seconds, there!) leads me to a conclusion - how we so easily misconstrue and become determinants at what they mean.

Ambition is good in the US. In the 80s it took on a more aggressive persona: "Greed is Good"- ala Wall Street's Michael Douglas' character.

In the UK ambition is to be left in the fridge with the half used can of beans. We all love doing something and working in the media has a high "I love my job quotient". But here too there are tacks on the floor. How much do I love you to want to stay on late and impress the editor who will remember my radiant chuckly reply when I spoke of drive, and combed my thoughts which screamed "Bloody mindedness".

We all want success: to be the best postman, most accomplished burglar, and a good journalist. And we'll do what we can legally to get there. But we're lumped into an ecosystem which rewards the antithesis to that we deem good character.

B****... HE IS A RIGHT W******
My diary shows I uttered those words possibly 1 trilion times in the beginning of my employ. Well actually I didn't but I must have heard it amongst the small gathering around the coffee machine.

There can be few professions in the world that are so personality driven, residing on ego ( in varying dollops) and insecurity.
And it's this unhealthy mix that is in part the daily catalyst to spring step to work to the sound of music, walk, then drag feet by midday.

But we love it. Many of us wouldn't do anything less. This is no place for shrinking violets my boss told me. Er what did he mean? I had no idea what he meant. Translation, if you can't shout about what you do, then no one will do it for you. Actually the more succesful ones are more tactful about how that's done. Oh yes and at some point you're gonna be loathed. Fancy becoming a manager?

Email 13.17 Sunday
As you know Jim there was a slight problem with the edit that carrie should have dealt with so we went back. Did you see that item on Ar** irrigation on Newsnight's newsbelt?

Inference: The sods working late again, post 10.30. No 11 that's when their newsbelt's on. Gosh how ambitious can you get? And look at the time of the email. **** off and die.

In part, the green mist could quite easily descend on me on these ocassions. But what was it that I/we felt envious about? Them or my lack of that killer "et tu brutus" stroke doing the same thing. I didn't want to

The web cohabits this wierd and wonderful world of contradictions. More so because of our abilty to interact, scrum and thwack that arrogant journalist/writer back in the face. Particularly joyous if it's the paper or journo you love to hate.

But as the new superstars of the web are showing, the old personal human traits so prevalant in the media are showing no signs of abating. One major differences is that this new group have had a rather meritocratic rise in blogospshere based on you, I and my pet dog sparky who would bark when he saw Amanda Congdon on Rocketboom.

No where would you like to be in say years; no where did you go to school; no er, we already have a person with a disability, ethnic background, er whatever in the workforce. This time it's me and you. Our blogs, the quality of them, our youtube videos, flick pics, sniper-edge pods say more about us than anyone could.

Yeeeeees, (i'm squirming) and No (very abruptly !)

Jon Snow on my reel produces the biggest reaction to this schizo-mania. Those who know me, will probably have guessed what it means, that when I sit down the chairs don't illuminate. Of the student's I know and have had the pleasure or working with, I can't imagine a more crass intro walking firstly into a lecture. Not because of what Mr Snow says, but by actually believing it.

C'mon...

But the Snow effect, a visual CV, the equivalent of those pithy comments for the paperback you're planning is a proxy vote of sorts, a short cut if you like Snow to cutting the author some slack, a grandfathering ping

Grandfathering?

Three pieces of advice passed to me, passed on. When considering a career into the media.

Find yourself a grandmother/grandfather - a mentor.

If your dad happens to be Michael Grade, mentor? They'll be coming to you? I was once paying a brief visit to the home of a very powerful TV exec. She sat me down with a cup of tea and begun to tell me about how I should work hard to get where I wanted and then segued into a tale of her daughter.

"Gosh she works so hard. She's just finished two attachments and even the Managing Director's are calling asking if she want to come back", she said gushing.

Yep, musn't be judgemental. her daughter probabaly did sit down to Gustav Holst's The Planets in Full Score, but it didn't seem illogical that the reason also her daughter was being pursued... you get it!

But grandfathers/ mothers have a place, and self belief as well. One of the professions I advocate to anyone/friends e.g. journalist aspiring journalist is to teach.

Because a) I'm finding I can shortcut all the ***p I went through by hopefully passing something on
b) the first time you stand in class you're as naked as the day you were born. If what you're saying doesn't make sense, watch out. Furthermore, there are no airs and grace in the lecture just what I refer to as the cauldron.

Everyone is equal, our respect reciprocated. It's an assymetric coms line, where often the more you're pressed, the more you learn about yourself. The more you learn about yourself, the more you want to push further.

I worked at so many outlets in my broadcasting career that I lost touch, and while a quick flash at my CV may look dandy, it's in part a card trick; huge highs followed by lows. In the UK in 92 I couldn't fnd work in the UK, so relocated to South Africa, ploughing townships and the most aweful places for a story. In 97 I emerged from an agency disillusioned and then like everyone else probbaly goes through badgered enough people to get work, in 2002 having dusted down the last year's general election, I begun to question whether this is what I really wanted to do.

And then I had a idea - viewmagazine.tv though it wasn't called it then. here's an early incarnation if you're interested.

The law of averages says this it's a big numbers game. The 5 percenters. The more we play in the field, the more we're likely to get the ball. Success is relative. Hah I was once touted in the Evening Standard as some doer. What i want to do is pay my mortgage. The law of averages says in this ecosystem where there's a lot of back/foreground noise, find something you're good at and keep doing it. The law of averages says it's a big bell curve, that only a few will make it, a large percentage of us will do ok and a small amount will... well.

The law of averages says those who work hard will be rewarded and the best reward is that which you like doing, whatever that is

The irrational media makers

I'd like to be involved in building a school for media makers; irrational ones who insanely believe they can make a difference.
To some extent they would be journalists, but I feel it's a redundant albeit necessary legacy term that we might be stuck with for a while. Journalists ~ writing for a journal.. seems rather dated!

Media makers are platform agnostic, they deliver to the journal, the TV, online, and all manner of sub constituents.

The advert would read: Only those with an irrational passion to make a change need apply. What is our function? Journalists write stories, you write the new rules. In the course of their growth, we would foolishly make them privy (electronically or otherwise) to that we feel uncomfortable, even shy away from; poverty, abuse in families, racism, death, murder - all the while pushing them, testing to see where there is a higher sense of ethics that we could develop.

If you've never seen death, strife, injustice at play, does that make you a lesser journalist? Do you need to experience pain to understand pain. "Act my dear boy, act" the late lawrence Olivier told his co-actor Dustin Hoffman in the Running Man.

But there's no doubt, Walter Cronkite and many other journalists before and since have had their senses smacked when in Cronkite's case he returned from Vietnam.

We would also want to re-evaluate our relationship with the story. As a journalists we tell hundreds of stories. Some stick, some don't some indeed are mediocre. It happens, in a narrow corridor, there's so much news about, or is there? I'll come back.

I asked Scott Rensberger - a 32 awards winning journalist, photographer, and possibly the first contemporary video journalist with a 20 year track record, what his favourite stories were. Not supprisingly, he had many, and they were strewn across a wide geographical plate. There's something in that.

Bono and Geldoff ludicriously believed they could make a difference with music being a vehicle for change and change agents. Financiers deluded themeselves many years back with The Marshall Plan and how we might rebuild a crippled dejected democracy and Europe. Al Gore, we thought must have been barking mad when earlier in his environmental career he preached the mantra of global doom.

Of course I'm not any of the above, just someone who believes a re keeling of the way irrational media making might work. It's unfathomable but every story they publish will have a banking purpose. The net does that now with linking. So if I said this in 1994 I'd be even more deluded.

But our feat is to redefine the database for news and its agenda of hit and misses. I onced asked a delegate at one of my talks how many times she checked her stocks and shares. At least once a day, she replied. It meant something to her, I concluded. It had value. But I added, today's news: Hurricane Katrina, The Tsunami, the Virginia shootings will soon fall of the agenda of our present custodians of news. It may be inportant but something of more significance has come along to shift its from its temporal location. Never mind that. Someone's now saying, there's no possible way you can keep showing the same news every day.

No I didn't say that, but how do we pick and choose our news is something to look at and should we be blaming the news hosts for their lack of our choice?

The news would not be a showcase of us; perhaps there's no helping that, but the purpose would be seek a new discourse in how we tell it.

Here videojournalism has been rather better placed, but it's not the panacea. Except the nature and characteristics of video journalists - at least those I have met - tend to mirror the attributes of photojournalists. Lensmen and women who tread that place angels would hesitate to go, and yes there are a kerzillion other journalists of indistinguishable merit who have enriched is before, But.. But on the bell curve of behaviours they're at the top end.

Video journalism I told a BBC reporter in Berlin, much to his delight - he told me later - is about getting down and dirty: Gonzoims updated. Finding a story that often makes little sense on paper. I'll be posting an interview with Rensberger and some of his films to illustrate, but Kevin Site's solo missions also make me wonder.

At the dawn of TV and radio, I'm returning to my narrow corridor theme; the world, as complex as it was then as a microcosm of now, must have been simpler to peer at and wonder. For one thing nations and issues were more more definned, less blurring around the edges. The world we live in today is complexity sans border.

So the issues to report were perhaps more obvious. The uniqueness of air travel also meant, any story back from the "Far East" or Africa resonated in its novelty.

The world shrouded by a chaos theory, which cycles through good and bad times makes it impossible to report on single issues, even to sustain such reports e.g. Darfur and the Genocide.

So what are we to do? Irrational media makers report and with their multimedia skills let you thread, thus soon every niche of a debated issue becomes a top page rank. Last time I checked on google as an experiment - a story I posted with 90,000,000 returns placed me at number 3. Intelligent software and human eyes, intelligence gathering gives the stories new impetus.

I asked my Mac, so how have things shaped up in New Orleans? It returned a slew of links, but in our new frontiere, our stories featured prominently. There's still more than enough anxiety to topple the cadres who stood by for the worse to happen. On another morning I asked for the top health stories around the world, then my favourite reporters. Each time the data base returned with annotations from us irrational media makers. "Huh" we said, now everyone's deep linking video to get more currency.

One of our features will be to move as "swarms" - think of it as special units. In London alone after one month, what you'll know about the city will be far and above what the daily diet of a thirty minute news programme tries to show. And whilst we won't neccessarily seek out "good stories",our aim would be examine those that ripple with their effect.

We'll need to deconstruct story telling. Pre 20th century cinema , the narrative for film wasn't fully conceived. I've no idea what it is, but where we are now, cannot be the be all and end all.

As irrational media makers, we work across news, video, photos, pods, design, promos and articles. To us they are all ones and zero, with however deeper instrinsic social purpose.

The new paradigm will ease us away from the nomenclature which defines us at the moment.

Yes, Cyber MI6 ( integrated multimedia Video journalists working the Outernet ) repurposing old ways. No.. shifting things altogether, yes, yes, yes.

.....then I woke up. 6.30 the alarm went off to the BBC's Today Programme.
Wow some *****ing dream that was.
But I managed to jot something down. It said little drops of water make the mighty ocean - an irrational thought if there ever was one.

Power to the People

The incredible battle of trafagar square - simply brilliant.
Before television was atomised to show endless runs of soap, and liquorice drama it was Pilger, Cook and World In Action et al. TV's social function, not withstanding the rose tinted outlook we attach to the yesteryears, meant something.

Injustices were served up without the chiming thunderous scores - alright just a little bit. There were few in comparison to today's consultants and pinstriped analysts telling us what we should be shown.

TV was about finding good stories and if they were about the under dogs, the neglected, the dissed, then all the more better.

Thatcher's Britain was an invitingly outrageous time to be in TV. If anything the tories gave TV land a reason to be earnest and all important. Then labour came to power and what happened next? Well if you ask anyone in TV land, we're doing as good a job then as we are now.

Tim Samuel's programme is big themed and generous, poignant and piercing. That was television, non-derivative and bold. I want my television just like that to expose the duplicitous nature of politics, life, of MPs who want to hide behind a bill that prevents the electorate - the very people who put them in power - from knowing how they serve the people. And to give some dignity to those people they were all cocker hoop to send to war, but readily abandon on their return suffering all manner of ilnesses.

More, please

newspaper reporters are now video editors

Very interesting post in which indie VJ Cliff Etzel - an email buddy - exchanges views with others at the water cooler.

The big one! Newspaper reporters are now video editors, what's your take? I have been fortunate to work with quite a few newspapers in the UK, more recently with the Financial Times amd while video is the new kid on the block, my contention is the written word remains strong, and possibly will get stronger.

Couple of things to consider for such a statement. The triple play eventually may well be the choice between the article, video or audio podcast.

When I developed viewmagazine, I had an idea that was so 'nuts' that to tell any newspaper company to adopt, well...I'd imagine the rhetoric: "Stand aside - what do you know?" And that's being nice.

Viewmagazine relies principally on the writer and strong photojournalism - the very tenants of basic journalism. But what would happen I asked if you clicked the picture? What if I could hide video behind it? In some cases what if the picture slowly animated? That's the now.

Then what if an incon next to the article, when triggered, delivered the article in the spoken word? What if also we could link audio and video seemlessly as yo do with text? That's the next phase.

The implications whether to do with accessibility or creatvity - the triple play should increase the dispersal / readership of articles.

In the last two weeks I have since learned that two national newspapers in the UK will break through in the aforementioned style. And yes as I imagined if you want to see just video you can by jumping to the paper's library or in viewmag's case Apple's podcast.

But something else kicks in which is the stuff of newspapers - 21st C. equitone. It's from the era of Addison and Steele C17th; literary figures who drove the evolving newspaper industry. Equitone became the emerging prose in which newspaper writing would adopt, developed further with journalese, headlines writting etc.

300 years odd and you could argue that while video is a threat of sorts, the written word itself online is fighting itself.

By that, what often works offline may not punch above its weight online, because of online's rules of engagement: meta tags, and linking phrases. We're now writing not only for an online audience but a cacophony of spiders trawling the web googling your prose, deconstructing your article and testing the limits of its web-friendliness, with the reward that the more webnastic it is the more people get to see it, cuz it rises up the google ranking.

I bought a video recently, something about great cinematographers. It proved something I'd thought but not been able to get to the bottom of. That all the things we're doing now with video is history on a loop. Before Man with a Movie Camera, Birth of a Nation, the early pioneers of film did it all themselves. They presumably had nothing to be concerned about as they was no strict division of labour that has come to structure our industry today.

The industry is going through its own perestroika and glasnost and the big question is whether newspapers adapt. Do newspaper reporters become video editors...........?

In this link newspaper journos in their own words talk about video journalism and what it means to them.

the new new journalists

I have been invited to speak in Bilbao - The Association of Eurpoean regional TV - about the future TV makers.

In short its this 3 years down the line

15-19" Mac super - laptop treble the speed at present inbuilt net-sat reciever
Final Cut VII -integrated editing tool with after effects + motion 100 and HD Deep video for the Outernet
Adobe Solutions X+ CSS Xml coded package with deep video 2.0 to hyperlink video
Sony HD A111 - HD camera with shifting lens and variable speed mimicing 8fps - 75fps with blue and wifi server technology

Off course this is all gobbledygook.. but the point is the next generation journalists will work off laptops and cameras that fit in a rucksack

I am a journalist with a camera: a film maker

A feature caught my eye in one of the UK trade magazines: "We will invest in quality journalism", intoned the article, attributed to a senior news exec.

How many times have you seen that? It's a bit of an oxymoron really, suggesting those on board aren't quality, but more to the point is an easy rhetorical point to convince evetyone, that, yes, frankly we will invest in quality journalism.

How?

More law training?
More public body reportage?
More international stories - quite?
More what really!

Well more innovation frankly and that means understanding the new rules of the trade, and those riding this new wave: Naka Nathaniel; Travis Fox, Mike Kraus; Sabine Streich: Ruud Elmendorp; Claudio Von Planta. . . the list continues

An old friend friend rang me yesterday. He needed a voice over for a documentary. So I headed down to his house to masquerade as five different characters - some of which have done the most heinous things in war.

Claudio Von Planta is not a name you should forget in a hurry. You've seen his work, but he is an unknown. A craftsman, whose trade goes back many years. His most recent productions have found their way onto Al Jazeera and Witness presented by Rageh Omar; Sky and Mercanaries in Afghanistan, and an hour speacial on blood diamonds with the award winning Sorious Samura for CNN.

Claudio's most high profile production though is Long Way Round, a feature starring Ewan Mcgregor and Charley Boorman on motorbikes travelling the world.

Now the point I'm trying to make. The camera Claudio is holding aloft, that's what he uses and a laptop to make these superb programmes. In a video feature I'm about to post we talk about the creativity these cameras offer, the new programme makers, the insecurity of broadcasters and the phrase: We will invest in quality journalism - frankly whoever says that without considering video journalism doesn't know what they're talking about.

Detailed article on Viewmagazine.tv soon

8 Days - How newspapers learned videojournalism in 8 days

How newspapers took 8 Days to learn video journalism



Overall this film is 15 minutes long. This segment is around 10 mins. Please go to Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLwjWsne6GA to watch the second part



Also Inside the Financial Times and their extraordinary grasp of Videojournalism. Plus the newspaper videojournalists who only make films for their newspaper.

Fancy that! You train as a newspaper journalists. Apply for a job at a newspaper and are told, you're only going to be making news features. Double page feature within the UK industry trade magazine UK Press
Gazette

omg You may know him from Oz. His repertoire boasts the best of, and his just the salt of the earth guy who you'd sit down to a beer to.


So.. I'm walking and see this figure fleetingly. Now, I'm not a star struck kinda person. I remember last year odd standing next to Jay-Z and thinking er! I guess if you work in television you can become blasse. But ocassionaly I will go wide eyed like a saucer and I couldn't resists stopping Eamon Walker who's playing Othello at the Globe, London.

We spoke for about 10 minutes and he was so incredibly nice and humble. Frankly on the odd ocassion someone's come up to me... yes I have been humbled..but I'm not sure what to say.

Anyhow I'm going to go and see Othello. Do come along if you're in London and lets hope I can catch Mr Walker at The Globe for an interview. Judging from what we spoke about, it should be a cracking one.

What are personal sites for

When I worked as a daily journalist and producer I often found there was nothing more frustrating than to present an idea and for it to be rejected. There were a myriad reasons; quite often that idea in hind sight was not editorially suitable, though having said that I reckon I had more hits than missess.

In programme commissioning, it's like pulling the teeth of a big white, ALIVE! I once remember the ebullient former Head of BBC 3 Stuart Murphy agreeing to a meeting after we exchanged emails at length. We had one of those marveous meetings - going on 2 hours. So what happened afterwards? Er nothing. I'd been passed down to managers who had no vested interest.

You soon learn commissioners have their own set ideas - of course they've got to - and you're either a name to help them or you're an irritant. And this came after working/freelancing for the likes of Newsnight, Channel 4 News, ABC News, BBC World Service... and so on. Mind you having worked for those organisations doesn't guarantee I know what I'm talking about.

But if like me you had a fair few ideas swilling around in your cranium what were you to do?

One evening I started toying around with whether I could get some of the programmes I'd made independently out on the net. Why not, what else was I going to do with them otherwise.

viewmagazine.tv was my outlet. I wanted to combine several elements: videojournalism, a fresh look at online design; Flash movies, audio files, video hyperlinking files and possible if I could my newphew's pet dog Scotch.

Some people got it and were deeply encouraging asking questions that I always tried to reply. Others hurled abuse - woops, what have I done.

I can't navigate your site
It's crap what 's it about
It's somethig the cat threw up
your files are too big

There's really not much you can do here, an I gently tried to bring to the attention of those that this wasn't a publicly funded site and that with some humility you do have a choice. The site was built around ideas I had, perhaps some of them stubborn. But yes I understood what some people were saying, particularly if they'd been reccommended to the site and thought... what the heck is this? It breaks all the conventions.

I guess if we deign to produce anything new rather than derivative of something else you're heading for some public humiliation. Viewmagazine isn't perfect.. ohh noo! But it's still my attempt to offload issues I have come into contact with.

And that to many students of journalism is the only bit of advice I can pass on. The medium and profession is changing. More and more managers are likely to look for someone with net skills. In ten years time heavens knows what journalism will look like, but I am certain, there will be a stronger component than now online.

Publish and be damned. Let tose ideas go. Learn CSS. Learn Final Cut. Learn Flash. Learn After Effects. Learn Photoshp. Learn how to use the camera as a journalist and the psychology of how we consume all this.

And yes you'll be criticised. In some ways that's a good thing. Once in a while a genuine commentator will add to site, by making a salient point. But in many ways you'll control your own media. We are about five years or less away from broadcasting taking the biggest batering.

It's questionable whether it may even survive in its present state. Hopefuly you won't have that to worry about. You'll already be a jack of all trades and master of many. That much I'm going to be telling delegates gathering at Bilbao - where 400 odd TV stations meet as part of CIRCOM.

See you there.

beware the ptc glitch

woops BBC TV's 10 Oclock news featured a double take Evan Davies, Econs editor delivering a piece to camera... stopping and doing a retake. Ouch! someone forgot to edit that out. The look on the newsreader Hugh Edwards after! Me thinks the editor or producer might have to explain a few things to the programme editor.

We know what it's like.. and at some point we've all been on the end of such er, howlers, particularly on news shows with fast turn arounds working right up to the wire. ;-)

Turnaround

I got talking to a UK national newspaper. We've been talking for a couple of months and met in Kensngton for a coffee etc. I was a fruitfull meeting and I'm hoping to see if I can spot emerging talent in their selection process.

One of the execs said something that on reflection I noticed I get asked time and tme again. How do you do this?
Sometimes it's translated as why I do it? This isn't self aggrandisement. Oh no..

I was always a big fan of the Sunday Times Business section profiling people who had a built a business because you could always come away inspired. There was always a nugget. And so what I'm about to say, I see in the same vein.

How do I do this?
Because often I see the end story quite quickly from the strands of pieces in front of me. Otherwise I tend to think what would make the story stronger and go hunting for it. A friend, an award wining composer once told me, when she is composing, she sees images. I laughed: when I shoot I see music.

Part of this is practice. It's the second nature of anticipating the flight of the ball, from the torque of the racket and body shape of your oponent. It's the old mantra. What's often at the end of a ball bouncing into the road.. a seven year old streaming behind.

Instinct plays a huge part, which in itself is often habits now maquerading as impulsive thoughts. If I'm interviewing and I get short answers and a restlessness from the interviewee, I know to cut straight to the question I need to know, even if it's quite blunt.

We tested this in Norway, for a four minute interview, it took a further ten minutes for its to be edited and ready, and with that I'd also managed to shoot further drop-in shots.

This thing we do.. TV, Video, the Media.. It's not rocket science, but in defence of some throwing the baby out with the bath water, you still need old hands, wise heads around to make decisions swiftly and firmly.

So.. why do I do this.. because I can. This is my allotment, my garden shed, where I experiment growing new produce.. There is no substitute than to get your hands dirty after some training. And then break the rule book. Nothing is sacred.

Why do I do this... because no one, no one, as we may all rather attest is entitled to anything and the only way we get there is by wanting it. Want it

Guns and assailants

Dirk Coetzee wss part of South Africa's apartheid government's death-squads. He commited countless atrocities, the most prublicised was murdering Griffiths Mxenge, the human rights lawyer for ANC personnel.

"We stabbed him 35 times and then burnt his body ... while that was happening we were having a brai ( barbeque) nearby... " Coetzee would later tell me.

I was at the Holiday Inn in down town Joburg with friends eating when a senior South African broadcast manager spotted him. "I want to talk to him. I have alway wanted to talk to him", I said. Whilst I was a freelance correspondent based in South Africa 93-94 the opportunity never arose. Now here I was some years on (98) and he was in talking distance.

It sounds so long ago, but seems like yesterday

"Why don't you go and ask him?" was her reply.

I approached hands in the air talking courteously but loudly so he could make out my English accent. At his table, four friends all packing and his son stared up.

Then he agreed. A journalist who had never held a dvcam in his life was given the camera and a few instructions and then we started to film. I'll post the interview on viewmagazine.tv

What are some of the things his done?
Why did he do what he did?
Did he not feel any remorse?
Is he a free man? ( Coetzee got amnesty for talking to the Truth and Reconcilaition Commission) But is he a free man?

Then after 30 minutes we wrapped up, chatted off camera for a while and the star formation his son and colleagues had formed around us eliminiating any blind spots from a potential assailant dissipated.

What did I get from the interview? The unique opportunity to hear a calm rationale of why he killed and what he felt. He talked about being a reformed person, a Christian. I felt I could have asked him anything and he would not have shirked from it. It's one interview I wil never forget. You can see the unedited version soon.

Footnote: this is one of those incidents that shows videojournalism strengths. I had a camera, sa an opportunity for a story and within minutes had a remarkable film, and because it was on dv, its physical integrity has held well.

Reporting mass events

The Virginia multiple murders will fill anyone with sorrow. As new reports more and more details, I have found myself rooted to TV screens, radio bulletins and surfing the net. Such scavenging for information has become the norm. My appointment with TV for its schedulled news is unwavering at these times.

Here also at these times, I find myself screaming at the crassness of reportage defaulting to something almost bordering on postering. It's perhaps not that blatant. May be I need examining.

During the UK's 7/7 I used my blackberry as a note pad incessantly typing in the indiscretions of reporters saying things they were not in a position to say e.g. ..the ambulance and fire services got to the scene very quickly... rather than, the ambulance and fire services say they got to the scene very quickly. The first rule of journalism; attribution. Then there's the reporters being emotive with language when a cool restrained approach would facilitate greater understanding.

I feel so profound about this. So while there are fingers being pointed at Virginia's authorties for something akin to a lack of professionalism - clearing the campus - I believe media outlets we so trust should take a closer look at themeselves to evaluate language and approach in such delicate and tragic circumstances. After all these are real people, ordinary people, people who the previous day were a family, but are now grieving.

The job of reporting tragedy is a huge responsibility. It bears resemblances of war. Don't embellish the copy, cut the adjectives. Let the story tell itself with facts and figures. That much I have held to from a former BBC Correspondent, the late John Harrison whom I so admired. Reporting tragedy is one of those pit-in-the-stomach experience I had while a full-on reporter. Asking people how they felt in order for them to open up is a well known technique, but it is equally deeply intrusive. What do you do?

Our language and use of specific words is one of my greatest beefs. In reports submitted by students, if anything comes close to a cliche, a tired expression wheeled out to impress, inadvertantly or not, it finds my red pen.

It's crass, but today across the media I watched. The old adage that reporters report to compete with one another came back.
Words which sounded more like iambic phrases were sprinkled throughout reports... "an evil has visited this community..."
"Their dreams of a future has become their worst nightmares"..

Why do we do this? I can think of a master of reportage who eschewed the aforementioned and should be studied as we study great books of learning: Charles Wheeler -a BBC Correspondet of phenomenal ability to make the complex appear conversational. Watch him talk about the Watts riots all those many years ago.

We, they, reporters must surely do better. Online journalism removes any personality to the journalism. This is not the solution, but online at least offers an opportunity to bury for news without being pre-occupied with the obstacles I mention.

Most networks spend a lot of money rehearsing the big stories - the death of the Queen, a Prime Minister etc. But it appears there may well be a need to study the way one reports such tragic events.

A community will be besieged for a couple of days, people grieving will say things, and then a week later they're gone and people are left to pick up their lives... pick up their lives ( yuk)... then a week later people are left to make some sense of what's happened.

As South Africa celebrated its first all-race election, I stood in a township taking in this massive indelible event. I had just posted to a unit in the BBC World Service, but felt a tinge of anger. Days, maybe weeks later, back in the surrounding areas of Melville the media was decamping. News had reached of murder in Rwanda. South Africa had seen of any blow-up and was deemed no longer news worthy.

There is no rule book that says bad news only sells, otherwise inspiring positive stories would not have a place. It is in the way we package, adhere to principles perhaps are deigned still worthy. In a mature 21st century, of further deconstruction of media, we may appraoch a turning point when we find empathetic ways of sharing knowledge, of reporting, or making the narrative easier to digest. I do look forward to that point.

Talking bout a revolution

Too much to say in too little time.

Very buoyed by the VJ gathering and range of speakers. Will write a report for viewmag and pass on to a few of the publications I write for. Firstly thanks to everyone for being so hospitable, to Tord for inviting me, and the Institute etc... Acceptance Speech done.

Not quite, and to the many attendants who dragged themselves out of bed on Sunday after a night of hedonism and much drinking to take in some VJ tips at the Master class.

I hope you found it interesting; it was like cramming four days into one hour, so it might have come across as dense etc. I have got the elements for a VJ package so I'll try and post that soon..

Back to marking and other things, but some deeply interesting things to emerge from the gathering.. if you go to the front page of viewmagazine, you'll see a clip of a wonderful robo_VJ contraption and a crane-like device to hold your camera . Sublime..

Gunnar, Tord thanks for the info from the blog. Here's Gunner's take www.videoreporter.blogspot.com

VJ in Norway

I thought I'd provide a running account - as much as I can - for the videojournalism event in Fredrikstad at the Institute of Journalism

Just seen a presentation from one of the country's most experienced VJs, Magnus whose work is simply superb. Very artistic and creative. He's been a VJ for about seven years and I loved what I saw. Looking forward to us collaborating on something.

Magnus' touch combines a hand held whip pan element with a creative narrative and even though it was in Norwegian was visually strong to easily follow the narrative.

...just looked up from my screen to watch a heart-touching reuniuon between father and son in a story by one of Norway's foremost award winning investigative journalists. I'll get his name in a bit.

One thing that is evident is that videojournalism has a strong relationship with broadcasters e.g. NRK - which is Norway's equivalent of the BBC. And contrary to what attendants have been saying the movement appears robust.

It could be down to the gathering ie a concentration of people in one place, but I'm not completely buying that VJ hasn't got deep routes.

I can't for instance name any VJ that reports nationally for a news-type programme and makes their own long format item. Alistair Leathhead (?? - must check name) a correspondent for BBC files VJ reports from frotlines et al, but that seems like the total of it.

Tim who's speaking later will likely expand on the BBC's interest in Vjism and the 800 plus vjs it has amassed.

Are newspaper journalists the only ones who can do video journalism?

Interesting post from Anon. Thanks

++++
I see you write about video journalism where newspaper journalists are VJs. What about writing journalists for internet publications, or former tv journalists? There are a lot of VJs with background from broadcasting..We've worked in team with a photographer before, and now work alone. Do you mean that videojournalism is primary for former newspaper journalists?
+++++

Nooooooo on the contrary videojournalism isn't exclusive to any one group at all. And I's so aware of the many talented individuals in the industry

I'm in the midst of training an estate /Housing project (US parlance) to be videojournalists
I have trained African TV Journalists ( South Africa and Ghana) where they used it to produce their first co-production and possibly a first State-to-state coproduction on the contient, though I shouldn't be so presumptious
http://www.viewmagazine.tv/africatalks2

My TV Masters students gain an insight into videojournalism
I have trained photographers whom I know make great vjs as they already possess that 3rd eye and Videojournalism is photojournalism with a movie camera anyway.
And yes I have trained TV broadcasters - who seem always to find the process incredibly liberating. I started off in radio before going into TV and trained myself to be a VJ back in 1994.... so why newspapers?

Perhaps it presents the most interesting challenge, perhaps as my original trainer told me:" If you're a TV person, you're probably going to have to wrestle with a few beasts as VJ undoes the structure so trechantly acquired in TV production". But yes many have bought into it, whilst many also remain unconvinced. Video journalism isn't just DVCams and shoot/edit on a laptop, it's a fresher language , in many ways it subverts the ws/ms/cu. In many ways its become a child of the Net age
Perhaps also I am yet to get into an ecosystem of TV, Net companies and photographers where I can share/exchange thoughts. I'm in Norway next week where their industry has embraced Vjism (TV,photojo,Net creatives etc)

An aspect of videojournalism I teach incorporates web promo making http://www.viewmagazine.tv/webpromos.html so I have employed it working in the Ad industry as a creative director www.re-active.net

As a language videojournalism - all of its ten years in the UK and a few more added on in the US - is still in nascent form, and so is going through huge transformations, much in the same way that every other creative industry has been given a shake e.g. film -dogme; music-multi-skillers; publishing- desk top; literature -gonzo

Skype me on daviddunkleygyimah and lets have a chat

p.s I'm seeing one of the BBC's flagship programme editors about videojournalism in a few weeks, I'll keep you posted.

Al Jazeera - best fun with your clothes on

So I met up with a mate at Al Jazeera. Frankly I could meet up with a fair few mates at Al Jazeera as the whole of the news broadcast industry is there: former BBC, ITN, CNN producers and correspondents, so I'm bound to know someone.

Morgan, is the creative director of AJ. We've done a fair bit of curries et al with Riz Khan, another friend.

I passed around their knightsbridge office, joined by Patrick - a veteran BBC/ Adland producer for a whizz round the park. You know chew the fat, no particular agenda.

Morgan's great. I remember when I showed him viewmagazine about two years ago and he in turn passed it onto a designer who would use it to mould AJs web site, so he tipped his hat.

What followed was grown men talking passionately about the changing face of the media, and how viewmagazine.tv was functioning, or could function as a news driven site.

The overiding question perhaps could have been, why is Viewmagazine.tv not making money? Or could it? I read about Rocketboom's producer lamenting the same thing, and mirror his comments that viewmag leverages my public standing, enabling me to talk etc at conferences and produce for others.

Question: If you're an independent site owner making a clear turnover please contact me to tell me how. Presumably yes advertising, but are you selling content from your site?

So we tood and froed on that. User generated content is a great vehicle for attracting eyeballs, that in turn become your content and bring in the geen backs.

But viewmagazine as Morgan pointed out doesn't do UGC. Why not? I guess it's because I'm not in possession of a behemoth server and more to the point, I think there are good UGC sites that I'd be ill to want to take on.

That's not to say I underestimate viewmagazine, it's just that I believe I know where my stengths are.

Now as we kicked around a few more themes, I admitted yes, Viewmagazine.tv can be at times "a bit out there", but in truth that's the left sidedness of viewmagazine.tv. For me it's the site for the schoolboy and girl to gaze out of the class room window and wonder why planes stay in the air. Or to be more precise why the media works in the way it does.

With 20 years behind me in the media across tv, radio, advertising, and digital media, you begin to get some idea and then you're left with a choice. Run with it or see if you can find new angles to explore and push the conversation either forwards or sideways.

Viewmagazine's principle areas are video journalism, video hyperlinking, the outernet and grey areas of new reportage and new forms of doc making.

And that means for some people the conversation stops now. What the **** is the Outernet? For others it's a chance to engage and share their thoughts.

TV by its very convention is fixed in a paradigm that entertains very little 'extremes'. It's bound by a fixed narrative.

Video journalism purports to offer something new. And it does. Showing Morgan some of the work made by newspaper journalists may not impress TV bods, but the leap is that these are newspaper journalists now shooting video.

In a break from TV, they may have upped the game in picture composition, but yes to make some sense on their sites they will follow, but not exclusively, the model template of TV.

Now here's where the fun begins. Video journalism end game is a divorce from the construct. At its best, anything goes. It is auterism. It is mini film making, dogme , bauhaus, disruption...

And those are some of the areas I find exciting that I write about. The disruption but comprehension of the narrative, that has bound us for the best part of a century with reference to film etc.

At a point in time, which Patrick ( yep I'm still in the board room at Al Jazeera) and I waxed on, might we approach a new year zero? User generated content is as raw as you get news footage, but can we effectively learn coherent randomness, no randomness period; Charlie Parker, Miles Davis in news. Mmmmm.

It seems absurbed, but in the new language of digital media, hurtling light years away from news corp, will we emerge with what is in essence "back to basics"? Strip all the promos, Gustav Holst's intros, garish graphics, to simply tell a story with mood and tempo

I remember seeing Homicide for the first time in the 90s and being in awe. It was rough, ready, torn, a departure from the norm. And it was designed to look like something shot by your nextdoor neighbours toddler, but it worked. Lowbrow, high art.

The question is will news go that way? Could a youtube for news produced in a dscordant, "Homicide - the US series" fashion become a new movement?

In the next couple of weeks, I'll be producing pieces that further open up this debate. In-your-face news productions, with the warts n' all. Basically unsanitised, the remnants of zoo-radio, fades and dissolves replicating the human eye...

And so 5.30 dawns and it's time to leave, but the interaction has become a slow burning beacon, not to reign back on some of the esoteric aspects of viewmagazine, but to explore further those things that allow us ask the question, for which so far we have very little answers answers.

what blogs are for?

I only write this because of the article I'm about to post in viewmagazine.tv If anything my blog is an incoherent pastiche of thoughts - a writers draft of what i inted to buid, xpand upon in more constructive articles.

They're havens for impassioned idea dumps and that's what I'm about to do in the next blog.

Apple!

Apple sent me a 15 inch notebook Huzzzah!

The article for their site about the work I'm doing here grabbed 18,000 sessions in the two weeks of its release. I think they were pleased with the traffic.

Meanwhile the podcasts which I've gradually been teasing from viewmagazine.tv's ste, as well as producing new ones has picked up wide interest. It's highly likely that if I ever wanted to work for The top British news programmes, despite starting my career with Newsnight as a researcher, I'd fail miserably in convincing the editors.

So it tickled me somewhat to see that listerners' annotation compiled by user tracking behaviour read:

"Listerners [to this podcast] aso subscribe to The Today Programme, From Our Own Correspondent, and Newsnight." Herein is the power of users deciding what works etc.

Hail the Net.

Master cohorts

University of Westminster Masters students coming to the end of the core skills in the Net and Video reportage.

It's a one year intensive course and asks a lot from students. Definately not for the meek. Looking forward to assessing their work and seeing how it sits with national work from other media universities in my role as one of the quality assessor for the Broadcast Journanalism Training Council.

The BJTC is the body that links industry and media universities and its kite mark is much sought after by tertiary education establishments and broadcasters hiring media students.

Some of the skills on offer from the prog this year included:

* Technical writing for the web with attributable good sources
* Using google rich-link phrases to attracted rankings
* Using matrix stats and user behaviour to plan PR and pitch articles.
* Podcasts, compression and Video User Behaviour for the podcast producers
* Design aesthetic and balance

All of which are assets much prized by the business and media world. Meanwhile if you'd like to see the students online efforts here you go

http://www.thesnowballmag.co.uk
http://www.interviewmag.co.uk

What is the Outernet?

The outernet, video hyperlinking, and Mi2videojournalism - The video is now up - key note speech in Norway
here .

It's in 2 parts. Not many people know what the outernet is. You've got to see it to understand it

letter from Norway

Hi again David

I was just reading your thoughts from the weekend at SKUP. You don't only use your camera as a pen. You know how to write well on the keyboard too. I really enjoyed your story - and your encounter with Maria:-)

I thought your presentation at SKUP was very good, and I hope you had a good time!

I am alone in a hotel room in Bergen in between two lectures. Not very funny to see the insides of hotel rooms, as I recall we talked about during dinner Friday evening...

Maybe we'll meet when you come to Norway next time for the VJ-conference. Make sure Tord show you the "old city" in Fredrikstad, where the conference is.

Best regards
Stale

_________________________________________________________________________________

Hello David

Just read your piece on Skup. Very nice - escpeially since Ståle and I helped Trond doing the reseach on police chief . Thanks for the pat on the back :-)


Cheers

Tord
_________________________________________________________________________________

Thank you everyone for making my stay in Norway so warm. I'm back in Norway over a weekend in a couple of weeks looking at Vjism.

If you'd like to see the piece I wrote with the accompanying video presentation of the outernet here it is
http://podcast.wmin.ac.uk/weblog/schoolofjournalism/

David

Ghana and its independence

So I'm watching CNN and this lavish affair - the first collaboration between CNN International and CNN local to celebrate India's standing with its next generation.

Meanwhile on the Euro front, in Berlin, celebrations are in motion to buff the treaty of Rome - 50 years since it was signed. Will they won't they, that is apologise for slavery? - The world, the UK in particular, marks the abolition of slavery with a series of programmes. In April Larry King CNN's venerable chat show host celebrates something of sorts.

Then, blink and you might miss it, but Africa's first state to gain independence 50 years ago has just spent a shed load of money to commemurate this event. But then you probably missed it.

I have a vested interest in the latter: my parents are Ghanaian. My mother in fact half German - the result of early traders looking for new pastures. And I have spend considerable time in Ghana.

So to the celebrations or thereabouts. Ghana couldn't have picked a worse time to proclaim its jubilation for being set free. The BBC carried a slice of news, tucked away on its web site. There was an interview with the president HE John Kufuor on Radio 4 and a smattering of news packages here and then.. and then that was it.

In our teutonic news driven world, there's a lot to be said about how proactive one has to be to gain column inches. And sadly a proactive news agency is one thing the Ghanains are lacking in the UK. Notwithstanding the absence of any lobbying, why, you could ask, rely on the big news sources anyway.

Perhaps because the big news beasts still matter on the international front. But that doesn't negate the Ghanaians from forging their own documentaries to underscore the year. Sadly that doesn't seem to be the case. Browny points to the good people behind What's on Ghana for putting a series of gis together.

Please help me

I have been lazy.

In the 90s I was an avid reader of all things techy from magazines such as New Media Age, Production Solutions, Digit, Create Online etc. In fact I have spent a small fortune getting my head around such laudable questions as "Is TV dead?" and "Creating your own TV Station".

Somewhere along the way, I read and reread about how broadband at 8mb download represented a digital rubicon. That the data rate of TV runs at 8mb, so once broadband crossed that threshhold we could attain DVD [mpg2/4] quality films via the web.

I have loftily taken this as fact in the way it spews from lectures. It might well be, but now feel strongly that I need to delve deeper. I rifled through some of my old archive copies of the aforementioned magazines, but guess they're being recycled into 24k diamonds

8 mbit was a huge area of disucssion at a time when we ran on 56k modems. But trawling the net, I'm coming up short finding anything on this.

What I do understand to quickly avoid any public blushes is that bit rate of video is different to bandwidth transmissions.

So is TV really 8mb as generalised or is it that 8 meg download is the key for streaming [live or progressive in the nature of VOD]?

There are ome some knowns: greater bandwidth allows for the transmission of better quality video and IPTV -Internet protocol TV will be a huge player.

I also said at a conference how I favoured Flash over Windows Media Player and was in the habit of advising clients about using the FLV player because of its aesthetic. A further clairification might help. When it comes to image quality, Flash, Quicktime, Windows Media player run on similar principles. What you put in, you get out. Meaning, it's up to you. If it looks bad on your newspaper site that's because whoever encoded the video did so with a heavy hand, and would probably muck up Flash all the same.

No my real leaning to Flash is its aesthetic, that I can devise my own play back controls and that they are not visual comparison for Windows clunky less ergonomic displays, but then that's a personal opinion.

The video journalist Decree

In my 15 years as a video journalist, I have fought many battles, witnessed many things. I have worked in Apartheid South Africa; my doc was the only non-South African feature played during their historic election. I would be introduced to Nelson Mandela. I worked for Lennox Lewis with with his fight against Tyson.

I produced South Africa's first African co-production. I have dived with specialist divers and military personnel on an open sea expedition to the ruins of WWI, almost buying a one-way ticket. I have been shot at. I produced a promo within 24 hours aired on CNN. I shot designer Ozwald Boateng's first promo.

I have been in prison - the notorious Wormwood Scrubs - talking/filming Life inmates. In each event I have had my camera with me. Each time, that which I seek to do I have been told can not be done.

The professionals will tell you, it is impossible to be multiskilled. But everything we do is multiskilled. Before the ubiquity of the motor car, professionals would tell you, mastering this vehicle was a job alone in itself. Before the mass production of the stills camera, we were told only the professionals can take pictures.

Before the industrial revolution, the technology revolution, the very job you are doing now would have been seen as impossible. The only thing the professionals would like you to believe is that you can't understand what they know.

In Britain, before Journalism was gentrified, before it became white collar, for 100s of years in the back streets of London, East End "blue collar's peddled news slips and gossip.

Here therefore is my emerging manifesto - the decree of the video journalist.

The video journalists Manifesto.

WHATS' NEVER BEEN DONE AWAITS TO BE DONE

1. I am a video journalist: I crave creativity, loathe that which is predictable. It is my job to look for truth.

2. I can move alone in any terrain. Experience is my blanket. Swarming (groups of Vjs coming together) increases my range.

3. I will be told by those who believe they know best that it can't be done. I must accept that they don't understand my job, my limitations. Nothing is impossible.

4. When they look at a blank piece of paper they see nothing, when I look at a blank canvas, I see the orgins of motion graphics, film and information coming together.

5. I start a dialogue. My packages can be open ended, begging further questions and dialogue. My work is never done. Each thread leads into a new tapestry of ideas and dialogue, which I relish. Herein lies the possibilities of deep video linking

6. My greastest allies are the hundreds of contacts I am yet to meet. I am surrounded by ideas, people, who have a story to share. And I often shoot-on-the-fly, unrehearsed; news in unpredictable.

7. Failure is an option. I must be allowed to fail. I do not court it, but is is a precondition of creativity. I am a researcher with a camera, experimenting with the template which has driven news production. I write my story as it unfolds and sometimes I know, just like a newspaper journalist, I may have to spike my story. Visually it just didn't work.

8. I am lean. I carry no excess weight or baggage. I am a specialist. I kill only that which I can eat, lessening the load and burden which others artificially absorb. There are some shots such as court and "big game" reportage where I may be unsuitable. There are risks as a solo journalist, but discretion is on my side.

9. My job is never done. My camera is my third eye. My camera goes where I go.

10. Like an actor I crave new parts, Like a footballer I make endless runs into the goal mouth searching for scoring opportinities. My work rate is phenomenal. But I'm trained to undershoot so my work load is made lighter.

11. I am a child of a bygone era. There were others before me. The first film makers were VJs [ Victorian VJs] I respect and build on their skills. My fall back is history, convention; my milestone is the future.

12. I am a designer, an editior, a producer, a director, a reporter, photographer an designer. I am a jack of all trades and a master of them.

13. I represent a new discourse in story telling and journalism blurring the boundaries between technologist and artisan, the net and TV, a writer and visual blogger.

14. I hear pictures, see sound, absorb words and can visualise music -all of which makes me a more attuned VJ.

15. Mi6 Video journalism allows me to strip a story bare: the podcast, blog, article, video, and multimedia

16. The tools of my trade: a powerful laptop, editing software, rugged rucksack, collapsable tripod, High Definition DV Cam, water, pen, firewire cable, external 200 g hard drive.

17. My software includes: Final Cut Studio, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, In design, After Effects and Flash

18. It's all in the story. My job is to craft it visually.

19. The Net - the most powerful broadcast media-in-waiting is my natural home.

20. The benefits of video journaism are many; but the ink definning video journalism is not dry. It is many things to all people. To me its is an aggressive, sometimes stealth way of shooting where the results of my labour will outdo those of bigger crew.

21. The work of Claudio Von Planta, Scott Rensberger, Rosenblum, Naka Nathaniel, Ruud - just some of the doyens of videojournalism illustrates the aforementioned point.

22. This manifesto is not complete

23. Belatedly added. Videojournalism is but another thread sowing the tapestry of our many stories, but what's next? What will come to define in our contracted timeline the new discourse and new tools. Qu how might videojournalism evolve?

Belated addition to the decree

24. Create alternatives to the convention ~ that may surprise you

25. Experiment or expire - a run on demo or die from MIT

26. Acknowledge that online the environment is interactive, your package can have multiple entry points.

27. Think expansively, shoot lean. Think like a detective entering a crime scene. If you think too narrowly, too traditionally, you're in danger of missing the new story, the new clues.

28. Videojournalism, blogging, photography are daughters of multimedia which may well require a multi modal language approach i.e. you could be the one to better define the new language.

29. Mi6 VJ says you can shoot and strip a package 6 ways,. You're a conductor controlling the play of any instrument at any time in unison. But you'll need to appreciate the capabilities of the instruments.

30. Add value to the visual conversation rather than exclusively always seeking a reaction. There is a difference. Being confrontational does not always lean towards resolution

31. It's not multimedia that is impossible. it's how you're conditioning your thinking.

32. It is an evolving language atracting jack of all trades and masters of all.

Design event submission to minister - news and design

This is a precipe of my talk to an influential design group, which is preparing its submisssion to the minister wo overseas this sector


THE OUTERNET - 21st century internet.

My talk focused on the Outernet – a manifestation of an emerging era of the internet which will have far reaching implications beyond that of the net itself.

We’ve seen glimpses of it in science fiction movies like Stephen Spielberg’s Minority Reports, where electronic billboards react with the user, where screens had the ability to recognise individuals via a number of arrays e.g. voice, iris ideintification, which are indeed a reality and today.

The Outernet is an outward front facing internet in public spaces – a html/css driven televisual medium delivering bespoke video programmes and ideas for the deliverer to end users.

It will be is possible because broadband at 8mb plus enables the streaming of DVD quality programmes.

Thus the biggest revolution to communications is the next crossroads of download speeds – an optimum 8mb. It’s also the biggest threat to the existence of television.

Imagine that: a council, an estate, a shop, an individual responsible for a “web site” with moving image information and advertising. There will be no OFCOM rules to navigate, no licenses on broadcasting. Decency and impartiality will be in the hands of the beholder.

We’re seeing early signs of this already in UK political site 18 Doughty Street, Al Gore’s US teen site Current.tv and perhaps even my own work viewmagazine.tv

As a news broadcaster, designer and video journalist, there are a number of facets to reconcile.

• A fundamental shift in the design of web sites; sites will look increasingly like TV screens and vice versa e.g. BBC
• A shift to database as opposed to time-tranistion programme. This has already contributed to the success of Youtube.
• A much more streamlined and cost effective way of programme making. This will involve video journalists – one person news crews – working more closely with subjects. This has been the path the UK newspaper industry is taking, which I have been involved in as a consultant and trainer.
• A fundamental shift on news and hierarchy. We should no longer entertain the artificialness of the news agenda which supposes news and programming should be centralised. One of the most exciting ideas to emerge is some work I’m undertaking with a senior government advisor on crime. The community we’re entering will, with a number of safety measures intact, be making programmes about the social impact they’re experiencing – which will be of interest to other groups attempting to find solutions. We’re experimenting on placing outernet screens within the estate.
• Gametheory: embracing new paradigms to combine journalism and design. The work we produced, The Family, for Channel 4’s digital awards is an example of this and one which I integrate into my lectures as a senior University lecturer
• A greater embrace of designers and information flow producers
• An examination of video hyperlinking and new technologies to strengthen our understanding of information.

I believe all the above is doable. The work I have produced in the US and Germany, both of which have won prestigious international awards demonstrates the need for looking at complexity, and Initiatives such as 'Designing for the 21st Century' to enrich all communities.


David Dunkley Gyimah
www.viewmagazine.tv

BBC - Youtube deal

Times reports the big one. If you're an independent, be afraid be very afraid. The BBC may have been slow in catching up with the new media thing but this news from the Times is enough to make any newspaper and broadcasting exec throw their coffee on the cat.

Landmark
BBC -Youtube deal "Executives at the Corporation believe this is the best chance for the BBC to “crack America” while Google — the owner of YouTube — say that it is the largest content partnership it has struck in the website’s short history

Wired Magazine's feature in January looked at whether Youtube would usurp traditional media. I doubt it, but the future is data base television.

But the BBC's has been busily trying to strike all manner of deals including a memorandum of understanding with Microsoft which should be interestng to watch.

When I interviewed the BBC Director General at the WeMedia summit, it was obvious then that Mark Thompson believed the corporation should be doing a lot more to exploit the future and attract the next generation.

I'm looking to write a more expansive feature on viewmagazine, together with an insider view of London Underground's Cross Track Projection ( XTP).

Meamwhile, there will be lots of jubilation within the pastel covered walls of the BBC's exec media land.

TDB Till Day Break

4.26 a.m.
We used to mock fellow collegues doing this at boarding school: TDB - till day break. And woe betide you got lugged with an edit or had the ignomy of a new site to lauch in what we called the death march.

But the cause of my enforced insomina, a hapless inexperienced so so and so at my host site, whose poor and inconsiderate instructions led to viewmagazine.tv - my site being deleted from the server.

Pain... you don't know the half of it. But there was a job to be done. Get the Masters journalism online, who this year will clearly win something, see my dean, have another meeting around 10' 0clock and then get home and look for one of six back up files to load.

I'm on a 1mb pipe which is excrutiatingly slow compared to the 100mbit janet network at uni. And as I sit here uploading the files on one mac, i watch the slow progress of the load bar move knowing that if I don't get all my podcast assets up, when Itune refreshes in the morning around 8 0clock, I'll be kicked off.

So a word of warning in dealing with your Host etc. Double question everything they ask you to do. Don't worry about sounding like an echo chamber: " So you want me to delete this. Are you abs sure, cuz that means I lose this".

Ultimately the trouble is a young buck who would have answered his 100th call with me, was on auto response. Not really caring that I had a specific issue that initially needed fixing. Graeme, his name, customer service at Fasthost didn't seem to understand that his attitude was costly and that ultimately more of those and it's the good reputation of what's claimed to be the best host in the UK, Fasthost, that gets sullied. They've been extremely helpful in the past, but this memory won't go away any time soon.

It's 4.38 now and a 50mb file has uploaded 30mb - at the rate of 1mb per minute.

Super size me Vs Gun Crime

An 8 year old weighing 14 stones risks being taking into care. A 15-year-old boy is shot dead in his home. News items seperated by a few days.

News searches for stories and is not a repository for social welfare news practitioners may argue. Their job to sell stories. But is there another function news has negated, yet could serve a deeper purpose in this century?

The above stories all depend on value and currency to their constitutents. An 8 year old now runs the top of the news agenda, while the aftermath of a 15 year old falls of the radar. One is about the fear and risks, the other is about the fear and risks

Do we care that much? Should we care that much to see news take on a greater social responsibility? The purists will argue emphatically NO.

Over the course of a few days there was much harumping and hand wringing at a nation gripped by guns.

Over the next few days there will be much much harumping and hand wringing at a nation gripped by obesity.

Is there any secondary, evolving purpose for public acess news other than to bring you a slice of the day's: Oh my God!

The trouble with news is that its been designed by default to be transient with no accountability. But if enough people cared about each issue could they not design their own news ie force the agenda and its ranking in a schedule - a data base.

I don't have any solutions other than to observe the futility and absurdity of this thing called News.

After 911, I think it was the NYT who pledged to keep the news on their front page. They needed to keep this in the public domain. Being off the page did not mean the issue had disappeared.

So what is this called news and how might it better serves as a social anayltical tool rather than a screen of ions showing the lastest thing to shock.

Any suggesttions?

news and complexity theory

Where do we get ideas from? How do we comprehend news? And what role can design play in creating a fresh paradigm in our evolving news environ?

At the University of East London I was invited to a gathering
magic in complexity consisting of PHd and practicing media artists and designers, many connected with Smart Lab - a brilliant schollarly playground where ideas are transformed into a cacophony of practical devices.

It's easy for news managers to be cynical about "thinkers", particularly when much of what might be discussed falls outside their sphere of importance and indeed influence.

The theme of the event: magic in complexity. Complexity theory is a brand of science which studies behaviour and seeks to deconstruct events and attributes which may seem vacuous, but are held together by models. In effect, those who generate ideas upon ideas may well have found a suitable template that allows that, whilst many of us might just say: I'm not creative; not so.

Ant hill colonies, tele-infrastructures, online gaming particularly and the way we access info all fall into complex theories which the Smart Lab unravels.

I was invited to share my ideas on the Outernet - a place I'm convinced the world is heading to too soon. Stephen Spielberg's Minority Report gave us a glimpse.

However I was more fascinated with some of the themes evolving from the debates, which inturn got me thinking about news structures. Cast your mouse around and all the major video play sites e.g. Youtube, Myspace, Ifilm are following a trend - a database -library look and feel.

Then examine our behaviour on these sites. Marketers call it the customer pathway. What seems obvious is the emergence in a short period a dominant look and feel, which may well come to characterise television in the near future.

The design process is often viewed as something designers do when instead, design is all about the dissemination of information in a more ergonomic aesthetic way. Exception, designers tend to think in spatial terms ( the architecture and the information) while most news managers are concerned with the content.

It's a real road to damascus to suddenly realise how we might better equip ourselves for the never ending comms tasks ahead of us, when we consider how much complexity theory may help.

I've shot some film which I intend to package into a short item soon. Within that we'll hear from Alison Waugh, a PHD reasearching ideas and space.

Question: where and when do you get your ideas?
Answer says Alison - from her research th three Bs: bath, bed, and bus.

Water is an incredible stimulus - just being in the shower creates an environment for the translumination of ideas. I'll come back to that word in my video package. Being on a bus, movement, provides another haven for ideas. Ergot she says, that's why it's a good idea to have the cofee machine down the coriddor. Bed, those twilight periods of just waking up are a major stimulating place where the brain sorts out complex behaviour.

Bath? I said in my best BBC Radio Today's John Humphrey's voice. "Oh yes", she responded. You can here more of how to get stuuck into complexities in a week's time on Viewmagazine.tv

complexity in design

Complexity in design is a relatively new area for me, but one which I could come to relish. Today I was invited to a gathering of innovative designs, examining complexity, game theory, emergence, and strange attractors to name a few.

The event took place at UEL and the Smart Lab run by the ebullient Liz Goodman. It's pretty late so I'll talk more about it tomorrow

news you can use

Responding to a post from Adrian Monck's blog who writes

Monck’s Maxims® of video news online:
"No newscasters. News anchoring is a presentational trope borne of the complex organizational demands of analogue TV studios. The newscast is to online as Top of the Pops is to YouTube."

Interesting how the origins of new ideas often reside in past genus e.g. Addison and Steele. Sorry an after thought.

An intriguing operation, yet to be replicated innovatively today, stems from Channel One circa 96.

The station had a "sadie"-like news system. On air it looked live, but these were prerecorded links from the presenters.

This had a huge number of benefits. Oh and you could opt in real Live if you wanted e.g. New Years.

But the format lends itself to the future of supermarket news ie off-the-shelf.

I agree the presenter is a product of the hollywoodisation of news and that a youtube/ agency model of news consumption has a rising currency harking back to another maxim "news you can use".

However if presenter-led news stays the course, here's an idea of how to customise your own in a database driven news economy.

Click your ipod, devise your menu of news reports, then scroll through the menu for those prerecorded links from your favourite presenter.

Today, Paxmanesque, tomorrow Snow.
Each click brings revenue to the network or online station that employs the presenter.

On the other hand, if you're brand presence resides in various territorities you might just be able to live off your click rate - something I mentioned to Christiane Amanpour as a panelist at the Front Line Club. I'll post the vid soon.

Like I said the genus relating to a new idea may well have something in common with, in this case, the juke box, which is as old as the news agency.

New Designs for the web

Viewmagazine.tv 2007 now


Viewmagazine.tv 2006- 2007



Six weeks into the Masters programme for Online Journalism and the students have impressed. But something else happened that only perhaps other lecturers/teachers will recognise, they gave something back. Perhaps it was not so overt. We opened up the web further to look at redesigns and spoke about Gillmore.

How can we influence that which has not been made. Part of Gilmore's book about We Media is about projection. Yes it looks back at a scholarly timeline of the media, but it only serves to ask: what now?

In examining, The Mirror, Telegraph, The Sun, The Times et all, a couple of things are emerging.

Sites are becoming more televisual- that was bound to happen see blog/article here from two year back.

But also some pros are sensing a greater cleaness about design. Under the bonnet that's CSS, but the aesthetic is more scandanavian, than Brit or even US/Chinese - which tends to favour portal dense sites.

Opening a site means using spatial colours. In selling a house, marrigold, according to a recent survey in Britain from Estate agents is preferable. It creates the illusion of space.

Space, weight and symmetry are the parameters, and more, that hold the grid for design together.

So late last night I looked to change some of these parameters on my own site.

The colour has been one I have long admired and once purchased a suit from the excruciatingly expensive but de rigour designer, Ozwald Boateng. There's something about pastel, what I call offset colours. The Times has executed that brilliantly with the lime green colour scheme it now employs for its new site.

So what do you think? The classic black - which will always have a place - and the hexidecimal 6600cc colour.

Also without making the site any more dense with images, it's now occurred to me there can be a far greater use of the front page with a popularity index and further links highlighting blogs.

Having said all that I will want to on occasion revisit the predominant panoramic quadrants, but am also aware that the new structure sets up a natural hiearchy.

So a start, but I have my students to thank. :)

8 Days - from newspapers to video journalism

UK newspaper journalists put themselves through an 8 days boot camp programme to learn video journalism, while one of the largest police forces tests them by opening up a recent murder case. 8 Days.

8 Days took the international video journalism award for independents in Berlin'a annual award

12 possibles for looking at gun crime

1. Intervention - accept that the age of intervention to help this generation is far below 15 years - perhaps as young as 8-10 when young boys start to figure out the peverse attraction of a maligned together ness as in gangs. Perhaps what's needed is a heavier dependence on life-skills presented by a 'different' sort of teacher, capable of engaging latch key students after school, who would otherwise be up for grooming in their troubled neighborhoods

2. That at the heart of society ills is a break down in discipline. Children's rights are to be applauded but at the point when they challenge adults, even in the event of being admonished, something's wrong. Progressive liberal laws need to be reexamined, unless like the prime minister you believe gun crime is being committed by a small section of offenders - which it possibly is - but the implication is we (society) shouldn't lose our perspective.

3. Stripping teachers of any power empowers unruly kids looking to fill a power vaccum. I was once physically assualted reporting from within a school. The headteacher looked on powerless.

4. A society can't have it all ways. Some good liberal friends of mine in South Africa carry guns - some are broadcasters. "They need their Glocks for protection, against criminals", they say. I raise a non judgemental eyebrow. Now put a stressed out kid with a grudge, and no reasoning skill in the place of the broadcaster.

5. Accept politicians do not have the answers. Most politicans will never be privy to the level of unaceptable behaviour from youngesters. Yes, their children carrying guns etc. It's a world away from that transcribed to them via news headlines or even from constituents. If politicians were serious about this, they'd be moe aggresive behind the scenes campaigns and embrace of community heads who have some idea.

6. Accept that when politicans want to do something - a priority issue - dangerous dogs act, invasion of iraq - they'll muster all available resources to make it work, irrespective of the odds.

7. Tougher gun laws e.g. lower the age of criminality to 17 will have some effect, but how much. Gangs exploit the law by making minors carry guns. You're only forcing an even younger generation to become the custodians of illegal arms through the actions of those older.

8. The pressure to join a gang is intolerable for youngsters. My nephew attended a good Catholic school. His mother worked double time - white collar job - to keep him their. But in growing up he was lured by the 'intoxicating' lifestyle of friends on his estate, who could do what they wanted, anytime at anyplace. By the time my sister-in-law had a hang of what was going on, it seemed almost too late.

9. There exist in Britain a lost generation. They're gone, unreedemable. They don't respect authority and live by their own code of conduct and summary justice. That much I witnessed also in the townships of South Africa - where the I first heard the term lost generation. If you were an actuarist you'd probably say there's nothing you can do about it. Liberal society believes that a henous cop out.

10. Stronger show of force. Some are bored, some aren't salvagable. Some have no idea what they're doing. Dis them in any number of ways you'd consider irrelevant and the consequences could be dire. They're not bothered by TV News or newspaers, so there needs to be an alternative show of force to demonstrate society's unaccaeptance.
e.g. million man march. It won't stop it over night, but will raise the consciousness of the issues and the legacy.

11. The media has a fundamental point to play. Unlike some countries that use TV as social tool, we in the west haved far advanced on that, so we watch what we want with the understanding that the broadcaster has limited rights, and beyond that its up to you. If there's an audience, there's a buck to be made.
There have been assualts every other day in the UK. The media would have you believe it's only happening now. Before hand it wasn;t interested. And two days after what's happened, it's yesterday's news and has moved onto something else. If this issue merited national emergency we'd see a different media response. Wasn't it the New York Times that ran with the 911 story in some form on its front page for a whole year? Somebody wanted to keep the tragedy in the consciousness of the nation.

12. Yes it's about money, but also aggressve intervention with parents who have lost control of their charge. What can be done? Accept that nothing will change, because after all the hullabaloo, what WILL fundamentally change tomorrow?
New prisons?