One to save and savour. Videojournalism guru David Dunkley Gyimah has produced a 23-point (and growing) video journalism manifesto. It's a call to arms and two fingers in the direction of the "professionals [who] tell you it is impossible to be multi-skilled."
A fascinating development of interactive journalism that has grown out of a television documentary series, Diamond Road Online is an 'interactive documentary that learns from your choices and grows from the community.'
San Jose Mercury News has a cool interactive panoroma - in the style of a collage - focusing on a small town. It uses software created by a company called Vuvox.
Instead of using wordcount to measure the length of text, this software estimates how much time any given piece will take to read. I can hear the news editor now: "Give me 72 seconds on Brown's environment speech. You've got ten minutes."
Today I've mostly been watching the first UK site to put professionally-produced video content at its heart. CNET TV is the latest from what claims to be the largest online-only publisher in the UK, whose sites reach 9 million unique users across the country. Its aimed at enthusiasts in technology, music, computergaming, film and tv - all of which have there own 'channels'. Here's the trailer:
Unsurprisingly, there's not masses of content up there yet - it is day one, after all - but it's still enough to get the idea of what's going to be on offer. Each channel has weekly episodes of its own flagship programmes, as well as interviews, news reports and packages from around the place. Its all highly-polished stuff and unashamedly modelled on tried and tested TV techniques. So on the technology channel, for example, we get Rory Reid's review of the Toyota Prius in a package that wouldn't look out of place on Top Gear. Likewise Andrew Lim's news report of the iPhone's arrival in London could grace any television news bulletin. Less slick (and less expensive) is the pair of silicon.com journalists discussing social networking - but you've still got to love that image quality. What's perhaps surprising is that there's little evidence so far of huge innovation in the form that this wealth of content takes. That may come with time as CNET lets its people loose on some more experimental storytelling techniques. Revenue will come from advertising - HP is signed up as exclusive launch sponsor - and sponsored links (including some from the BBC: are they allowed to spend our licence money on such things?) at the bottom of each video page. Let's hope it'll be enough to pay for all that expensive production and on-screen talent.
An award-winning piece of multimedia interactivity from the Bay Area News Group. A number of US papers are making good use of mapping community stories, particularly using their crime data. This is a prime example.
Adrian Monck has embedded a funny YouTube clip from the strike by Hollywood writers. Here's another one that's doing the viral rounds. Doubtless the NUJ will be taking note of this new picket line weapon.
Great multimedia piece from the LA Times. Photographer Louis Sinco talks about his iconic photo of 'Marlboro Marine' Blake and follows him as he comes to terms with life after leaving Iraq
Just having a look around blogtv.com, a new videocasting-live-for-the-masses service, when what should I stumble across but recorded footage of Oliver Luft of journalism.co.uk and his experiment with the beta of the service. Hard to tell what Oliver makes of it - most of it seems to be him staring silently at the screen and typing - so we'll just have to wait to see his published piece for the full verdict.
Also of note today: dotSub, a video site that specialises in adding - or rather, encouraging users to add - multilingual translations to uploaded videos.
[Transcript] As you can see I've had something of a makeover this week. Alright then a complete sex change. It's thanks to Sitepal, whose service allows me to get an animated character to do the work of my videoblog for me. I can change how I look, how I sound. I can even translate myself into languages I don't speak. Such as Japanese. Or I can use my own voice, while taking on the guise of various current and former US presidents. Thanks Bill. And by the way, I did not have sexual relations with that woman. Sitepal services start at around a fiver a month. Which might even put it within in reach of the odd blogger. And most of them are odd, let's face it.
Right, not much time this week so just a couple of clips to show you. First is a recent winner from the National Press Photographer’s Association in the US, by Everett McEwan from KWGN-TV in Denver. The guys at Multimedia Shooter consider it their new benchmark for quality news video, and it's a superb example of great narrative editing. It's just 2 minutes long, so do check out the full version to see whether there's a happy ending.
This week’s featured multimedia journalism project comes from News.com web site in Australia. It's called Culture in Crisis and is an impressive, detailed look, using audio slides, text and video, at how aboriginal people have been treated in the country and what the future holds for them.
Finally a warning from our health and safety department. Mobile technology can be an alluring concept, but you can take things too far. Unless you want to film a multiple pile up with yourself as the star, don't try this at home.
A shameless bit of promotion for my work for the University of Kent. This is a Flash presentation I've done to hook some students in for the degree course at the Centre for Journalism that I'm helping to set up. Feel free to pass the link on to anyone you might know who is considering journalism as a career.
Sitepal enables you to design your own animated speaking character for your web site or blog. Genius. I may take next week off and get my alter ego to do the videoblog.
File under: 'Questions to which the answer is no'. But gives the videojournalist an interesting problem. How to capture strange 'glowing orbs' on camera with the lights out.
Via the Editor's Weblog - this is a great idea from The Star in Cleveland. The Star Car is a mobile newsroom that follows stories, and readers can check its progress and view its past stops on an interactive map. Question is: does it chase ambulances?
Well I've finally sussed out the complicated work-around that allows me to post my Delicious bookmarks as a daily feed to my Blogger account. Its about time Delicious and Blogger got together to sort that ludicrous anomaly out. So I'll be trying to post a regular-ish list of links to interesting-ish bits of web video/convergent journalism through the week, and I'll still round off the week with a videoblog cutting together snippets of the most interesting stuff.
Cody's Rescue KWGGN-TV, Denver. MultimediaShooter's "new benchmark for spot news video, no stand-up or narration, all subject driven and edited like Tarantino or Scorsese".
A good regional newspaper idea from The Roanoke Times - the US paper with a journalist on the payroll whose job title is 'data delivery editor'. Its MusicCast brings local bands into a local studio to perform songs on camera for the paper's site.
Hi welcome to the (transcript of the) latest videolog featuring various bits of web video journalism from around the net. I'll start this week with serious plaudits for a serious piece of work from the Guardian. The newspaper's Katine Project is a highly ambitious attempt to transform the lives of people living in one of the poorest places on the planet, a village in rural Uganda. It contains, as you would expect, news and blogs from the village highlighting different areas of its life. But there's also a fantastic rich interactive map - the virtual village - which brilliantly brings the sights and sounds of Katine to life. It's probably the best piece of convergent journalism I’ve seen from a UK newspaper – or any newspaper for that matter - so far.
I've also been taking a look at Joost, the video on demand service from the people who brought Skype to the world. Now for a start I'm wary of anything which requires me to download a new application – my desktop's cluttered up with enough redundant rubbish as it is – but I bit the bullet with this one in the name of journalistic exploration. Joost has signed deals with some major journalism organisations, including Reuters and ITN. No sign of any ITN stuff yet, but Reuters is providing weekly entertainment and technology bulletins. Joost has a nice interface, but so far lacks enough really compelling content. Until there’s more to watch, any further visits will be hard to, er, joostify.
The Bristol Evening Post is part of an interesting new video project. It's streaming live video footage of meetings of the city council in a brave attempt to bring local democracy into readers homes. The Post reckons around 200 people tuned in for the first one, and the video remains available to watch afterwards on the site. But at 3 hours, I suggest you nip out for a packet of pro plus tablets first. Now what would really help is a Post journalist to edit it down into highlights so Bristoleans could find the bits that really interest them.
Ustream is a network that allows you to publish live streaming video on the internet. So instead of producing this brilliantly crafted and immaculately edited videolog, I’d be able to talk to you in real time and you could contact me live to tell me what you think. Don’t think I’m quite ready for that yet – but I can certainly see some applications – conferences, for example – where it might come in handy.
Incidentally, new viewer Joshua pulled me up last week for not giving Kyte.tv a fair crack of the whip and opting instead for a cheap banana joke. Fair point. And actually I found myself watching some footage by tech blogger Robert Scoble on Kyte this week. So there is clearly more to it than fruit, and it is worth keeping an eye on.
Speaking of Scoble, I see that reports of his company’s demise were not just premature but downright falsehoods. I'm glad about that, not just because it shows there is a market for the one-man blogger and videoblogger, but also because it gives some great insight into technology that’s coming our way. Like this example: That's Stanford Professor Marc Levoy who is working on a camera that allows you to refocus pictures long after you’ve taken them. I know a few Fleet Street snappers who'd pay good money for that.
Finally, here’s a couple of earnest young men debating the modern problem of information overload on Google Video (at about 8 mins 40)... That's Marshall McLuhan and Norman Mailer, filmed in 1968. They should go far.
