YouTube Educating Citizen Journalists
Posted: June 29, 2009 Filed under: journalism | Tags: citizen journalism, YouTube Leave a comment »A few interesting media-crossover stories today, but while thinking about the Wikipedia-David Rohde story (fascinating stuff, more on that later), I got distracted by a new project on YouTube via TechCrunch called the YouTube Reporters’ Center.
The concept to me is fascinating. Provide basic education and instructions to encourage more journalistic type of videos for the hopeful cell-phone-camera-reporter. TC complimented it but hinted at the motives:
The idea is sound and some of the content is rather good, and I’m sure it will provide a helpful resource for citizen reporters across the globe. Of course, it serves YouTube’s interests as well when more and more people take up the habit of filming whatever happens in their neighborhood and upload the videos to the wildly popular sharing site afterwards.
I don’t think there’s any reason to look for some dastardly rationalization for the project – YouTube is not going anywhere, and providing basic education isn’t going to help the franchise hit even more astronomical heights. This is just an interesting experiment, especially in the wake of how the service became a place for this type of content on its own during the Iran Election protests.
I think I’m most fascinated by how the media is playing along. Getting Couric, Woodward and others to participate (and many more journos to follow suit) is an endorsement of community media. This isn’t MSM trying to build blogs and Web video in an attempt to mimic the format of successful social platforms. This is them actually saying, yes, there is something out there that we can’t ignore any more. Instead of scoffing at low-quality video that delivers news that we can’t otherwise provide, let’s help folks get it right so that everyone wins.
This very well may be the most social Mainstream Media has ever been.
The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward on conducting investigative journalism
Weekend Treat: Do Not Abandon Blowouts
Posted: June 26, 2009 Filed under: Department of Broadcast | Tags: sports section, weekend treat Leave a comment »I ended up following a lot of TV bloggers recently. Partially because of all that Chuck ranting, partially because of my pop culture dorkiness. Yes, there is enough irony of a digital guy who blogs a lot about the struggles of mainstream media to move with technology who is completely obsessed with iconic, traditional TV.
I’m really happy I started keeping up with Alan Sepinwall and his What’s Alan Watching blog earlier this spring. To add to the levels of irony, please note that Sepinwall is also the TV critic for the NJ Star-Ledger. There’s about nine crossovers of interconnected media here, but that’s the purpose of the rant.
One of my favorite things that Alan has been doing this summer has been a TV rewind – with limited new programming worth focusing on, he’s utilizing the power of DVD to “cover” TV shows as if they were still going on and around for the first time. Part of his focus this summer is the exceptional Aaron Sorkin behind-the-scenes, pre-West Wing piece, Sports Night.
The show was great and its worth catching up with Alan’s coverage of it if you get a chance. This is one of my favorite moments, from the season one finale, when Jeremy (an assistant produce who has the dweeb setting up all the time, but in an endearing way), tries to convince his co-workers that all they need is a big rally. I could watch it over and over again.
This clip is property of Imagine Television in association with Touchstone Pictures.
Here’s the full text of the speech:
Jeremy: Listen to me, everybody. Stop your work. A writer once wrote “As if it matters how a man falls down; when the fall is all that’s left, it matters very much.” What did he mean by that? He meant ‘do not abandon blowouts’. Watching proud and accomplished athletes battle in the face of odds that are virtually hopeless is one of the more stirring sights in all of sports. The Phillies have been down 14 to 1 since the third inning. And I think it’s the best game we’ve got. That is all.
Must read: “A Shameless Defense of Journalism”
Posted: June 24, 2009 Filed under: journalism | Tags: journalists on defense, Vanity Fair Leave a comment »
Illustration by John Hogan via vanityfair.com
This article on Vanity Fair’s site by Matt Pressman truly was a great find by the NY Times Media Decoder blog. As David Carr writes over at Decoder:
Matt Pressman takes on the eternal question of why people find media and its practitioners so unlikable. He cites a study from the Pew Research Center that ranks journalist just below snake’s bellies in the social hierarchy.
Pressman goes through the list of complaints levied against journalists everywhere, including education, liberalism, conservatism, and other insults that also seemed common during the 2004 elections. I thought his take on the digital aspect of the industry was a fascinating justification:
4. We couldn’t keep up with the digital revolution
One reason traditional media have been killed by technologies such as Craigslist and TiVo is that instead of trying to devise a new business model before it was too late, we became more inflexible and stuck in our ways. So our current parlous state is due to our complacency—serves us right!
Validity: 4. Undoubtedly, most media organs were far too slow to recognize the game-changing nature of the Web. But what established companies have been able to generate big money online? And the daily newspapers have a good excuse for failing to plan ahead: they were busy putting out the paper every day.
I have to say, though, his argument falls apart in that last sentence. “Putting out the paper every day” is in no way a valid excuse for falling behind the eight ball of journalism. Ever have that teacher who reminded you that doing what you’re supposed to will only get you to the middle of the pack? Prognosticators couldn’t predict *how* big instant, social, and digital media would become – but someone could have at least had an eye out.
In fact, they are beginning to get there. The future is the journalist who can do everything from write a newspaper article to code it onto the Web site to getting reactions from people on a flip cam and editing it for Web video content. Note – that journalist is still contributing to getting the paper out – but, as Jason Jones said earlier this month as he was tormenting the New York Times – it’ll be “aged media” by the time the newspaper is printed.
So, I’m changing your validity score, Mr. Pressman, to a 7. The ignorance of an argument involving printing presses is at worth at least three more points.
Weekend Treat: John Hodgman on “The Nerd President”
Posted: June 20, 2009 Filed under: Department of Broadcast | Tags: John Hodgman, nerds, the daily show, weekend treat Leave a comment »“You people do an amazing job, but you’re not asking the hard questions about this President’s nerd credentials.”
-From John Hodgman’s keynote at the Radio and TV Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, D.C.
John Hodgman devoted his time at last night’s #nerdprom2 to try and determine if Obama is the leader of the new “Revenge of the Nerds” or a jock. Worth every minute.
Great quotes:
“He’s not only comfortable with technology, but he’s apparently addicted to his name brand smart phone that I shall not name for contractual reasons.”
“At this very moment, the fate of Iran is strangely entwined with the sleep schedules of the geeks who maintain the servers at Twitter and YouTube.”
Sports, Media, and My Childhood
Posted: June 17, 2009 Filed under: Department of Print | Tags: sports section, USA Today Leave a comment »It was June of 1998, a day long before Twitter, Gmail, blackberries, SMS or any of the other myriad things I write about here. I was barely a high-schooler, and vividly recall reading a USA Today article about the record-breaking month for which a Chicago Cubs outfielder was on pace.
.jpg)
I was younger, obviously, but also still a bright-eyed teenager coming to grips with the resurgence of the game that once taught me about the loyalty and joy of sports before crushing a young kid’s hope within the 15 years before that moment. I cheered as McGwire’s 62nd home run sneak over the left field wall in St. Louis that September on an 11 inch TV I stealthily moved into my bedroom. I could cheer the return of the game on the back of these athletes.
Now I love the game, but like everyone, I’m suspicious of the athletes. I’m critical – I wrote my collegiate thesis on how the sports media, both on and offline, covered the steroid scandal of 2005 in light of what sports fans were looking to read. Do we want to hear more of this? No, not really. What’s changed between 11 years ago and today? Well, for one thing, we stopped caring about the greed of players’ unions as the inescapable vice of professional athletes and started pining for the purity of the game. However, there are a few bigger things in the works here regarding professional athletes, the sports media, access and doubt.
As Dan Shanoff wrote this morning:
“Accusing one person specifically of doing something wrong? You better have specific evidence to back it up.
But accuse everyone of doing something? You’re in the clear! Accuse away!
That was the lesson of the [Raul] Ibanez thing last week, especially combined with the Sosa thing this week: Cynicism rules.“
I only linked to the coverage of the Raul Ibanez blogger-media-steroid accusation debate from last week that Shanoff is mentioning without going into too much detail, but suffice to say, Dan is right on. Here’s the difference: in 1998, we didn’t have any reason to suspect – or the means to blog and twitter – a sudden surge of power, we now have a motive and ability to express our discontent. The crime with a blogger calling on Raul Ibanez’s tremendous season was not the accusation, it was that it singled out the player.
The other change? Athletes now have the ability to remove that filter, too. Ibanez felt within his rights to respond directly to his accuser. Blogger or journalist, it didn’t matter – the playing field is now level when it comes to media relations.
Sports Illustrated covered the Athlete-Tweeting phenomenon in May, and the telling quote may have been from the real life version of The_Real_Shaq:
Another attraction: Twitter lets athletes speak on their own terms. “In this world we live in now, everybody becomes media,” says Shaquille O’Neal, who has an enormous Twitter following of 950,000. “If something is going to be said, hey, it’s coming from me.” Journalists may lament athletes passing over the middle men. But honestly, what’s more interesting, a “we gave 110 percent” from the postgame podium, or a tweet like this from Shaq last week: “Dam manny ramirez, come on man Agggggggggh, agggggggh, agggggh.“
Baseball has changed since 1998, along with our impressions of slugging athletes, communication and more. The communications revolution just so happened to coincide with the Steroids Era. Who knew that we would get something so fake and so authentic at the exact same moment of history?
Because journalists should crowdsource, too
Posted: June 12, 2009 Filed under: journalism | Tags: crowdsourcing, journalists on defense Leave a comment »Thanks to a tip from Dan Gilmoor, I caught this article from Robyn Tomlin, the editor of the Wilmington, NC Star News. It actually gives me hope that someone, somewhere, is willing to change the fundamental roadblock of a paper and satellite controlled media system.
One of my rants for the longest time has been that just because a newspaper has a blog (or a “Social Media Editor“) doesn’t mean that the newspaper is all of a sudden cruising in the carpool lane of the Information Highway.
Utilizing the Web for communication is important – that’s a no-duh moment – and constantly adding content around the day has been the biggest change. But it doesn’t become a blog just because you are delivering outside of the morning edition, adding a comments section to an article *from* the morning edition, or creating new video content in between the 6 and 11 o’clock news.
It all still just follows the mold of the old, top-down media model – which isn’t the only way to get information any more. In fact, it’s the slowest way of getting information. And by not acknowledging the interconnected world, whether as a journalistic ethic to not link to other sites or as an editorial directive, the story will never be full.
Robyn Tomlin, you get it. One-hundred percent. Journalism isn’t about getting scooped anymore – it needs to be about utilizing all available resources to get the full story. The biggest limitation of a newspaper (you know, outside of those massive printing expenditures) is that it’s stuck in one place and one source. The best you can do is “continued on Page A15″ to get someone to another specific story in that same edition of that paper.
Here’s the part that really stood out to me from Tomlin’s comments (the links are hers):
Sholin quotes Chris Amico, the interactive editor for the PBS Online NewsHour, saying: “Humility is healthy. The more we get out of this mind set that we are the sole producers of useful content, the better off we’ll be in the long run.”
I couldn’t agree more.
I firmly believe that we are much better served by linking out to other voices, sources and even competing news organizations than we are ignoring them and hoping they’ll go away. In the end, we all share a goal of informing and educating our community.
So, let’s work as the crowd – bloggers and newspapermen, reporters and twitterers – to get the whole story. That’s the way everyone will benefit and prove that journalism is not a dying field. If you have to link around? So be it. Get the story together. Let’s get in the carpool lane.
State of the Fourth Estate Reading List 5 11 09
Posted: June 11, 2009 Filed under: Department of News | Tags: morning reading Leave a comment »Don’t have time for a full post, but here are a collection of interesting links from the past few days on the state of things like the Globe, Newspapers, and Media vs. Blogger Fights
- Globe dispute with NY Times riles Bostonians, Jay Lindsay, Associated Press Writer (Posted at Yahoo News)
- Should America Bail Out the Globe?, Peter Cohan, Daily Finance
- End Times, Jason Jones, The Daily Show (I watched this clip, in which Jason Jones visits the offices of the New York Times, last night as I was half asleep and nearly lost it because it was so funny).
- Ibanez Takes a Swing at Steroids Speculation, David Roth, WSJ‘s Daily Fix (also worth reading, the original post from the Jerod Morris who first started this and Joe Posnanski’s response about the situation.
Boston Globe (1872-2009?)
Posted: June 9, 2009 Filed under: Department of Print | Tags: Boston Globe Leave a comment »
Out of irony, let me link to the New York Times for this story:
BOSTON — After weeks of labor tension and 12 hours of suspenseful voting, members of the Newspaper Guild at The Boston Globe narrowly rejected a proposed package of wage and compensation cuts. As a result, the newspaper’s owner, The New York Times Company, said it would proceed with its threat to unilaterally impose a 23 percent salary cut.
As Jeff Jarvis wrote this morning, “I wonder how saving $20 million when you’re losing $85 million can possibly do the job; it’s a Band-Aid on a gushing artery.” He goes on to add an interesting perspective that wage cuts aren’t the solution: a new way of journalism is the solution.
Whether it’s challenges from J-school deans or new curricula that focus on the cadre of skills required by the journalists of the future (Time, June 8, 2008), the industry can change. There just needs to be a change beyond leak-plugging among these monolithic structures of newspaper factories.
The fact that this is the Globe obviously cuts a personal nerve for me. I grew up with the Globe and was partially taught to read by my father as he showed me how to check Red Sox box scores. The Globe Sports section was an institution throughout Boston and its hubbed suburbs (actually, for a phenomenal perspective on this, check out my friend and former BC classmate slash sports editor Kevin Armstrong’s piece in, how perfect, the online version of Sports Illustrated).
What the Washington Post is to beltway and world news, the Globe was to top-class writing about Boston and its sports subculture. Say what you will about what the fading newspaper industry has done, but it hasn’t tarnished this legacy even if (after?) the doors close.
The problem isn’t bodies in news rooms or salaries and overhead, it’s an archaic way of thinking that the printing press is the only solution. We need the information, we are just held hostage by the delivery mechanisms. I loved this quote from the Time article I linked above:
…As emphasized by a report released last month by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the World Association of Newspapers, traditional news outlets must “cross the digital abyss” if they wish to survive. The problem, of course, is scraping together the capital to invest in new technologies.
I have to believe in the future of journalism and reporting here, not necessarily the industry. Will some people miss newsprint in their hands? Sure. But stubbornness is how the newspaper industry got to where it is. And stubbornness could also cost us the information we so desire.
Interconnected Media 1, Traditional Media 0
Posted: June 8, 2009 Filed under: Department of Broadcast, social media | Tags: interconnected media, late night Leave a comment »Conan O’Brien’s first week as Tonight Show host actually went pretty well – it was enjoyable and it’s clear that he isn’t giving up on the type of humor that got him to where he is today. And throughout the week, social media had a decent footprint – a nice little hat tip (and a great “YouTwitFace” joke) to his audience. There was one big win that is really interesting to track in terms of the future of mainstream media.
You can give the assist to Conan on this, but I actually think the MVP is in fact Aaron Bleyaert (aka BigBley), who has stuck with Conan O’Brien’s staff on the way out LA from his old position as the now-defunct Late Night Blogger.
Time for the context: last Wednesday afternoon, a blogger makes the catch of the lifetime and whips out the photoshop to prove his point. The art-deco backdrop of Conan O’Brien’s new set happens to have the exact same features as the Nintendo classic, Super Mario World. As these things are apt to do, they ladder up through the Twittersphere, and TV-bloggers, and gaming bloggers decently quickly:
You can go ahead and file this in the “I need an example of blogs making an appearance on television,” because here’s where the story gets great for those of us wondering if traditional media mainstays are paying attention. The story didn’t stop with a joke on a minimally trafficked (now majorly relevant) blog like Serious Lunch – because Bleyart was paying attention.
On Friday’s show – and this was interestingly hinted at for the last few days on Bleyaert’s Twitter feed – Conan gave a direct mention to the blog and the author’s serendipity find:
I don’t have the facts behind this – but this may be the first ever direct reference to Blogspot in non-Cable, broadcast history. It’s pretty impressive to think that what we write and say as we participate in our own communities online could actually impact and become a bit on a major network show.
Bleyaert’s role may be growing with this event. If he continues to play along with the conversation, it stands to grow the audience of the actual show. Next time you get that question about what social media can do, you can probably save this.
Now, I’ve been watching Conan every night (or on DVR early the next morning). I enjoyed being in on the joke when he finally gave the acknowledgement to the set’s Super Mario allusion. But which part of the audience was I in? The geek-will-inherit subsect? Or is it safe to say that it was not just a lay-up to his small clique of online choruses and, in fact, the audience as a whole would warm up to the reference.
What a tangled-Web we live in, eh?
