Wednesday, April 29, 2009

SLR Photos + HD Video = Panasonic GH1 = Wow!

Panasonic's compact GH1 SLR/video hybrid gets a big thumbs up from New York Times tech columnist David Pogue.

Pogue wasn't wowed by last fall's G1 model, though he acknowledged that it was "a technical breakthrough that took a giant stride toward the holy grail of photography: gorgeous, professional-looking photos from a small camera." (It was Popular Photography’s Camera of the Year.)

But the updated version, to be released in May, features for the first time full, unlimited-length, 1080p high-definition video, with autofocus, a first for an SLR-style camera.

You can use different lenses for shooting video, including ultra wide-angle. You can use all photo controls for video, including macro (extreme close-up). You can achieve sharp foregrounds with blurred backgrounds, which is impossible with a regular camcorder.

Pricetag: $1500 -- nearly twice the cost of its predecessor. "Panasonic says that most of the increase over the videoless G1’s $800 price is because of the new included lens. And it is a beauty: a 10X zoomer, specially made for video (for example, it’s silent when focusing and zooming)."

In the end, though, $1,500 doesn’t seem that bad when you consider what you’re getting: the world’s first SLR that captures full high-definition video — and keeps it all in focus. Plenty of SLRs cost that much and don’t take any video at all — and plenty of $10,000 hi-def video cameras don’t take stills.

The camera is fast, well-designed, enormously satisfying to use, and generally tops in image and video quality. Overall, the Lumix GH1 is a big leap toward a future when pro-style photos come from consumer-size cameras.
Pogue's review / Slideshow of Pogue's sample images.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

MediaStorm: '10 Ways to Improve Your Multimedia Production'

When it comes time to put together your audio and video assets, for better or worse you're stuck working with whatever you've got -- some of which you may not have even shot or recorded yourself. MediaStorm producer Eric Maierson offers "Ten Ways To Improve Your Multimedia Production Right Now" in the edit bay.

He notes that these are not meant to be dogmatic rules but rather helpful aesthetic and technical tips.

When you're finished assembling your story, he advises, "Watch your production on speakers with someone who has not yet seen the piece. There’s something about reviewing your work with an audience that makes one more self-conscious and thus open to seeing new things."

Read the full to-do list, with examples, here. And be sure the explore the MediaStorm channel on KobreGuide.com.

Nielsen: Online Video Use Skyrockets

Online video engagement by Internet users is deepening, according to a new report on the online landscape released last week by The Nielsen Company.

Nielsen Online CEO John Burbank takes a look at the economic and advertising impacts of the report.



Highlights of the report:

* The number of American users frequenting online video destinations has climbed 339 percent since 2003.

* Time spent on video sites has shot up almost 2,000 percent over the same period.

* In the last year alone, unique viewers of online video grew 10 percent, the number of streams grew 41 percent, the streams per user grew 27 percent and the total minutes engaged with online video grew 71 percent.

Nielsen also reports that video viewing has been a key element in the success of President Obama's revamped WhiteHouse.gov Website.

The proliferation of video across the site, from the President’s weekly video address to video segments on the site’s blog, has helped spur this impressive growth. Unique viewers of video content increased 236 percent month-over-month, growing from 75,000 in February to 252,000 in March 2009, while total video streams increased 350 percent during the same time period.

What's fascinating is that it's not just young folks who are tuned in to online video: "Unique viewers 35 to 49 were 78 percent more likely to view video on WhiteHouse.gov than the average viewer, while people 65 and older were 48 percent more likely."

An experimental new video feature on whitehouse.gov, Open for Questions, was launched this March, allowing the President to address questions posed by citizens via online video. Reports Nielsen: "Open for Questions was one of the top subdomains visited within WhiteHouse.gov, receiving 618,000 unique visitors during the month." (By its own measure, the site itself additionally reports that 92,937 people have submitted 103,978 questions.)

Online video comes of age.

Monday, April 27, 2009

The Ethics of Mixing Music and Videojournalism


Regina McCombs, a Poynter Institute visual journalism instructor, has created a powerful illustration of how soundtracks can affect a video story -- illuminating the debate as to whether they have a proper place in videojournalism.

In her article, "See How Music Changes a Story," she shows three versions of the same video story, "Mom Goes to War" (featuring a pilot preparing for her second Iraq deployment and her young son). The first is with natural sound. The second adds a slow, somber keyboard track. The third features an upbeat guitar/percussion track. (Both scores are GarageBand loops -- demonstrating how easy and accessible it is for even someone with a tin ear to provide professional sounding music background.)

McCombs poses the all-important question: how do the alternate versions change the way you react to, and feel about, the story?

The ethics of adding music to a nonfiction video story has long intrigued us. Is objectivity compromised? Is reality warped? Are emotions being artificially manipulated? We've posed these questions previously. It seems to be a gray area: "60 Minutes" would never do it, but the New York Times has.

McCombs advice is to use it sparingly, not as a crutch. In her helpful guidelines, she proposes that "music should be used to enhance or further the narrative, not to compensate for incomplete reporting." Further, she notes that "music is not a universal language. A breathtaking aria to one person is grating noise to another." And she makes an excellent point by noting that the art of scoring is an esteemed professional pursuit that should not be undertaken by amateurs, no matter how simple the software.

McCombs has gone the extra mile and researched and provided a set of ethics policies regarding music in news stories that have been adopted by leading media institutions, including the New York Times, National Press Photographers Association, CBC, Radio-TV News Directors Association, and American Press Institute.

Amy O’Leary, a multimedia producer at The New York Times, offers an in-depth look at how that newspaper got past those issues to mix music and journalism in two notable video projects: “Choosing a President,” and “Choking on Growth."

(Full video and transcript on Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab.)

O'Leary says she learned everything she knows about journalism soundtracks during her stint as a producer at radio's "This American Life," but acknowledges the difference between that show's subjective first-person perspective and the Times' quest for objectivity: "The Times has long traditions and standards that they’re trying to figure out how to apply to the new media landscape. Music is one of those tricky areas."

Also from Nieman Journalism Lab, these invaluable basic audio tips from O'Leary, including what equipment to use when conducting interviews, and the proper way to use it.

Obama's Intimate Moments, by Pete Souza

One of my earliest photojournalism students was Pete Souza, who is now President Obama's official White House photographer, giving him extraordinary access to the president's most intimate and private moments. In a recent interview with CNN's John King, focusing on Obama's first 100 days in office, we got to see and hear about some of those behind-the-scenes shots.

Souza, who is on leave of absence from his normal post as an assistant professor of photojournalism at Ohio University's School of Visual Communication, had previously served as President Reagan's official photographer, and on the staff of the Chicago Tribune.

"I look at my job as a visual historian," Souza says of his current position. "The most important thing is to create a good visual archive for history, so 50 or a hundred years from now, people can go back and look at all these pictures."



When asked to choose one picture as his favorite, Souza selected one of the president and first lady softly butting heads in a freight elevator, surrounded by staffers who appear to be avoiding eye contact with the couple. Michelle Obama is smiling playfully wearing her husband's jacket.

"I chose this one because it's a genuine moment. It was chilly in the elevator. He took his coat off, put it around his wife's shoulders and then there is this private moment going on between the two of them," he said. "It's just a complete storytelling picture."

Friday, April 24, 2009

Travel Channel's 4-Day Video Bootcamp


USA Today reports on the Travel Channel Academy's four-day bootcamp for videojournalism training.

Approximately 30-40 wannabe travel reporters -- many who've never even handled a camera before -- fork over $2,000 tuition (airfare/hotel and equipment rental not included) to learn video shooting and editing basics from veteran TV producer Michael Rosenblum, and to meet and mingle with Travel Channel execs.

The goal of the crash course is to produce short videos (under three minutes) for potential distribution on the Travel Channel website.

But whether more videos of spring-breakers getting drunk in Cancun or tourists eating pastrami on rye in a New York deli, or even a two-minute account of "my trip to Costa Rica by land and sea" (a current TCA alumni pick hit on the website) brings more clarity or just more clutter is debatable.

"We're not doing investigative journalism. We're doing show-me-the-best-restaurant-in-your-town journalism," says Rosenblum.

Students have diverse career backgrounds; virtually none are photographers or journalists.

Of the 953 graduates since the course began two years ago, about 350 of their videos have been bought by the Travel Channel, the vast majority for its website... for anywhere between $50 and $2,000, depending on usage and quality.




Upcoming classes:

April 27-30, Santa Barbara, CA
May 14-17, New York, NY
May 28-31, Washington, DC
June 25-28, Santa Barbara, CA
July 09-12, Washington, DC
July 23-26, New York, NY
Sept 10-13, Washington, DC
Sept 24-27, New York, NY

More info: TravelChannelAcademy.com

Thursday, April 23, 2009

PBS Launches Web Video Channel

PBS has launched an online video channel featuring thousands of full-length episodes of its top TV series, complete seasons of current shows, and archives of its classic series. Among the offerings: American Masters, Antiques Road Show, Masterpiece Theater, Nature and Nova.

While some PBS series (e.g. Frontline) had been previously available online, they were scattered throughout the site; now they're all conveniently under one enormous roof.

According to MediaWeek, "PBS plans to create programming packages for the site featuring compilations of episodes from various shows that touch upon a common theme, starting with this week’s environment-centric package, which is being launched to coincide with Earth Day. That collection includes snippets from Frontline, Nova and Nature, along with the classic Jean Michel Cousteau Ocean Adventures."

Here's the most exciting news:

PBS is also planning to roll out original Web series at some point down the road, according to Jason Seiken, PBS senior vp of Interactive.

Currently, PBS is offering a full-length "Web exclusive preview" of "Time Team America," a new science/reality series (debuting July 8) that sends archaeologists on a race against time to excavate historic sites around the nation.

Looks like we were prescient in creating our "Got an Hour?" channel on KobreGuide, which already includes excellent PBS programs.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Comparing Video Sharing Sites

What's the best site for uploading and sharing your videos?

There are so many criteria that we've been constructing our own list of what to look for. Every videoplayer seems to have some advantages, such as ability to link to the video from (or embed on) other sites. But all have innumerable inadequacies and flaws.

Joel Williams, aka the Blog Tech Guy, has diligently devised his Ultimate Guide to Online Video Sharing Websites for no less than 48 video sharing sites, and 13 video editing sites, including:

AOL Uncut, Blip, Break, Brightcove, Buzdeo, Crackle, Cuts, Dabble, Daily Motion, Dave.tv, DivX Stage 6, eefoof(VuMe), Eyeka, Eyespot, Fliqz, FlixYa, Google Video, Gotuit, iFilm, JayCut, Jumpcut, Kewego, Kiwivid, LiveVideo, Lycos Mix, Metacafe, Mojiti, MotionBox, MyHeavy, MyNumo, MySpace, Nelsok, Ning, OneTrueMedia, Ovi (Twango), Revver, SevenLoad, Soapbox, Spymac, Sumo, Veoh, Viddler, Vidilife, Vidszoo,Vimeo, Vmix, VodPod, Vsocial, Wat, Webshots, WeShow, Yahoo Video, YouAreTV, YouTube, Yurth, Zeec and Ziddio.

Did you even realize there were that many?

On one Quality Comparison Page, using identical test footage, you can see for yourself the difference in Color, Vision, and Sound. However, this doesn't take into account other factors, such as whether that annoying "play" triangle icon appears in the middle of the screen when you pause, or whether you can manually fast-forward the slider.

In a separate 45-page PDF ebook, Williams rates and describes the ease and quality of creating an account, uploading video, and viewing video at each of these sites -- along with annotated pros and cons.

Additionally, Williams offers a handy chart, Online Video Comparison Matrix, which features an apples-to-apples comparison of more than a dozen useful criteria.

He notes that video editing sites are different from video sharing websites: "While sites like Photobucket (and now YouTube with Remixer) do both, these sites are designed for the editing of videos, (which) are normally loaded from other video sharing sites, and not uploaded to the site directly." Here's a sampling of those:

http://www.clesh.com/
http://www.crackle.com/
http://www.grouper.com/
http://www.cuts.com/
http://www.dabble.com/
http://www.fliqz.com/
http://www.forscene.net/
http://www.gotuit.com/
http://www.jumpcut.com/
http://mix.lycos.com/
http://www.mojiti.com/
http://www.motionbox.com/
http://www.stashspace.com/
http://www.webshots.com/

Bet you didn't realize there were so many video editing sites, either! Bravo to the Blog Tech Guy for his diligent research!

Tell us: What's your favorite video-sharing and/or video-editing Website, and why?

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

'Truth With A Camera' in Guadalajara

There are only 15 spots in the Truth With A Camera workshop in Guadalajara, Mexico, May 23-31. It is led by NPPA 2006 Photographer of the Year Josh Meltzer, a Roanoke Times photojournalist and Fulbright scholar.

(Meltzer's prizewinning "Age of Uncertainty" project, about caring for the elderly, is proudly showcased on KobreGuide.)

Imagine children as young as 6-years-old, running in and out of traffic on a 6-lane highway, trying to sell a piece of gum, wash a windshield, or juggle oranges for change. They lack education, suffer from malnutrition, and are surrounded by a world of danger and loneliness. Now imagine it is your job to tell the whole world who these children are. To breathe light into an existence too few know about. That’s the critical role photographers working with non-profits and NGOs play.

It is exactly what you’ll be tasked with if you join our next Truth With A Camera workshop in Guadalajara, Mexico. At over 5 million people, Mexico’s second largest city is one of the most modern in Mexico, though social inequity and urban poverty remain a constant and painful reality for the tens of thousands who have sunk desperately below an already subterranean poverty line. This is no vacation. During this intensive week, you will be working alongside students from the University of Guadalajara, one of the largest and most respected public institutions of higher education in Mexico.

After each full day of shooting, your evenings will be spent editing your work with some of the leaders in the field of documentary photography from America and Mexico. Your shared assignments, at one of our partnering NGOs, will offer you the chance to be both witness and advocate. A chance to build experience and make a difference – by donating your work to the NGO - at the same time.
Tuition is $1,100, and only $110 for students at University of Guadalajara. Check TruthWithACamera.org for more information .

Monday, April 20, 2009

What Matters More: The Soup or the Bowl?

Excellent article in the N.Y.Times regarding the confused state of journalism education: "Professors are hustling to figure out how to teach journalism at a time when the field is undergoing a sweeping transformation."

The debate is no longer over whether the subject should be taught academically or vocationally -- it's over how to best prepare students for what could either be an extremely promising or dubious career choice, depending on which way the economic winds blow in the next few years.

Journalism students (and their departments) are hedging their bets with courses in public relations, advertising, and even the vaguely labeled "communications." Best part of the article is towards the end, addressing the extent to which new (and soon-to-be-outmoded) technologies should be part of the curriculum:

Fundamentally, J-schools are about teaching students how to be storytellers, says Tom Fiedler, the dean of the College of Communication at Boston University. He subscribes to the philosophy that “it’s the soup and not the bowl that provides the nourishment we need.” He adds: “We want to teach our students to make a great soup. What they serve it in matters little.”

Rich Beckman, a professor of visual journalism at the University of Miami and a guru of new media education, would beg to differ. The new media, he says, have required professors to revise their classes on media ethics and law. Multimedia reporters must know how to edit audio and video without taking quotes out of context, and to abide by copyright law when incorporating music. In updating a blog post, they must recognize when a formal correction is warranted. They are called upon to alternate between objectivity and self-expression — a new New Journalism enabled by the Web, for a generation raised on Jon Stewart and Bill O’Reilly.
Your thoughts?

Friday, April 17, 2009

Yet Another Pay-For-Content Scheme

Probably because of its high-profile partners, the newly created Journalism Online is getting a lot of buzz about its plan to rescue newspapers by enabling publishers to charge their Web audience for heretofore free content. It's also planning to help publishers negotiate licensing fees from search engines and aggregators whose existence depends on their content.

Sounds good on paper, but read it for yourself and see if it sounds any different from all the other micropayment and/or subscription schemes we've been hearing about... and if you think this one has a prayer of working.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

NPR's John Poole Leads Video Workshop

Momenta Workshops announced that the lead instructor for its Memorial Day Multimedia audio and video training workshop will be National Public Radio’s video producer John Poole. The workshop will take place on May 23-25 in Washington, D.C.

Previously, Poole was the senior documentary video producer for Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive and taught at the Corcoran School of Art + Design in Washington, DC.

The price of the workshop is $775. For more information, click here.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Cast Your Webby Ballot

The 13th annual Webby Awards nominees have been announced. In the "Documentary: Individual Episode" category, two of the five have previously appeared on KobreGuide.com:
In addition to the official awards determined by industry judges, separate "People's Voice" awards will go to nominees who receive the most online votes from their fellow Web denizens: "Last year, nearly half a million votes were cast and even more comments were posted to mark the biggest turnout in Webby history. And this year we expect even more spirited participation." You have until April 30 to cast your ballot.

The three-day awards extravaganza will be held in New York, June 8-10.

SPECIAL BONUS: Must-read interview with MediaStorm's formidable founder Brian Storm, a three-time Webby winner and current nominee.

'Don't Blame Your Paintbrush' Dept.

He wasn't a visual artist, but he was inarguably one of the most influential bass players of the past half century. His name was James Jamerson, and if you haven't heard of him, it's because he was an anonymous session musician whose work was mostly uncredited. But you've definitely heard him, since he contributed his distinctive sound to all your favorite '60s Motown hits: Four Tops, Temptations, Supremes, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, the list goes on.

(Jamerson was among those profiled in the Detroit Free Press's 50th anniversary salute to Motown Records.)

Reading an old interview with him recently called to mind the ongoing fascination we all have with the latest video technology:

"Bass players call from all over," he revealed, "wanting to know what type of equipment I use, what type of bass, what kind of strings -- things like that. I'll tell them, but that's not what's important; it's the feel. The strings don't make the sound, it's the feel. It's all in here, in the heart."

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Amanda Koster's Magical Mystery Tours

Want to go to Guatemala this June? Photojournalist Amanda Koster wants to take you with her. Her traveling band of visual storytellers, which she calls SalaamGarage (for reasons you'll have to visit her Website to discover), still has a few open slots.

SalaamGarage leads trips that combine cultural immersion travel with media storytelling with and for NGOs around the world. Think: humanitourism meets Web 2.0.

Our trips around the world connect participants with international Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). Participants (storytellers: passionate and not necessarily professional writers, bloggers, videographers, photographers, etc.) commit to creating and sharing unique, independent media projects that raise awareness and cause positive change. We are the media now. Join us.

How does this work:
1. come with us / take a trip
2. team up, create a project with an international NGO
3. travel around the region
4. go home and share the project
5. cause change




Gosh, she makes it all sound so easy! Roll up, roll up for her magical mystery tour.



More info on Amanda's Website, blog, and SalaamGarage blog.

Monday, April 13, 2009

EyeBorg: Do You See What I See?

Take a one-eyed filmmaker, an unemployed engineer, and a vision for something that's never been done before and you have the EyeBorg Project. Rob Spence and Kosta Grammatis are trying to make history by embedding a video camera and a transmitter in a prosthetic eye. That eye is going in Rob's eye socket, and will record the world from a perspective that's never been seen before.



This camera will not help the one-eyed filmmaker see, but will let everyone else see what he is seeing.

Who wants to see his world?

Could this be the first step towards enabling us to see the world in the way a painter, poet or photographer might see it? What catches and holds their attention? Do their eyes scan and intake the world the same way ours do? What can this teach us about an artist's vision?

Monday, April 6, 2009

Special Videojournalism Issue of 'Digital Journalist'

Dirck Halstead invited me to guest-edit his special April issue of The Digital Journalist, the monthly online magazine for visual journalism, now on a Webstand near you!

TDJ has been on the front lines of reinventing photojournalism since its first issue 11 years ago. This month, the issue is devoted to videojournalism, and we’re blessed to have some of the nation’s top practitioners contribute. They tell and show how they are changing this emerging field, and we strongly encourage you to head right over to DigitalJournalist.org and see what they’ve prepared for you. Here are some highlights:

Spokesman-Review’s Colin Mulvany is a highly decorated visual journalist whose portfolio and commentary serves as the cover story. Colin was among the first and best to make that bold leap from still photography to video. He also personally trained and groomed his paper’s photography staff to produce great videojournalism along with him. He recently received yet another award -- second place in NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism contest for Web news video for Warming the Homeless. Read about his long, steady trek to the top.

Kathy Kieliszewski generously shares her perspective as leader of the Emmy Award-winning video staff of the Detroit Free Press. Their staff keeps wowing us with their labor-intensive projects, each one reflecting a strong level of collective commitment. How can such a small unit spend a year chronicling life inside an orphanage? How did they ever find the time to put together their ambitious multi-faceted Emmy-winning 40th anniversary salute to Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” ? And how many staffs would dare to undertake a 50th anniversary celebration of Motown Records by preparing FIFTY short video stories? Kathy takes us behind the scenes at freep.com to show us how they keep churning out the hits.

New York Times videojournalist Erik Olsen treats us to an inside look at how he personally made the transition from ABC TV news shooter to creating video stories for a newspaper – and why he’s so much happier for it. As a “one-man-band”-style VJ, he finds that having the opportunity to edit his own stories (instead of handing over footage to an editor, as usually happens in TV) helps him better visualize the final result as he’s shooting – making for a better story overall. As part of a crack team of fifteen videojournalists, Erik lends fresh insight into how one of the nation’s top news organizations is wholeheartedly committing itself to pioneering first-rate videojournalism.

With newspapers shrinking and dying, videojournalists worry that there will be no outlet for their work. One solution, for the entrepreneurially-minded, is to strike out on your own and take a shot at freelancing. But who will buy your pieces? How much will they pay? (A budget-slashing paper surely can’t be a potential customer.) What are the protocols and procedures? Do you pitch ideas, or only peddle finished stories? So many questions, so few people in a position to answer them. Luckily we found one – Brent Foster, a former L.A. Times videojournalist who packed it in this year and headed for New Delhi, where he’s setting up shop as a fulltime freelance VJ. We asked for details, he graciously provided them, in his “Email from New Delhi”

Probably the best potential market for freelancers is not cash-starved newspapers, but organizations and associations whose Websites are designed to communicate to their membership. A few have already experimented with videojournalism. Among those who’ve produced the most successful results is the gargantuan 40-million member American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). The good news for videojournalists who’ve been laid off is that AARP.org represents a viable freelance market. AARP multimedia producer Nicole Shea, whose background includes stints at National Geographic and Getty Images, gives us the inside scoop on what AARP is looking for – which should open your eyes to other possibilities for institutional videojournalism markets.

For this special issue, the KobreGuide mavens distilled a list of “Ten Tips to Improve Your Videojournalism.” One of those tips is to tell a story from an alternative perspective. When Reuters’ award-winning photog Lucy Nicholson attended an intensive MediaStorm workshop (her first foray into videojournalism), she impressed us with her fresh look at an old icon, by profiling the underwear-clad Times Square musician who calls himself “The Naked Cowboy” -- from his girlfriend’s point of view. Our Q&A with Lucy illuminates her creative process.

Another tip is to find a singular character on which you can hang your story. It’s such important (and oft-neglected) advice, that we asked KobreGuide contributor Kathy Strauss, an accomplished visual journalist in her own right, to share her favorite character-oriented videos from KobreGuide, and demonstrate why each story was immeasurably improved by having a single human stand in for an abstract issue or theme.

To illustrate what differentiates videojournalism from other media, we created a hypothetical story – “Building a Sandcastle” – that also serves to show how a videojournalist can show us something we couldn’t find anywhere else. In “The Future of Videojournalism,” we offer a peek at some new and emerging trends that we feel will soon be used to improve the medium’s viability and versatility.

We’re confident that you’ll find plenty in this issue to help you improve the quality of your own videojournalism. If you’ve found or created something worthy of KobreGuide.com, please let us know by clicking the “Recommend a Story” tab on our homepage – we’re grateful for all the extra eyeballs that help us locate those proverbial needles in the haystack. And if your newspaper wants to join the KobreGuide Consortium, enabling it to feature the Web’s best videojournalism on its own site – and to have its own video appear on Websites around the world – both at no cost, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

We’re grateful to Dirck Halstead and his professional team at DigitalJournalist.org for this golden opportunity to guest-edit this special issue and share our videojournalism adventures and insights with you. Please enjoy it, and let us hear your feedback.

Friday, April 3, 2009

NPPA's 'Best of Photojournalism' Winners on KobreGuide

Now in its eighth year, the Best of Photojournalism (BOP), a project of the National Press Photographers Association, touts itself as "the world's leading digital photojournalism contest."

We're impressed with how many of the recently announced 2009 BOP winners have already been showcased on KobreGuide. Here is a sampling:

***
News or Feature Multimedia Package

(Independent)

2nd Place:
Trapped: Mental Illness in America's Prisons
Jenn Ackerman

(Newspapers)

1st Place:
Thirst in the Mojave
Las Vegas Sun

2nd Place:
Age of Uncertainty
The Roanoke Times

(Larger-circulation newspapers)

1st Place:
Christ Child House
Detroit Free Press

2nd Place:
The Debt Trap
The New York Times

Honorable Mention:
The Girl in the Window
St. Petersburg Times

***
Road to Office Multimedia Package
Choosing a President
New York Times

***
Web Video Photography

Documentary Video

(Independent)

1st Place:
Trapped: Mental Illness in America's Prisons
Jenn Ackerman

3rd Place:
Intended Consequences
MediaStorm

(Newspaper)

1st Place:
Left Behind
San Jose Mercury News

***
Feature Video

1st Place:
Common Ground
MediaStorm

2nd Place:
Burned in the War
NPR

***
News Video
2nd Place:
Warming the Homeless
The Spokesman-Review

***
Road to Office Video

1st Place:
Choosing a President
New York Times

***
Feature Audio Slideshow

3rd Place:
World of Words
AARP Bulletin Today

***
Here's a complete list of BOP winners.

The BOP Awards Ceremony will be held in conjunction with Convergence09 and the Multimedia Immersion in Las Vegas in early June:

Congratulations to all!

P.S. Tune in to DigitalJournalist.org for its special April issue devoted to videojournalism, which I had the privilege of guest-editing. It launches Sunday, April 5.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

NYTimes.com Videojournalism Nabs Peabody Award

The Peabody Awards annually celebrate excellence in traditional TV broadcasting. Its recipients generally include the likes of HBO, PBS, CNN -- and it has lauded groundbreaking classics from The Ed Sullivan Show and Edward R. Murrow's See It Now series to The Wire and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Guess who just received one this year? The New York Times. Not the paper, the NYTimes.com Website. Specifically, its online videojournalism.

According to its citation: "Aggressively and imaginatively adding sound and moving images to the news that's fit to print, the 'Gray Lady' became a leader in the emergence of new journalistic forms."

Well deserved, we say! And this clearly represents a recognition of the tidal change in the content, tone, genre, and delivery platform of video storytelling. (Other online recipients: YouTube and TheOnion.com!)

Peabody director Horace Newcomb: "The list of winners this year clearly indicates a changing media environment."

See what the fuss is about, on the New York Times channel on KobreGuide.