New Journalism: journalism-of-self but at what cost?

The Journalism-of-self, but there are costs

We can all take stock now. Some already have and I know I have written around the subject before. Yet some of its themes and my understanding have grown.

It comes in many guises, but ultimately it's the journalism-of-self. This is different in ways to other journalism, because the journalist-of-self is the Brando of the unfurling profession which professes all the world is my stage. Its actors are rebellious, adventurous, soloist, at times wary of company.

But for all their flaws, the actor-of-self, starting out on their career recognised Stanislavski, as much as they did Strasberg or at least the techniques they passed on.

Journalism-of-self is now embedded into our psyche, prefixed by such conferences and training manuals as "Everyone is now a journalist, "Twitter and Facebook journalism"  and the 'hail videojournalism".

Any argument to the contrary is drowned out within the sphere. But the conversation or truthfully enquiry is a philosophical one which often negates asking what journalism is or its function today.

Philosophical because systems undoubtedly change via socio-cultural, technological and the historical and thus any interrogative question seeks to understand the core.

The latter, "history" implies even the best history academics, through their own narrative discourse rarely tell the same story in its whole. In years to come Berners-Lee will still be the father of the web, but antecedent's and protagonists will change as new information becomes available.

Take Mike Conway's superb book on the history of broadcasting published two years ago. I mean who would have thought there was still a treasure trove of info to acquire for a subject that's been so fastidiously combed over.

So whatever constituted journalism in the 80s, compared with now may have general variables: inverted triangle n' all but different specificities. One reason why Bradshaw's rework on the triangle has lit up academia and the workflow of institutions. These are philosophical enquiries.

This however is not a treatise on what is journalism, but a side spin of its rump. If we can do it all, why do we the association of others and note I distinguish between associative journalism and social. A post for another time.

 Journalism.co.uk captured me talking about associations in  in 2005. And even though I advocate the "wisdom of crowds" approach, we assume and hope the crowd has proponents who can intelligibly deconstruct our wishes.

Old Journalism reworked values
So moored with a presumed new function of defined journalism; and if you haven't in the face of Murdoch's crisis, Schmidt's MacTaggert Lecture on google's interface with TV, or Dan Gillmor's now lengthy dog-eared We the Media, then this means nothing to you.

This quest assumes stories and their genesis are becoming an irrelevancy. What riled the outsiders, within the onset of convergence culture circa late 1980s looking for change in story plurality, contextually, interpretation and analysis hasn't quite been the seismic change.

Change which says "I kick you, you kick me, and then a third party sees if he can kick both of us", can be a tad tiring.

Our attention, quite rightly turns to its distribution in that if the best story in the world can't reach an audience and fails to attract anyone, it fails a primary function.

But the journalism world as it unfolds according to one good friend has metamorphosed into the "google journalist". And herein lies the danger for the journalist-of-self.

Google journalism is perhaps a harsh term, given what the proponents have done in using search as investigation et al, but the name conjures up  an indelible image of the vampirish journo who never sees the light of day or night for that reason.

If we're relying on the vortex of stories weeded into our filter-bubble - so eloquently explained here by Eli Pariseri- that's a concern. If we're not hammering from the ground, or not consulting wise counsel in at least the mechanics of traditional journalism [for want of a better world], we're not fit for 21st Century purpose.

This figure merely serves as a model for enquiry,  translating Mathematics to social issues. So I'm simply taking a view of an issue and positing how it might be viewed when thinking of an issue in journalism. This method is not uncommon. Journalism invariably fuses multiple disciplines; more recently data journalism in computing and trends. I'm trying to understand how something as formidable as imaginary numbers I learnt in my grad days can have some application to what I'm doing now. An abstract which will hopefully develop further critical thinking.

Looked at it through the prism of maths, at least, that's how I rationalise change, we're used to the x-y axis and elements of the z have appeared but where's the "i"? In Maths the imaginary numbers quotient as brilliantly explained here. It's an attempt to see past the obvious as an integral means of new enquiry.

Witness how Paul Lewis from the Guardian says even reporting from the ground, journalists covering the riots in London largely got it woefully wrong. How so? I've not seen any study to confirm this view but I respect, as many other journos do, Paul's view that something's wrong in Dodge.

The internal review that purports to answer what the best of journalism does and then how, a more testing question, in the "holy cow - everything goes world" can be quite elusive. Question: has any journo institute dissected what could have been a model of reportage for the riots place. Paul proffers some answers.

And in speaking of wise counsel, when was the last time outside of a $695, 40 minute talk sprint, you heard some of the giants of the profession discussing their craft?

This all infers something, which we knew but elided through a dash of supposed schadenfreude.   Schmidt hits on. Any system relies on the savvy of new and currency of tradition (old) to survive - particularly when tradition has a stake in the status quo.

So, for instance that television screen is not about to disappear anytime soon, and those newspapers the minute they do watch how trend-setting companies will introduce us to vintage 2015 - and what newspapers looked like.

So what does this all mean for the journalism of self, that incidentally I have been an ardent apostle?  It says the discourse needs to shift from tech to language, the art, the practitioner sans po-faced and some of the practices of evaluation Carrol elegantly records in On criticism Thinking in Action.

That within this discourse which heaven help us should be dialectical rather than solipsistic, there's room for good practices to be the source for us to chew and reflect over. And one that doesn't reduce factual storytelling to exclusively assuming its anyone's game.

My head of department SMS'd me this morning, saying how he'd read a citation of me at a conference saying "leave me alone".

If there ever was an aphorism for the journalism-of-self it would be this. Yet it hides a fallacy, in that "Leave me alone" only ever makes an impact when the time leading up to that has been an inculcation of many association.  When Brian Storm talks of collaboration, this is what he's alluding to.

Brian Storm, Jesicca Stuart, Tom Kennedy and David Dunkley Gyimah

We both agreed collaboration is the new, er old black, even in the face of the the Dietrich's I want to be alone.

In a few weeks new cohorts of future journalists will start their journey into the known-unknown and many of us will enthuse about the new new thing.

But the danger and one that has seen its roots sprout furiously since the convergence culture took grip, is the you can do it by yourself comes with a note of caution.

For the soloist figuring out the planes of journalism, there's another older reality beyond the journalism-of-self. As many actors sometimes end up musing about their partners, the best performance comes from studying others, and via the generosity of the other actors.

We can all push this out, but it takes a bit more to get it in - in the first place, and I am mean proper in.

Visualisation - at the heart of videojournalism and creativity

Videojournalists being prepped for combat reporting

Athletes, artists and creatives know it. Scientists have been trying to understand it - being able to visualise puts you in a state to create or perform.

The celebrated Art philosopher E.H Gombrich talked of schemas and mental states. We draw something, see how it compares to others and then subsequently alter it for the next time. Thus we build schemas - mini formulas in our minds and in Darwinian fashion the good ones survive; others get filtered out.

How else do we create TV shots and why do they look the same? This is a question, within a question whose answer I'll reveal below.

Neuroscientists have recently unveiled results that support the idea of visualisation.

John Gabriel from MIT showed volunteers 250 images to memorise whilst going through a MRI scan - apparatus that maps out your brain. [if you're a member of Athens you can read the full report here]

Two hours later the volunteers were shown a random additional 250 images to see if they could remember the earlier ones.  The scientists say something surprising happened.

Just before the volunteers saw the same image from the earlier test the patterns in a part of the brain called the parahippocampal changed to reflect a low level of activity. Gabriel says it was almost as if the brain was emptying itself.

The team performed another test. They showed the volunteers images when they exhibited this brain pattern and found the volunteers' memories improved by 30%.

In some way in trying to remember something appears to put you in a state of learning.

Gabriel says "Knowledge of brain states that correlate with learning creates the opportunity to enhance learning itself".

BBC TV image

Competitors taking part in the alpine sport, the luge, and Formula 1 racers, often visualise the course enacting twists and turns before they set off.

I discovered myself with observations for a thesis that solo film makers use visualisation in varied ways.

Think it; do it
Those with visual pre-thinking skills can accomplish the task of film making with a degree of ease - and I might suggest in a heightened state of learning are best positioned to carry out their tasks.

That also assumes a working knowledge of the task ahead or what I might call "inner-mind catalogue" of what I refer to as visual plates. But the key is what constitutes those visual plates?

The answer to the question I mentioned earlier resides in the last statement, which is if the repository of your images come from television, you'll go on to produce television and I believe if no Darwin-esque figure is able to act to alter the schema for TV, you will continue on that path.

This propensity to act by rules perpetuates a schemas. But what might have been appropriate in say the 1950s may not be now? In fact the 1990s constitute an important year zero with reference to a new convergence culture.

This largely affected a broad range of media, including news, albeit with reservations. There were specific and important alterations to TVnews in the 90s, but today if you're a visualists, documentary maker or videojournalist you could argue it wasn't enough!

In a later blog I'll address some of those schemas.

The art of photojournalism during the London Riots within a social network age. Don Omope interviewed by David Dunkley Gyimah

London's Burning - Riots 2011

The London riots will stand as one of those epochal events in British history.

[this post will be enormously useful for practitioners, academics and anyone interested in photojournalism and videojournalism.]

Much has been trawled through and spoken about with interviews from the police, politicians and rioters, but rarely have we heard from those on the front-line documenting these events, which have provided us with iconic images and reportage.

Don Omope, a photojournalist, is special because he embodies qualities that have come to define the new worker, the new photojournalist  - a freelancer who is also many media savvy.

He's special because, I have had the pleasure of seeing his career crystallised from BA student, MA grad, working for Sir David Frost and now producing network programmes, and he demonstrates what hard work can yield.

You'll be animated by what he says because he reflects the views of many, who work on their own terms eschewing the establishment route of media, creating their own niches.

You'll want to listen to him because, as he puts it, he was one of the first journalists on the scene, before Tottenham exploded. He made that point known broadcasting live on BBC News 24.

A bit about me:  I have been in the media since 1987, first presenting on radio for the BBC, to working across many of its acclaimed outputs e.g. Newsnight, and ABC News/ BBC WS in South Africa from 92-94 where I first came across some of the best photojos e.g. The Bang Bang Club [read here]. Then becoming an active videojournalist in 1994 training and working alongside many photojournalists.  In 2001 I wrote on my other site mrdot.co.uk how videojournalism used a photojournalistic methodology [read here]. In 2005 that led to one international award describing my videojournalism work as "photojournalistic and cinematic".  I have worked with an extraordinary number of internationally acclaimed photojos e.g.Yannis Kontos, a world press award winner,  and more recently my PhD work I'm completing explores an alterity narrative. What Don has here is relevant to the craft of photojournalists - practitioners and academics. Its very special.

Charge of the parade - Don puts himself between rioters and police for this shot

1. How it started
I started off by asking Don how he got down to Tottenham. He lives close by. He had no interest going, but friends and neighbours constantly called him that something unusual was brewing. Then when he got down there, a usual state of play, the police were being uncooperative.

The art of photojournalism - London Riots 2011 by david dg

2. Eye witness account trumps all
Don describes his interview with BBC News 24. What the BBC was saying came no where near to what was really happening, I told them. Meanwhile several photojournalists were being attacked, their gear stolen and smashed in front of them - equipment worth almost $30,000.

London's Burning 2011 Riots - a photojournalists account by david dg


3. The Myth of Photojournalism.
Whilst undoubtedly photojournalism is a craft, it has also perpetuated or disguised a huge myth relating to the flawed geniuses of many practitioners.This is not uncommon of many other disciplines. But as Don so eloquently explains here out of his 2000 shots many turned out to be unusable from a professional display point of view. In Art, that could be a different matter.

The point I want to make here is that for every set of pictures taken a photojo like Don unconsciously and consciously swiftly evaluates their work with references to the matrix of technical data on the camera to the outcome of the photos, the storytelling aspect of quality ( proximity, shape etc) of the story image and whether they are after a narrative or not.

Get the shot before it decomposes. Photojournalists therefore take a series of shots. Each frame is different from the other. Within the shot duration small changes - the man blinking, sighing, head turned a certain away affect the aesthetic quality of the image. What would have happened if Don got to the floor such as the image below by Yannis Kontos? What prevented him from doing so? Listen to the podcast.

Yannis Kontos, award winning photojournalist. This image was taken in Iraq. For more in Yannis go to his website www.yanniskontos.com

This section of the interview is lengthy, but deeply interesting for what academic Barbara Kennedy would call aesthetic impulse. Don's aesthetic impulse, like many others, is informed by many factors. But the one I'm drawn to is the lone ranger.

In photojournalism and videojournalism involving live events, there is a shared communion between even rivals to establish a near repertoire of story shots.  They inform each other within a constant looped paradigm.  How do you know what to shoot and when?

Heiddeger one of the west's celebrated philosophers created the word: "Dassein" - a complex understanding at how we think and work, which involves being in the zone. Don's Dassein involves working against the grain. He wants to see what others have not, capture the event before it decomposes and then swiftly move on. Heiddeger talks about moods and how things in this case, the scenes of the riots, articulate something the photojournalists absorbs. It's an unconscious thought and involves an intentionality - your mind directed to a task. Your doing informs how you will undertake future task - what others have called experiential learning.

The consciousness of the aesthetic. There are a limitless number of ways to capture an image. Here the fire burning provides a signification - there is a fire. Don has stooped to the eye level of the crouching policeman. There is a proximity. Forget everything you've learned as a technical exercise and concentrate on the composition. Don is only about 10 yards or less away. Part of the art of photojournalism is a fearless quality of getting the shot. Its what Cappa said and its the reason so many photojos get injured.

A Photojournalist in the thick of the London Riots reflects by david dg

4. The limitation of the 5D and social networking
Don reveals what would have been his favourite camera for the job, but also reflects on the use of social media at the time. It's become imperative thus, for the freelance mini media mogul to make a living, to understand all workflows in media.

The photojos becomes a narrative specialists understanding the mechanics of text. See Hayden White's Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (1989). The writer becomes a visualists. See Representation and Photography by Manuel Alvarado et al (2001)

Here too Don speaks about social networking to drive the story and pictures.

Photojournalists in a networked world by david dg




Oner last thing before I sign off. I'd like you to have a look at the two pictures below. One from an old friend which dates back to 1990 - London's poll tax riot - and the one after from a student demo and fees. There's a story in there - and one that Don and I discussed may involve police response to different sets of crowds. 

Student riots 2010

Poll Tax Riots - 1990

Click here for insight into major new findings on

What is videojournalism on the web, in multimedia and offline - a major study and film - and why it matters

State of Play

Its said everyone has one story to tell in a lifetime.

Not any old story, but one that intoxicates them and the audience; the defining story.

Whatever Spielberg does, he'll always have ET in his first sentence. For Car Bernstein and Bob Woodward, it is of course Watergate.

But they don't have to be epochal stories witnessed first hand by the public. A wedding, a birth, a break up - the resonance of the event is what becomes momentous.

Heiddeger came up with the word: Dassein, to define something special. I like that word.

For the last couple of years I have been trying to unpick a number of locks within the field I so love. For a brief while, it was chemistry - the science of making up things. Today it still is the science of making up things but within a social science of the moving image.

It's been a laborious passion. One of discovery; of nakedness, when I hear myself say I don't understand that; or that those who support me say, it's there - as if they were zen masters and I the little cricket.

I'm winding down now; not because the total end is in sight, but an aspect of building knowledge is drawing to a close. Like the brush strokes on a painting when the painter has to decide - "enough", the main body of my questions is coming to a close.

Doctorate programmes are akin, at least mine is, to an infantry soldier scaling high terrain for a sight advantage, only to find the rain or other impediment has caused them to slip, and they must try again.

Or not!

But you keep going because every small step reveals more, every new author you read is a new discovery, every new thread enables you to assemble thoughts you previously did not have, or even possess the capacity to explore.

The sacrifices you make mean whilst I would want to devote myself to making more films, at this stage I am unable to. But that hopefully will soon change. Soon, being months away.

For the next couple of months, the ideas will be fashioned, the argument honed, and the theory that becomes knowledge hopefully make sense.

A friend who is set to become my penultimate interviewee said today: "Well done. I wish I did mine after my Masters".

I talked her down. There is no well done. There is no gloating, no celebrations, but a matter of factness to reach the end and make a strong case.

That is the state of play.  And the one story? Not quite yet. Not quite yet!

How to brief a designer for a website, identity brand etc

I've been scouring the net for something to help with briefing a designer. As so often, when you do find something it takes you on some meandering path where you have to sort out the wheat and chaff, so here's my quick guide for the client, or person (low to medium size) wanting a site.


1. Have an idea what you want. This often comes from seeing a competitor or other sites.


2. Be realistic about the elements that you need and those that could be secondary, tertiary

3. In other words unbeknownst to you, but there are basic needs that show who you are, what you do, etc and then integrated add ons that allow for conversation. Holistically you could count these all as one, but depending on resources, strip it.

4. You may not be aware but wordpress, and blogs may do the job for you, so google : "wordpress" and your area of expertise and see if there's a related site that catches your attention.

5. A designer needs assets to work with and ideally clear direction. This often comes with a brief. But if you're not from a creative background or don't want to bone up on what a brief is
i) get the designer lost of pictures.. lots of pictures
ii) Do you have video?
iii) Very important write something about yourself, your business, what you want, what you want the audience to know - that the designer can work with

6. Be realistic about time. If it's a freebie or no-pay scheme, be realistic about the time of delivery and that the designer may need to get hold of you

7. If it is a paying gig, that's another matter and involves a more rigorous due-dilligence, toll gates etc. - forget about those for the moment

8. If it's a wordpress blog site, do you have the capacity and time to update the site?

9. When you receive feedback from the designer, ask around your friends for feedback - which you can then communicate back to the designer. But do that at the initial stages, when being flexible is easier

10. Help your designer to help you: Remember it's a favour, or might be, so work out clearly what you want and don't think because s/he's a designer, they ought to know your thoughts

The Unreality of Reality

Release (Director's Cut) from Kendy on Vimeo.


Webby's Gala Opening Sequence 2008 from Rob Chiu on Vimeo.


Two entirely different visualists: Rob Chiu and Kendy. Rob Chiu I have had the pleasure of knowing since the early 2000s. Kendy's work I stumbled across watching Channel 4's Urban theme: Concrete Jungle.

What unites them is a visual DNA, and also scores not too dissimilar to the undiscerning ear: Hecq and OBNY.

To their fans the two are way different, but all highlight a growing tendency in our visual culture: the unreality of reality.

In Sontag's epochal book On Photography, and if you're a theoretician in photography and you haven't read it, it's the equivalent of a playwright ignoring Beckett, Sontag pokes at the unreality of reality.

A photograph or image draws us to a realism in which more credence is attached than sometimes the real thing. In the past citing Gombrich she notes the image and its real thing were indistinguishable.

Today, our heightened sense of visual pleasure, brilliant colours, flares, noir has made cinema our reality.

Strangely, we'd rather watch the two videos above and marvel, than being given the rawness of the real thing. More so for a generation born into cinescopes' reality: games; films, music videos.


The Retwitter Show titles - journalism 2046 from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.


My work researching a doctorate draws some ideas, such as the reinterpreting, or reversioning of an event to heighten its affect; not for the sake of a 3 minutes of wanton pleasure, though that does happen, but an approach to burrow into your psyche - to disturb you or make you feel happy.

When those grey-suited men conceived of news and the recording of events in scientific mode - a stipulation that freed it from abuse - they did so as the nannying statesman protecting us from the deviance's of others e.g. yellow journalism, fakery etc.

Unless however the event ( news) is more gratuitous than the former its grapples fail to hold us, so in feature news e.g. docs, visualisation and sound scaping are designed to lock us in. By the way visualists have been doing this from time re:art movement to art movement. Note how the impressionists usurped the realist in the 1900s.

The unreality of reality sees TV being emasculated by 3dtv, composited form driving out what was its referent, by illusions overcoming physical states.

The unreality of reality was at the heart of the schism between classical film theory and post structuralism. In years to come it will become ever more crucial a factor that delimits our view of events.

And as the visual language grows, we can just about be certain, that a next generation's use of fluttercuts, flashframes, crushed blacks and the rest will itself become obsolete.

What then?

Meanwhile I'm enjoying this unreality/reality

Apple- profiled digital filmmaker David Dunkley Gyimah  and  internaional award winning innovator in media presents to industry on media and innovations. You can find more of his own work on viewmagazine.tv and contact him here

Mythology of Media - reforming news and intelligence

BBC Reportage from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

By the evening the level of unprecedented violence using knives and baseball bats had yielded a level of shock that was unfathomable to Television viewers and the police and the people of Brighton.

Geoffrey Cox, the News editor of one of the UK's foremost news outlets received information from the authorities that challenged the very ethos of his ambitions of getting stuck in there and showing the viewers what's going on.

This is what defined his approach to news: "Just remember, its better to be rocketed for something you've done than something you haven't done."

But Cox had now been made aware of something strange, that his broadcasts were being used by warring factions to determine their next strategy, where they would all gather and  fight.

The police asked whether Cox could suppress his coverage of these violent clashes, which might help restore calm. It must not have been an easy decision, but Cox writing in his semi-autobiography: Pioneering Television News considered it and did what he could and indeed the violence subsided.

Of course you might argue there must have been other reasons, but this is how Cox more or less relays it in his book.

Media Replay
That was the 1960s. Fast forward to the events of a couple of days ago - the riots in the England cities - and a seemingly causal link seems obvious.

There was a peaceful demonstration in Tottenham for the shooting of Mark Duggan [ a full enquiry has yet to ascertain the full facts].  It was followed later by anger against the police. On TV the police looked either powerless or out of sorts. The next day through copy cat or an escalation, matters took a turn into  the darkest side of human behaviour.

Twitter, Facebook - all manner of Social Networks have garnered their attributional share to how the rioters functioned, but now what about television?

As a hypothesis, no more powerful an image of the police seemingly looking on idly can act as window of opportunity for impressionable misguided minds of the young or disaffected. Seemingly, because perceptions, rather than what actually happens, is a powerful message.

Or consider the point where news reported London was drafting in extra police from other forces. It did not say where they were from. But that night when riots happened in Manchester there were reports Manchester indeed was one of the forces that had gone to the aid of London - and perhaps now caught short.

So, just as the rockers had used television, Britain's unruly mob had found television's alterity.  To paraphrase the Sun newspapers headline - it was television wot won helped it. You might even look back to the cause-effect of the Rodney King beating - LA Police acquittal - riots. This from the BBC's website:

 In March 1991, the beating of black motorist Rodney King caused outrage around the world and set off a chain of events which culminated in LA riots ...

This raises an important spectre and a qualification I believe in as much as anyone interested in news, but it deserves to be talked about nonetheless.

The spectre that television news played a role, in merely doing what it does. The qualification that  in today's liberalised, capitalist  society, no one would dare ask any network editor to tone down their coverage or would they? Not unless it constitituted a matter of national security (needs defining). And just how can you blame television? I'm not I'm drawing threads between what mobs do watching television, as they television people go about doing their jobs with the highest of integrity.

I believe I'm not being naive, neither should you hopefully think I'm trying to intellectualise this, but a couple of things become evident.

The Rhetoric of the video image ( courtesy Roland Barthe)
It's highly unlikely with any scenes of last week a news editor would relent from showing pictures when their neighbour and competitor and the thousand of social networkers or citizen journalist will search for the dramatic, sometimes with little thought to the consequences.

So there has to be fresh thinking into media-affectivity. How what you're seeing can be used as intelligence, not just news ( an impartial semi-scientific recording of events).   This entails the need to:

a) Understand the power of "video journalism" - the image's message, both obvious and hidden. If the police or politicians hadn't seen it, thousands of media professionals did. Like many I said as much last Saturday when news broadcast showed the peaceful march of  Mark Dugan, fatally shot by police. The family standing outside the station being ignored said something. The clash with the police later communicated something else - as the police looked on seemingly helpless. Semiotics!

b) Authorities need to sufficiently boost their inhouse levels of knowledge to include methodologies and social behaviour (the code) to the dissemination of information, both in a classical and modern sense. This is not about knowing how to set up twitter, but to understand from people on the ground and those in the know how mobs behave with these tools. It's akin to how militarists study wars. It's simply not enough- even after their non-apology for the executive branch of the police to say we did not expect what happened.

c) How coincidental was it that mobs attacked brands. Is there a new social governance and visibility that such brands should be expending to the social provenance and not just balance the sheets of their share holders. And if believe they are doing that already, then something, somewhere is wrong.

d) Greater use of media as social understanding. I know this isn't news remit, but this happens to be one of the failings of a new post modernism media. That it still reacts, as you might claim it should, to events, before it falls of the screen without trace and something else occupies it.

e) An understanding that they haven't solved the problem. It's just gone underground and could manifest itself in other ways, where vunerabilities are shown.

 The video showing above is from 1992 - one of the BBC's seminal youth programmes that I worked on called Reportage. Then as now, youth were running amok. Perhaps, one of the failings of "videojournalism" as a new model has been its inability at a network level to redefine how TV traditionally addresses issues, as news.

The above can either be construed as impracticable based on semiotics of what we expect, or a chance as so many other innovators are looking for, enact Thomas Kuhn moments to reshape news ways of understanding and contextualising media.

London Riots 2011- Robust reponse ?? and Criminality !

A man is shot dead.

The police claim they acted to protect the community.

A peaceful protest takes place to the Police station to seek answers.

Protesters are kept waiting for hours.

It’s no ones jobs worth to speak to them.

That night, a riot ensues, and the next, day and the next...

Today,  the catalyst that has put the UK into mob rule, has all but been forgotten. It should not.

Politicians have found new words to give themselves wider girths. Words, now slogans which have become meaningless. " this is criminality", "we will meet this with a robust response", criminality, robust…  Thank the good Lord for the word "robust".

Simon Israel, Channel 4 News' crime correspondents  revealed last evening that a preliminary examinations by the authorities, the IPC, investigating the shooting, say the man shot dead, Mark Duggan, 29, did not fire at police.

Tragic doesn’t cut it. This is catastrophic. How could the police get it so wrong?

Not just today, but on every incident that has involved a public death: Tomlinson, de Menezes, the police’s policy seems to be defend the badge, rubbish every one else's account.

Except for this recent event included a crass act whose repercussions were so obvious that a school boy lesson on public relations and communications would have sorted this mess out.

Five hours the protesters waited and either through arrogance or ineptitude, the police did not see fit to supply answers to the family.

The stations police chief was on holiday. Whoever was left in charge and you have to wonder about the communications team or family liaison officer, they’ve been found imbecilically wanting and should be reflecting on their conscious.

No one watching the riots and looting with a scintilla of decency will not be hurting. The riots that have followed encumber a range of reasons, which politicians, themselves have shown to be out of sorts understanding, what to do.

The powder keg is now seemingly distant; the airwaves now filled with one group or another classifying the state the UK's in with analyses which can sometimes make you weep.

The causes are there, and the solutions by no means easy will require attention and resources governments are often loathe to give, or cannot give. In the heat of the moment, the sentiment is the obvious - arrest and prosecute - as well one should.

Many of the perpetrators may be first time offenders, the punishment they'll receive will only serve to expose the UK's criminal justice system. A substantial number will not be locked up. 

If they are their term, which could amount to 8 years for rioting may be worked down to 4 years. You serve half the time for a number of mitigating circumstances. The prisons will not be able to accommodate the swelling numbers, so the authorities are stuck where to put offenders.

And those that do get banged up, may well thank the circumstances: 3 meals a day, a gym, x-box, some order to their lives and now their own badge of honour.

I reported from within Wormwood scrubs - one of London's notorious prisons a good while back, and then as now, governors will tell you denying the freedom of an inmate is the punishment, not what constitutes their rights to lead a life.

Its chaos here, because the foundation for how civil society functions has been undermined by solutions that are outdated. Rich, poor, the privileged, the down trodden, the haves and have nots, and in between these strata the grey areas where many people live and want to make a living with the creed of looking out for one another in decent ways.

In a couple of weeks time as politicians, and those who are hurting, seek answers, we'll begin to hear about the human rights of offenders and what they are entitled to.

The European Courts will have a say, those who are in the business of liberty will be anxious society doesn't seek and get what they deem to be inappropriate.

How we got here is an issue that's going to need forensic handling, where we're going will need imagination. What to do today is the issue to hand, and frankly no one's got much of an idea.

At the very least please can we stop using the word "robust"

Reflections in Integrated Multimedia Videojournaiism before the storm

The pictures above represent a few of the highs in a profession over two decades in the media. Just a few.

• Presenting at SXSW - a historicity in video.
• Presenting at The ONA (Online News Association) in New York, with Naka Nathaniel and Andrew Devigal, the multimedia Editor at the New York Times.
• Concepts in design for PCs in 2005, how we might access articles. No, I hadn't thought of the IPad either, though a similar device I came across in 2002 presented some ideas.
• Training journalists from State TV in Cairo over the last three years, which I have folded into my thesis, gives me much to chew on.
• And - a series I'm still proud of made in 1997 when working with a CNN executive we took videojournalism to Ghana state TV and South Africa. In a months time, I have been invited to Nigeria to talk about and share ideas.

So why all this? Somehow I feel I'm re finding my feet, or different feet, something more discursive, more evaluative, more dialectic, less sophist...  In the past few weeks I have been delivering a lecture to students entitled Illogical Rationalism. It includes or attempts to justify certain aesthetics.

Take this for instance. The 5D Mk II is great, but why will it soon come to represent something ordinary?  Because history has shown us, business has demonstrated to us.

 At some point innovation becomes comodified. Ouch! Artists have shown us that all great artists work against the norm. Go look yourself. And finally then when we can all show great pictures, it''ll become a game of spot the emperors clothes. Form and content will come back with a vengeance. Invest in a super 8mm now (LOL).

However I digress. For the meantime I'm giving my head a rest from blogging, before I assess the wonderful work our masters students have been doing. Then it's back to Husserl. Happy blog-break  :)

A movement beyond classic journalism

A horrific scene...
Chaos...
Infamy...

Superlatives fail to somehow induce a comprehension towards the events in the last few weeks.  Some things are just so big, in awe and shock, that we struggle to convey meaning.

The scale of famine in Somalia, the struggles of those eking a living in Haiti, the murderous act and deaths in Norway.

Pictures do the job. They try, often post - event within the structural narrative of broadcast reportage. Professionals convince survivors of their contribution for recounting events. Find a survivor.  Perversely, given the trauma and shock, their account is of value only if it can articulate - they are reluctant narrators.

The aftermath yields scars of immanence - forever seared on the mind; the hungry, the young, the blanketed youngsters seeking solace from breaching the cold to escape death. That often these events  happened outside real-time scrutiny e.g. cameras means our imaginations conjure up attempts to fill in blanks and seek rational answers.

On BBC Radio a presenter somewhat skillfully, gave to parallelism interviewing a Norwegian videojournalist, whom have previously been embedded in Afghanistan, segued with affairs in Norway. The form of narrative exposition can sometimes itself feel elasticated, in spite of the good intent.

At least there has been, or appears to be from the media humility and some dignity. Lessons learned. Virginia Tech Shooting I blogged about set a disgraceful example. Mark Hinojosa, Director of Interactive Media at the Detroit News and I spent time discussing journalism, its limitations and strengths in unimaginable scenes like this.

My thoughts turned to Turner Prize winner Jeremy Deller, whose work Baghdad 5 to illustrate the conditions in Baghdad resulted in him touring the US with a bombed out car lifted from the region. Visceral, disturbing, a confronting of reality knowing lives were lost in that vehicle.



This was not a normal exhibition, but then Deller, whom I have on occasion the chance to speak with (We are both Southbank artists in residence) is no ordinary artist.

Just in case I am misconstrued. I am neither advocating such for the atrocity this past few days, neither  do I seek to in any way shape or form to enter into a discourse over such an event for the sake of art. That would be heinous enough.

In speaking to Hinojosa, we stopped and pondered what it must have been like to be shot at for 90 minutes, with the amount of rounds the Gun man let off, when five minutes must have been an eternity.

Or what is it like to go without food for so long.

In the frenetic lives we lead, thess thoughts become fleeting. We imagine, ponder, then the door bell rings. It's the postman or something. Tomorrow, the next week, unfortunately those events will have moved from the temporal screen ( TV), but findable online

For the circumstances surrounding these, there are causalities.

The rich nations in 2009 spoke of a commitment to address drought and another pending apocoplyse. They did not hand over the money. In Norway, the police arriving 40 minutes after this unspeakable act is a taxing debating point. Why? Does the country lack an emergency response strategy?

What is it like to be shot at? I have been privy to a barrage of gun fire before, in downtown Johannesburg on the country's road to democracy back in 1994. Everybody and anybody walking the streets, and there were many, scrambled to the sides or ran across roads hunch-backed to avoid being sighted, or risk injury.  The shots though were not close range, at least as I recall a 100 metres away, but the anxiety around us was raw.

Dellers mission was to make us, the viewer, attempt to understand some more what war and carnage is.

Within the swathe of responsible reportage and post analysis, trying to convey an hour and a half of fear, human suffering and "being there" is something journalism in its present form attempts, partially succeeds (to degrees) and also struggles to convey. Within the boundaries of realism and journalism of probity it claims rightly so to make sense. But that is a matter of semiotics and narrative.

We know more now that we would a decade ago, but the formalised story telling form has constraints, constraints which as a well known sociologist Stuart Hall said are molded around conventions, handed down from one group to another. Reporters can't show emotion, so the matter-of-fact delivery reveals, often for me a strange haecceity.

Art practice, ( I don't like the use of the word "Art") can be unfairly judged on occasion, skewing facts in a regard for "impressionism", or its lack of deference to the reality of the event.  Yet in he right hands it answers questions that appear far-reachable.

In Alfred Cramerotti's Aesthetic Journalism: How to inform without informing, Cramerotti skilfully navigates toward a germane area, though perhaps greatly unexplored for journalists, where artists seek meaning through journalism-practice.

What can we do to raise more than the temporal interest in these monstrosities? Journalism under its current guise seeks to do its job, report. Yet ask yourself in the absence of the word "journalism" for something else "accountable story telling" ( and I'm aware the word "accountable" needs unpackaging, what would you do?

As a foot note, and an example, remember impartiality, balance, measure etc were cultivated into the profession in the 1900s to thwart propaganda and bias (Yellow Journalism).

Today, you might easily tell the difference between propaganda. Times, knowledge, meaning, audiencing, has changed. The argument would be we need structure, rules, otherwise its anarchy.

Conversely it might perhaps take something along the lines of an art form to gather collective thoughts for a future memorial to commemorate the young lives of those slain last week, or to bring to the world's attention Haiti still bleeds, Somalia is dying.

It may take art-journalism a middling ground between the science of recording events as they happen and the impressions of those to convey greater meaning to issues which sometimes leave more questions than answers

One and a half hours of shooting. Really!

David Dunkley Gyimah - above a pictorial account of videojournalism praxis - presenting at SXSW, the Online News Association ( New York).
His ideas on design concepts, training videojournalists in Cairo, and his critical videojournalism series made by Africans in Africa in 1997.
Click here for more and see his latest blog for a distillation of media.
David is a practical and theoritican in videojournalism. He has been teaching and practicing videojournalism since 1994 and a journalist since 1987. He has an insight into design and videojournalism which is the basis of his Phd Thesis at SMARTlab, University College Dublin

The Designer - If it hasn't been done it's waiting to be done.

Something that hasn't been done is waiting to be done.

At age 9 holding my art book I recall having desires to be an artist.  I'd draw planes and rockets, still life and human figures and then gaze through the window - imagination running amok.

By 16 in boarding school any notion of humanities had been panel-beating into a a career in Applied Chemistry replete with substitute nucleophilic reactions and matrix mathematics.

Science, its empiricism taught experimentation with measurable results, yet Art allowed me to make sense of abstraction e.g. benzene shapes, mental training and visualisation.

But unfortunately there was no creative life for the scientists as broadcast journalism that would immediately follow.

Yet there was a collorary. Such innate inquistiveness led me to think about programmes, stories, visuals as substrates. How did that work? Why did it work? And could it be done differently?

Listening to BBC Radio 4 Midweek I caught Douglas Edwards, one of the first employees of Google speaking about his book: The Confessions of Google Employee number 59  which is an insider guide to Google's space.

Backtracking to the Wall Street Journal, Edwards explains the interview method used by Google co-founder Sergey.

Finally, he leaned forward and fired his best shot, what he came to call "the hard question."I'm going to give you five minutes," he told me. "When I come back, I want you to explain to me something complicated that I don't already know." 

The WallStreet Journal Saturday Essay, July 16th 2011 

Knowledge, a precious sometimes ethereal commodity, we often take for granted, is being traded. So I thought what would you have said?

I might then (late 90s)  I thought have spoken about MrDot - fixed but still fledging videojournalism and design, hence its name, though at the time I had not yet made the film on the site.

Mrdot.co.uk website - design, coding and film making

To many Google may have seemed unorthodox, but there was an artistic methodology at play. Something that hasn't been done is waiting to be done - an old mantra of mine. A colleague of mine is currently completing her PhD around their creative methods.

To its pioneers if it had already been done, it wasn't worth entertaining.  This elides into a secondary theme I have been working closely with.

For the second of my lectures, tomorrow to students from Beijng University, I'll examine how convention, conscious and auterism play with each other.

And somewhere in there I'll show some of the extraordinary aspects of videojournalism and how its polysemic nature presents remediated ideas.

For one thing, I look at visual data: whether its website design or videojournalism as design-driven and whilst I can't go into it here post modernism - an infuriating word which essentially bridges cultural, societal understanding of things after the 1960s has a lot to offer.

The lecture starts with Apple and how Job's ideas ( auterism) became convention, yet also derived satisfaction from how hardwired we are to things, such as coming across an Apple and wanting to eat it.

THE CORPORATION REPORT - intentions in seeing and making

Now showing on Viewmagazine.tv we, you we're all corporations now.

Whether you're the BBC, IBM, Mediastorm, or Liang Zhao from the Chinese Communications University (who's just joined Twitter) we continually tell stories.

And this narrative whether visual, audio or text increases, by default, the awareness of ourselves, our self-identity, our work.

Globalisation a key to a corporation's brand expansion and symbolic experience, tangible or otherwise, we can now achieve through twitter, social neural works, websites and blogs.

I once told CNN's Christiana Amanpour at the Front Line Club what I felt about her brand quotient, and she expressed surprise. But you don't need to be Amanpour or IBM today.

To qualify what I mean by brand, in my lectures I distinguish between the brand as the classic corporation e.g. BBC,  the celebrity brand e.g. David Beckham and the new meta (beyond)  brand.

On BBC's The Apprentice, the young turk calling himself the brand had a point, though hubris and the idea he saw himself as a classic brand confused his message.

This id promotion may commence low level, but its trajectory is steep and uses much of the pedagogy of classic branding, but there are new areas to discover. There is much fantastic work for brand evangelists to deliver when considering this simple yet powerful statement.

But branding is but one of the feelers in the quest for meta connections.

This deduction links into a more rigorous, fun, performative presentation I have been delivering to Corporations, big "C" such as BBC World Service executives and small "c"  individuals (young people, organisations), which I have underpinned with this aphorism.

The statement seems simple enough, but it embodies cognition, the subconcious, and how we think (conscious)  in various disciplines. It's not a grand theory, and I do my best to hide away any overt philosophical discourse to keep it entertaining.

But is asks the question, how do you know what you know within  a context of design, visual e.g. videojournalism and film making, textual narrative, cinematic space and a host of pop philosophy theories?

For instance, when you see this next picture, most likely you'll smile. Why? Because you're hardwired, but when I show you the next one, your reaction may differ depending on your culture (convention). and your own individualism. This is nothing new.

Image is Copyrighted, from a good friend 

What is is the increasing array of hybrid theories to interpret events.

Incidentally this is Xun Zhou -  a talented award winning actress, singer whom I liked in the moral fantasy tale Painted Skin.

However the requirement of most creators is to ensure convention becomes hardwired, a desire becomes a need, a story hits certain points in ones psyche - the sub conscious. You may not have encountered those events before, but you're affected.

Increasingly I have become less interested in process, referring instead to an illogical rationalism, whereby convention is recognised but reworked.

Take these two images above from the same lecture. Which one appeals to you?  Possibly, the second. Many text books will deconstruct this within the rule of thirds. It's a convention which appears to arise from empirical studies from paintings.

However, it's become a construct which is consistently broken in films or distorted to achieve the effect of making you uncomfortable, as in Rob's film.

image from Rob's film on Youth angst. Notice the breaking of the third rule

Also, and equally interesting is the these conventions emerged from the dominance of western paintings and revelations of perspective. Some work in China showed me how early Chinese art disregarded one perspective in favour of multiple points of view.  For me this is quite profound.

And it's just one of many areas that I concentrate on in my lecture, derived from notes in my thesis, which I'll feed into viewmagazine.tv. More to follow.

Lululululuna Liang Zhao 

@ 

@viewmagazine it was a awwwwesome lecture,relaxing & enthralling. Thanks!

Jkoim Jkoim.Feng 

@ 

@viewmagazine the cube you show us is really amazing!

IM Videojournalism - videojournalism and site build methodology

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David interviews James Woolsey - fmr Director of the CIA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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