Broadcast/Multimedia: A Whole New Grammar

Posted on 10. Oct, 2007 by Tanzina Vega in Uncategorized

Participants: Michael Rosenblum of Rosenblum Associates; Jim Colgan of the Brian Lehrer Show (WNYC); Mike Sechrist; Brian Conley of Alive in Baghdad; Robin Sloan Current TV.

Moderated by: Steve Safran of Lost Remote

1:26 Safran welcomes the crowd. He has covered convergence media since 2000 for Lost Remote.

1:28 Safran says we have to talk about the money here. “Is there hope for it?”

1:29 Asks Brian 2 questions: how does he pull it off tech and money wise? He responds, “DHL is amazing”. They have people on the ground, do all the editing here, and translators in Syria. “It’s easy,” he said. Their correspondents are all Iraqis, some who are local residents and others who are journalists. Financially, the license to media outlets but so far no new ones are on the horizon. “We’re kinds knocking on deaths door,” Will people pay for content on a voluntary basis? Are grants and foundations the way to go? Will people be willing to give up a beer that week in order to see what’s happening in Baghdad>?

1:33 Michael: “Pushing it on the market without being paid for it is admirable, in your 20s.” Little laptops and cameras have radically changed the production side costs. They are able to “undercut almost everybody and still deliver a high quality product.

“99% of what you get on television news is crap.” When you empower a journo with a small camera, the quality escalates.

1:36 Mike: Using a smaller camera makes alot of sense and having Final cut pro on a Mac facilitates editing process by not needing an editing room. “We went from being a reactive newsroom…”

They went from 4-5 crews a day to 12 crews a day. The video was always the same, “the same crap over and over again, and this allowed us to get away from that.”

Never got one phone call from a viewer complaining about quality.

1:39 Brian: Current has viewer created ads on their site. “These are way better and more fun to watch.”

Qx: No focus group? No brand?

Brain: “Sometimes you don’t have to.”

Steve to the crowd: “Start working on your ads folks.”

Jim: Discusses “crowdsourcing” at the Brian Lehrer Show, WNYC as an extension of what they already had. Talks about the segment” How Many SUVs Are On your Block?” which asked listeners to report back on the topic. Percentages were then broken out and mapped so listeners could go on-line and see their neighborhood. “People were engaged and they actually participated.”

Qx from the crowd: Everyone on the panel except for Brian is funded by large companies…Could anyone help Brian?

Brian: Many people may not know that Alive in Baghdad exists.

Michael: “This guy upsets the apple cart”…Why send Katie Couric to Baghdad and pretend to do journalism? After Brian you look at the rest and think “It’s a joke!”

Brian says he has a plan on how to fund it, if only someone would consider it. How about offering archival footage to larger outlets?

Suggestion from the crowd: Anyone want to put up $5,000 to found a company? Silence is the response.

Steve: Is the best we can come up with…”I know a guy at NBC, you should go talk to him…”

Brian: Journalism needs to allow Mexicans to provide news about Mexico instead of just big privileged news networks.
Michael: “They won’t do it, because the minute if comes on, it shows the inadequacies of their projects.”

Steve: “There’s an entire session to be had in the hall to build this company.”

Audience member from Uptake.org: there;s not a lot of people committing themselves to do independent video projects. Uptake is a non-profit which aims to “tell stories that aren’t being told.”

Steve: “And it’s a different way of telling them as well.”

Michael: Travel Channel as an example of a functional profitable model of citizen journalism. Partnered with them to create Travel Channel Academy. Projected to have over 1,000 certified TJs (travel journos). Now in discussions with PBS to do something similar with local news.

Rachel from groundreport.tv: They are live blogging the seminar we are in right now! Participants watch the screen and wave.

Mike: TV stations he visits are scared of the web. He suggests talking to local tv stations to find partnerships. Nowadays they are a lot more open than they would have been 2 years ago.

Rachel from groundreport.tv: mogules is the platform they use for live blogging they are a for profit and are looking for funding too.

Qx from the audience: What about mainstream print media doing video?

Robin: Video is the future of the internet. In 10 years kids will say that’s what they use the internet for.

Steve: “The New York Times is doing a great job.”

Jim: What changes when you add participants to the journalism? Does the value fo the journalism change?

Mike: As an assignment editor, “they have nightmares every night about a newspaper strike.” Blogs now help to get them stories, especially neighborhood bloggers.

Audience member from tvjersey.com: When they realized their videos weren’t working they asked people to send in their own and tag them on YouTube as TVJersey.

Steve: Response in the newsroom?

tvjersey.com: “It’s been great.”

Steve: Money?

tvjersey.com: Notice there are no ads on the page.

Michael: A tapestry of text and film and graphics…a whole new grammar to be learned here that’s an amalgam of all these things. Video should be used when it tells the story better than print.