Presidential Videojournalism- Don't throw the baby out with bathwater

Presidential Videojournalist. President Obama shows his shooting skills, but is he shooting stills or video? Picture WhiteHouse, Pete Souza See here for David's 100 Day Obama video played at the Southbank Centre to an original live score by composer Shirley Thompsom

You're a would-be videojournalist. You're researching a course and you're at a loss at

• What to look for?
• What outfit to choose?

You're now in possession of the most amazing piece of shooting kit - a stills camera that shoots film and you have a bit more time on your hands than the US president. So options?

• Do you go on a course to jump start your solo shooting career?
• Do you go it alone?

When you open the directory for videojournalism outfits, there's the university and as many short course videojournalism training outfits leaving you a trite bewildered. They offer different epistemologies as those who have done short courses and proceeded to Unis or vice versa will testify. Not least the length of study. Consider this, a thought I'd like to stake in this piece, a sort of iambic pentameter. "Da de dam du dum, dum. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water".

"online video part of 'the new journalism'? - original article 2005 on journalism.co.uk by Jemima Kiss. Here for the rest There are now two schools of journalism. In one, the journalist must be accredited and trained. In the new school, we have bloggers, mobloggers and latter-day gonzo. You can attract a large international audience through blogging or podcasting, so a generation of storytellers may well bypass traditional routes of education and the mainstream if they don't feel the industry is relevant to them any more. "

Television is your answer Professor Leonard Witt, talking about Trust in the media from his 2005 Conference in San Antonio. You can see the film I made on this on their site. Trust is an issue I'll come back to later. Many of us may chasten television, I did and ocassionally still do, for the manner in which it tells stories. But this semiotic exists for a reason. Its use dependent on its medium. There are horses for courses. It's not the art of television journalism that is at fault as you pursue your new love. There are the most brilliant TV practitioners that ply their trade or have left extraordinary legacies for us to be informed e.g. Murrow, Jennings ( I met as an ABC news producer in 1994 in South Africa and was just awe struck), Bradley, & Wheeler, It is its application by those no longer turned on by its creativity and the extraordinary association and connectivity with the audience that has reason to make you feel frustrated. How many times as a journalism students have you screamed at the television reporter proclaiming you could do better, because a pun was not necessary or the reporter dominates disproportionately the message of the report.. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Da de dum, da de dum Television journalism was and is a necessary lingua franca and just as Latin begot common parlance e.g. Catalan English, French, Italian, so will generations ahead proficient in a paradigmal shift in visual factual literary story telling, be thankful to this form. Which begs the question for you right now. You've decided to go on a short course. It's cheaper and provides a quick rush to build your confidence. What do you look for in the background of the trainers?

A still David reporting for ITV's "London Tonight", circa 1998, from David's book and PhD study in which using phenomenology he shows how his background working for the likes of Newsnight, Channel 4 News, dotcom new media companies, Designer, Commercial Promo maker has informed his notion of visual grammar.

Television, yes, to impart to you an understanding of the foundations, but then something else, hopefully, an illustrative vision on how to push the form. In learning about about composition today we still go back to the origin e.g. Caravagio et al. Yet to break the rules, you need to understand them and many of the rules, we call "rules" are in fact guidelines, there to be broken by the innovator e.g. 180 degree. Mind you my thinking comes with a footnote. In years to come again when we've turned over, we'll likely not teach television in videojournalism, just as you don't teach radio writing for TV journalism. Or or taking form for for, you would not teach creative storytelling in novel form for print journalism So back to Videojo how do you know your trainers will be able to place you in this new space?

• Simply ask them.
• look at their body of work. Bill Gentile has thirty years shooting in the field; he gets to teach me, yah! Rosenblum needs no introduction.

Be wary of abject recommendations. I spoke about this presenting at the World Newspaper Forum, last year. I once knew someone who approached scores of people for that cred letter. He eventually found one, and guess what pride of place it went. Front page. A caveat though, as in any profession, there are some people who are autodiadactists or combine conventional education with a penchant to keep rethinking. I can think of a few like this, but would not want to embarrass just yet. They possess that "kwa" to push you beyond the boundaries of your comfort, which is what you need. "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. dada de dum da de" Teaching is a selfless act to others and a mirror reflection of ones self. That's contestable you might think as you're paying for the time to be taught, but the philosophy of teaching is not simply saying, this is a good film and this is how to carry a camera, but a psychological process leading to critical thinking and analysis, that enable you to be able to make your own judgement. Why is a chair, this chair beautiful to look at and how can what I know about this chair be transferred to how I might build my website? The answers lay within us all. The frame work is what teaching, building on knowledge, imbibing different socio-cultural indexes and pedagogical explorations, is all about. Whatever videojournalism is, and I have my own convictions littered through out the history of this blog and articles I have been writing or contributing to since 1994, it transcends all that which came before it. It has to in many ways otherwise is fraudulent of packaging itself as the new new thing. Pic. David reporting from Africa on its first cross production between two African states using videojournalism: Ghana and South Africa ( 1997) David is in Slovenia, Cairo and Chonquin in the coming months lecturing in "training the trainers" for professional TV execs and University Professors

How anyone can make Video - Master class lecture

Re:sounding motion was a short film made to complement the performance of a group of dancers and musicians shown on the big cinema screen of the Royal Festival Hall on Friday 26th, March 2010

Can anyone make a film? A good film?

I believe so, because it's a language and languages can be learned.

Michael Rosenblum, (my friend and tutor 16 years ago) arguably the most influential videojournalism evangelist in the world believes so fundamentally.

Recently he got me :) to make this video for one of the many illustrious clients he works with. ( See video below)

So our Master class at the University of Westminster will explore traditional and new themes of video making, and it really doesn't matter what level you're at, because this should be as entertaining as hopefully rewarding in prepping you for your careers.

Riz Khan, could be feeding into our lecture. Link here to earlier post.

I'll be pulling some early finds from my PhD study which surprised me and I'd like it to open us up to the new e.g. the IPad and films and make it as interactive as possible.

So I hope bring in a number of interviewees specifically for this lecture either live or pre-recorded e.g. Riz Khan, who is a huge digital film buff.

So see you back at Lectures and to Albert Gachiri for sparking the idea this possible.

----
Below is a post from an earlier write up on this event.

Jay-Z and Prince Charles sharing a joke at the University of Westminster, Harrow Campus, 2006. Yes the biggest rap star was in the TV- film studios. Link here to previous posts on IPad design.


It is shrouded in past iterations of different forms; just the word videojournalism may be somewhat novel in its acceptance of such a standard. No one ever calls a news item aesthetic !

But what does it mean?

Certainly not style over substance or otherwise a vainglorious attempt to dress mutton up as lamb but a distillation, to communicate as efficaciously as possible maximising the impact of what's said or envisioned.

You may end up playing the above video more than once; your behaviour, influenced by the affect of an aesthetic. The frame choice, mood, experience - all part of a complex interactive mesh.

Master Class
I aim to deliver a Master Class lecture at the University of Westminster for Masters students very soon.

Here, the focus is to illustrate, via an interactive forum, my own background as a practicing videojournalist/ artist in residence and findings from my PhD research how aesthetic videojournalism is crucial to our solo ability to tell more informed stories.

That is more informed stories of the same stories, taking into account the variables that allow us to enrich those moments.

The other notion I posit is how the very essence of "the story" in itself requires further interrogation in an age when the idea of story teller is no longer univocal. The concept of video-hyperlinking unravels ownership.

On page 44 of The Documentary Handbook (2009), under "Flying Solo", documentary maker, lecturer and author Peter Lee-Wright writes:

" His ( David Dunkley Gyimah) conception of videojournalism stands in stark contrast to the newspapers and broadcaster who see VJs as a cheap alternative to crews and traditional working practices"....

"While the experts trash around in uncertainty, it is a good time for the innovators to show their stuff...from the core investigative issues of public interest and accountability to the new forms of storytelling that Gyimah champions" (pg47)

If you're on the Masters programme (print pathway or broadcasting) reading this, then I hope to stage it after the Easter break and if you're allow me to say this, I believe it will benefit anyone with an eye to video or visuals of some sort. Details to be posted soon.

More on videojournalism here www.viewmagazine.tv

Viewmagazine.tv circa updated from 2005



David making a video for his friend and former tutor Michael Rosenblum for Oprah.com

Test

Behind the scenes with Riz Khan - Al Jazeera

Riz Khan was in town so I popped by to catch up with him; he's normally based in Washington, and see how his show is put together. I'll post that at a latter date.

But the interview with him was pretty funny, talking about some of the people who call him up to be on the show.

One thing that's not so known about Riz is he's a digerati - the consummate digi aficionado. He's show One on One with a number of celebrities, involves a three camera shoot using Sony ZXs.

And he's an avid photographer with a D7

I still recall a TDB ( till day break) we did in early 2000 when he'd made a film on the Haj and it needed to be on the BBC World Service the next day.

I'm a bit gutted. Riz is interviewing Annie Lennox tomorrow and asked if I'd like to come and sit in. Grrrr I have a previous engagement.

Anyhow's how The Riz Khan show is made and interviews shortly :)

Frame grabs from my JVC GY100 video camera

Columbia's joint engineering cum journalism degree - great

Columbia's joint engineering cum journalism degree - sounds like something way over due. Below is a link to Wired Magazine's article.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/04/will-columbia-trained-code-savvy-journalists-bridge-the-mediatech-divide/ I left the link native - my own creative commons attribute.

Now then, whilst I applaud this: I'm a chemistry/maths grad myself, I'm looking forward to seeing institutions that go a step further in inter disciplinary skills.

There's an aspect of journalism which could do with more rigour from an earlier standpoint and that is developing cross discipline analytical and enquiry skills, that includes a constructivism approach.

But Columbia's computer journalism programme is a great step in the digi-ecology. It won't surprise you how many journos balk at CSS or actions scripting.

For the model journalist in the area of journalism meets computers google Adrian Holavaty.

Art directing videojournalism for IPad

At SXSW last year I presented "the film is not enough". The presentation was meant to capture the notion that the video is just part of the aesthetic ecosystem.

So here's a more elaborate illustration.

Theses are web pages that I art-directed for the very first viewmagazine.tv that would go onto win the Batten Awards. The year is 2005

If it looks like something now designed for the IPad, that should not be suprising. I took magazine design as my template, but wanted to activate video/audio etc when you rolled over an image.

Art directed videojournalism
Now the Ipad is built for that, so I'm loking forward to now pushing at the edges, this time with the Ipad in mind and how videojournalism will work.

You can find the original viewmagazine.tv here without its front cover. Simply click the images and you'll go right to the page.

To see how I incorporated the idea into the CSS versions I designed. This page here gives a good account. The video is buried behind the image.

Among the articles in the first one. Jay-z atending one of our music sessions. I'm standing in front of the photographer

Exclusive pics of Bob Marley, the future of Cinema and Ozwald Boateng Fashion Icon

Who inspires you?

Who inspires me? These screen grabs come from a short video of my research colleagues. Truly inspiring. The aesthetic is in the narrative.

For video go to viewmagazine.tv, where they're talking about:

1. the creation of life from computers
2. sending 3d animate objects reprintable down the web
3. collaborative next generation social network
4. and how you can get more creative by modifying the space you occupy.

How do Blacks, Asians & Ethnics find jobs in UK Broadcast industry

Despite a digital broadcast revolution Blacks, Asians and Ethnic minorities (BMEs) still struggle to find a job in UK broadcast journalism.

David Dunkley Gyimah reports from ITN’s hosting of the Cultural Diversity Network – designed to solve the problem.

A shorter version of this article is published at Journalism.co.uk

It is the British broadcasting industry's hypertrophic scar, visible only if you truly want to see it: How Do You Solve A Problem with BMEs finding jobs?

When a phrase morphs into a three letter acronym you know it has political status, yet decades on since this "Solve A Problem" first needed attention, ten if you count the CDN's (Cultural Diversity Network) existence, Black Minority Ethnics still have reason to feel hard done by.

One by one in the basement of ITN they strafed the floor with questions to four panellists from the BBC, ITN, SKY and Channel 4. If the mark of a good journalist is to be dogged, readily posing open difficult questions, the panellists had their fill of journalists to choose from.

Each delegate could have held court for longer burnishing personal testimonies and follow-ups questions such as "Can you tell me what you do on a daily basis?” had the chair Sir Trevor McDonald not chivvied proceedings along.

The reflexive accounts from senior black and Asians in the industry: Chuck Nwosu, assistant editor, BBC News; Vivek Sharma, programmes editor, Sky News and Samira Ahmed, presenter, Channel 4 News, via a short film set the evening’s agenda.

Black and Asian figures
This was followed by ITN's managing Editor, Robin Elias providing snap shot figures of industry employment in England:

* In England the population percentage of BMEs is 12.8%

* In London this is 29%

* In London BME editorial staff accounted for 10% of the workforce

* On Screen staff made up 14%

* Off screen staff and editorial managers (decision makers) came in at 8%

Elias acknowledged there was work to be done.

In the 80s broadcasting countenanced a triple whammy, but judging from the shards of glass on the floor and editorial meetings looking less like an OBN Club, women groups have reaped a much better hard fought campaign than minorities and disability groups.

In the 90s before the era of the CDN and feeling the need to do something colleagues and I formed a collective, which with the assistance of the Freedom Forum staged events well attended by broadcasters.

We posed the same questions. Today, a new more savvy generation within the milieu of digital broadcasting wants answers.

Two hours is hardly adequate to resolve deep issues, and while “Gis-a job”, seems more than straightforward, a more inclusive transparent strategy between both groups should be under scored.

But a forum of this kind is necessary. It gives the panellist a realistic sense of the depth of feeling.

Channel 4’s head of news and current affairs Dorothy Byrne and Sky’s Executive Producer Kate McAndrew intimated fresh strategies.

For delegates it puts flesh on this abstractism, "the media", and the pushy ones will no doubt have done their career prospects no harm getting in the face of the likes of Tim Singleton, head of foreign news from ITN and Craig Oliver deputy head of BBC Multimedia from the BBC - an opportunity to be cherry-picked.

This last point is a favoured long-standing modus operandi. Channel 4 presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy mentioned how he’d been guided by a senior exec. I have Tim Gardam then Editor of Newsnight and Janet Street Porter for kick starting my TV journalism career in 1990.

CDN Today

Today’s CDN lives in a digital space that could generate a reciprocity of creative methodologies e.g. crowd sourcing and in the bricks and mortar world accessible ideas exhaustively enacted by the indefatigable Janice Turner at BECTU’s “Move on Up” events.

Delegates are guaranteed a sortie of face-to-face contact with potential employers over the course of the day.

It’s time for bolder creative solutions said BBC journalist Barney Choudhury. And more robust research is needed because blink and you would have missed the logic of causality that evening which makes for uncomfortable telling and listening.

Broadcasting’s revolving employment door, the result of job-hopping, internal promotions and redundancies has slowed down. The debilitating economy has further damaged the hinges. Every one's staying put.

And that puts more pressure on entrants. Jim Latham, the secretary of the BJTC, the journalism accrediting body represented by broadcasters and academics gave this stat breakdown.

In 2009 with 58 accredited courses almost exclusively in universities around 3500 students were interested in journalism, 1000 of these will emerge from post grad and grad programmes of which 350 are black and Asians.

Says Jim:

“There are big problems in broadcasting which have to be dealt with by essential programmes of in-house education and training. The casual offence caused by complete ignorance of interests, beliefs, what makes ethnic communities tick isn’t god enough”.

As a senior lecturer in Journalism and council member of the BJTC I too see this at the sharp end. Couple of years ago I asked the question in a short on digital diversity at the ICA, recognising the many tiers opening up in the digital world where minorities were becoming marginalised in the main.

I have a duty of care to all students. I do also where possible try and mentor black and Asian would-be journalists, and there have been happy outcomes.

Creative Ideas

At the Southbank Centre I’m looking forward to working with artists in residents SE1 United (predominately black youngsters) alongside acclaimed British filmmaker Penny Woolcock behind Mischief Night, and recently 1 Day - an uncompromising film of the Birmingham’s Grime scene on making dv films.

My friend and fellow artist Lemn Sissay tells me when Tennessee production Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was on its way to London, they were desperate to work with black technicians – another story in itself.

But clearly in these digital revolutionary times and richer variants of journalism and storytelling, it’s disheartening not to be seeing wider more apt gains started by so many, so long ago.

The will appears to be there. Certainly, the tools exist in twitter (twitter clouds); blogs and videojournalism to further lift the campaign. And the job market will pick up again. So Just how do you solve a problem of BMEs finding jobs?

---

David was a former broadcast journalist who started his career in 1987 and worked for Channel 4 News, Newsnight and ABC News and is now a senior lecturer at the University of Westminster in journalism and artist in resident at the Southbank Centre. He is currently researching videojournalism and news innovation as part of a PhD and was a juror for the RTS broadcast innovation awards.

Videojournalism - the drama

REPOST

Editor: so you one of those VJs?
Senior Editor: what!
Editor: VJs!
Senior Editor: DJs?
Editor: VJ, VJ, short for videojournalism
Senior Editor: V-O-D-O-O J-O-U-R-N-A-L-I-S-M What's that?
Young guy: Hey Ol Man It's video journalism. Not Vodoo, Not Vagner spelt with a "W", Not venerable. VIDEO. But I guess you're too past it to know we stopped using film in the 80s.
Everyone looks stunned.
***n it. I'm not going to get job now so I might as well speak my mind.
Trouble with you guys is you see a guy with a camera and think cheap. You'd balk at the idea of seeing Velázquez hold his own brush. Or that it takes two people to drive a car: one on the gear lever while the other shouts "move away". We've moved on. But I guess you still think Citizen journalism is some one's dyslexia for Citizen Kane.
Stop. Look out of the window and watch. We're now in colour. Video. Video. One person and a camera Phut! ( Shakes his head)
Door shuts
Senior Editor and Editor: What a strange man!
Senior Editor: So who's next outside?
Editor: Some guy with typewriter sowed to his head. Calls it blogging!
Senior Editor and Editor: Ahhhhhhhh

Series tweetish 1 here Does he get a vest

TV going videojournalism

David's back in the Mid East this month helping state broadcasters with plans and logistics to set up videojournalism in their newsroom

In many ways television news is as close to videojournalism as football is to field hockey. Both sports I love by the way, which have a ball at the centre of play.

That's why any announcement about television going videojournalism creates such a fuss. As a former network television producer, I get the arguments.

Yet I also know where videojournalism, IMVJ or cineVJ as I call it can play a huge part and I'm looking forward to what results the PhD research I'm involved in yields.

I have been practicing and writing about it in trade magazines since 1994. These screen grabs below come from a 2001 edition of the magazine "Producers". I'll provide a link for you to download later in the week.

Videojournalism's sole gain is not necessarily its soloism, though it's a strong feature. One of its true zeitgeist is enabling the practitioner to perceive what works where and how to accomplish it.

Think of it as the mechanic who has a good grasp of a cross range of cars. My local mechanic knows cars like the back of his hand; he builds them and also races them.

So its with great excitement - finally the point of this post - that I'm back in the Mid East this month working with a state broadcasters on maximising videojournalism in their newsroom.

And believe me it's not just a news gathering, more cameras to spare, exercise.




David writing in The Producers about a new world order in 2001. Videojournalism is tool agnostic. In the rh shot I'm shooting with a digibeta 700.

How anyone can make a good film - aesthetic videojournalism

Re:sounding motion was a short film made to complement the performance of a group of dancers and musicians shown on the big cinema screen of the Royal Festival Hall on Friday 26th, March 2010

The aestheticization of videojournalism is not a new phenomena.

It is shrouded in past iterations of different forms; just the word videojournalism may be somewhat novel in its acceptance of such a standard. No one ever calls a news item aesthetic !

But what does it mean?

Certainly not style over substance or otherwise a vainglorious attempt to dress mutton up as lamb but a distillation, to communicate as efficaciously as possible maximising the impact of what's said or envisioned.

You may end up playing the above video more than once; your behaviour, influenced by the affect of an aesthetic. The frame choice, mood, experience - all part of a complex interactive mesh.

Master Class
I aim to deliver a Master Class lecture at the University of Westminster for Masters students very soon (courtesy of Albert Gachiri).

Here, the focus is to illustrate, via an interactive forum, my own background as a practicing videojournalist/ artist in residence and findings from my PhD research how aesthetic videojournalism is crucial to our solo ability to tell more informed stories.

That is more informed stories of the same stories, taking into account the variables that allow us to enrich those moments.

The other notion I posit is how the very essence of "the story" in itself requires further interrogation in an age when the idea of story teller is no longer univocal. The concept of video-hyperlinking unravels ownership.

On page 44 of The Documentary Handbook (2009), under "Flying Solo", documentary maker, lecturer and author Peter Lee-Wright writes:

" His ( David Dunkley Gyimah) conception of videojournalism stands in stark contrast to the newspapers and broadcaster who see VJs as a cheap alternative to crews and traditional working practices"....

"While the experts trash around in uncertainty, it is a good time for the innovators to show their stuff...from the core investigative issues of public interest and accountability to the new forms of storytelling that Gyimah champions" (pg47)

If you're on the Masters programme (print pathway or broadcasting) reading this, then I hope to stage it after the Easter break and if you're allow me to say this, I believe it will benefit anyone with an eye to video or visuals of some sort. Details to be posted soon.

More on videojournalism here www.viewmagazine.tv

Viewmagazine.tv circa updated from 2005

Preview - Multicamera Solo VJ shoot

Sorry. I'm up to my eyeballs with work. But here's something I have almost completed which you can see here http://www.viewmagazine.tv/dance_soundmoves.html - Preview - Multicamera Solo VideoJournalism shoot.

The 3min film showcases Sound Moves - 8 young talented dancers meet 8 young musicians at the Southbank Centre.

The score isnt the one playing on the day Friday 26th at the Royal Festival Hall where this short will be screened. Requires a few more tweeks.

I used four different camera set ups JVC, Sony, Canon, and Flip with blocking techniques to capture straight off. No, I wasn't being extravagant.

Multicamera VJ
Each gives its own aesthetic. I did this on international shoots working in television, but it was truly pricey working just two.

On shoots such as Chicago, I'm directing myself ( see running shot). I tend to conceals cameras in vantage points to get what I'm after.

Shots in this film are heavily saturated and "crushed" - all for a reason. I'll write this up more comprehensively sometime but now its back to McQuails Mass Communication Theory.

ITV hosts Diversity in UK Newsrooms

Post will be going up on journalism.co.uk

ITV hosts Diversity in UK Newsrooms

Twenty odd something years since I clutched hold to the dream of being a broadcaster, the arguments for inclusion into the industry, diversity in UK Newsrooms, has not dimmed.

Is it about time broadcasters were brutally honest admitting there's little chance of solving this problem, or that they need more time and resources?

Tomorrow David Dunkley Gyimah, a former Channel 4 News freelance producer reports on how the industry is damned each way and that the solutions lie in a system not yet invented.

Revolutionise the form to be functional

Three events are running concurrently on my laptop and desk mac.

Each morning is a sprint, a brain dump of alpha wave thoughts to writing up chapters for research; form following function.

Some of the data is coming in, but it will be a series of ground hog days, which I must accept will drive me to watch birds flying an marvel how they do that.

I was at a China knowledge bank meeting earlier this week and shared my woes with Technology expert, the Guardian's Dr Aleks Krotoski whom chimed PhD, "oh yeah" ; hers she admitted still fresh in her mind. "Take time off when you finish", she advised.

My chapter on interviews for book has just been submitted for first drafts, slowly methodically they're taking shape.

The extreme difference, the writing style is utterly different and so I sit at my desk and look for the plug that says: "fluid and accessible" before hard wiring it into the base of my head. The Matrix, Oh yeah, t'is true. Form must follow function.

I'm midway into completing a film, which is one of my most ambitious in videojournalism as I can now push the form into enquiry mode, rather than the aesthetics of journalism which insist we close the argument.

The videojournalism shoot
The videojournalism shoot involved four cameras simultaneously fixed with different set ups. I know what I'm looking for, it's not superfluous.

Using After Effects, the front end animates around a visual theme not unlike that seen in Heroes. My vision is firm, but I have a second shoot for the flashforward sequence to work.

Meanwhile, a cold bead of sweat gathers on my forehead: I have a load of marking soon, Online and TV.

But if I'm really excited, it is the prospect articulated by the director of Southbank this week and the plans shaping up for next years epoch Festival of Britain.

To say its huge is an understatement, but I have so many ideas to feed in, that I have been scribbling furiously on train journeys in between Baudrillard and the next project, Cairo and China.

Time to get something to eat. Have I reached the stage when I must diarise that as well. Perhaps not, it has little do with form, however much to do with how I function

How tos.. film and pull off the big interviews - Videojournalism

One of my many interviews. This one with the former head of the CIA, James R Woolsey, which took place in Washington DC.

It forms a series of "how tos?", including interviewing Nelson Mandela at a Press Conference, to the great an late Eartha Kitt and turning the tables on my old friend Riz Khan. The how to exposes tricks and tips through out my career and some great flaws.

I was once mortified after my equipment failed me interviewing Sir Douglas Hurd, a high ranking Tory and then member of the Conservative government.

So I'm disappearing from these pages for a while as I have a number of deadlines. Admittedly I can't help the occasional quick blog, but all my writing and time is going into two big exercises.


Did I tell you I actually like making videos? I have got a couple more to produce, including a TED like interview featuring some of the most amazing thinkers I have come across e.g. Zann Gill, a former NASA personnel, is building the next social network as part of a study for her thesis.

Bruce Damer, another NASA person, is attempting to create life from nothing other than a computer simulation. They and others truly inspire me.

Inspiring people
But alas there are only 19 hours in a day, which starts at 6 a.m and concludes at 1 p.m. I have posted some new vids on Viewmagazine.tv including an interview with the fantastic Brian Storm founder of MediaStorm, whose work is mind-inducingly trail blazing.

I'm rebuilding parts of my site from html to css etc. Tomorrow I'm looking forward to seeing what our International Masters students are doing. They should be online with their new ventures.

I'll post a link for you to see the fruits of the six weeks labour with Flash, Css, Photoshop - and more importantly understanding the semiotics of online

Having watched "Hurt Locker" I was going to change the interface of viewmagazine.tv to show how to replicate the DVDs titles. I might do, but truthfully I'm up against time.

Still if you're a videojournalist or an outfit I'd love to hear from you.


We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit
Aristotle

Journalism's deja vu why... the past matters

David as a freelance World Service radio journalist in Cape Town settlement in 1992

I'm peering through the window; the fans of my hard drives are now audible - an irritant, almost.

And I have now seen fit to turn of the other two monitors, three will do fine for the moment. Yes I am a screen geek, but that's for another day to banter.

Journalism's deja vu and why the past matters is a reflective thought from building up a list of to dos for a study, which is also the making of a film I'm investing quite some time in.

It goes back to 1987 as seen through my eyes, an interpretive approach to the changing media. Oh how the past really matters, as I popped open a Hi8 (obscure thing) to watch on its designated player and rolled tape from the settlements of Khayelitsha.

For once, now we might truly recognise there is no grand scheme, no jewels of utter profound thought - though there are shards of occasional brilliance - in manufacturing media.

The year of 1987. Thatcherism. And how desperately I wanted to work in broadcasting. I'm black, a chemistry undergrad transitioning and haven't the foggiest how I might soon transmorgificate myself from post studentism to broadcast professional.

I wrote a piece for our student newspaper, a heated debate at the university about the emergence of AIDS from Africa discovered in Reese Monkeys. Yep!

Black is important. In 1987 colour was heavily politicized, student affairs was akin to a class struggle.

Later in 1992 when I landed in South Africa and was summarily invited onto prime time radio, you could forgive the host for asking the number of blacks who worked in broadcasting.

I digress.

Journalism back story
Reflection! What was once so, those distant times, why do they matter? Because journalism thought it never had it so good, short term views ran the course, the beneficiaries of the so-called professionals arbitrating on our behalf, became a self interest.

The past matters for context.

Over the years any number of outfits have changed, shed past ways, looked to the future, shed some more past ways and then made pronouncements about how right now they are in the here and now.

We heard it on the news again this week with the BBC's new policy javelin spearing two hitherto stations, you've probably never heard of. Martin Sorrell, the Stan Lee of advertising says we're (advertising) back. You can wheel the patient out of the critical room.

How prescient of Oliver Stone to resurrect Gecko. There's a looming irony.

Never mind hindsight, but its worth asking and firmly if you're privy to the change business. We all are as consumers, so how really different will the future be? For one thing our views of truth, Walter Benjamin suggests, which is shaped by institutions, by any account has not gone the way of the recession.

There is disquiet over the Tories intended fisticuffs with broadcasting should they toe poke the election. It looks too much like Murdoch's manifesto says the Guardian's Jonathan Freedland

.."the BBC has decided its best strategy for self-preservation is to suffer a little pain now to avoid a lot of pain later".

There is a sense we might be slow walking, not into old ways - that's not possible - but parallels of ways we've co opted that reference those ways.

Goldsmith University's research unveiled early last year that the Internet hasn't significantly altered the structure of journalism seems true to a large point.

Plutocracy rules. Old money, old ideas buy power. Witness the non dom tax debacle of Lord Ashcroft and traditional media tail spinning. Their news is our news.

We've sniffed a bit of lax in the system, but it's only a bit and apart from the odd subject agendas are made in corporate boardrooms.

All Change
And journalism, well it still hasn't fully recovered, question is when it does will it be the one of old or a new one in place - hardly a topic to debate really?

So why does my longitudinal study and the forsaken tapes I have kept from my first broadcast to recently running around Beirut training matter?

Well context Watson, context! Will comparisons with the past truly show how earth-moving this flux has been? Is the change we're witnessing a symptom of Darwinism - evolving - rather than a revolution?

To academics who chew the cud of words such lengthy studies are boringly necessary, because they often reveal not som much the changes made, but what was missed and truly could have been monumental.

Like I said, the next pronouncement you hear from your favourite media will be telling you how they've now got it so right, journalistically, in employment (don't mention the CDN), and socially.

You'll find out whether that's the case in another ten years time.