J-Rod Mount: Clever Video Camera Accessory

KobreGuide warmly welcomes a new advertising sponsor – The J-Rod, developed and produced by accomplished and resourceful videojournalist Jeff Rhode.

Jeff is a former staff member of the award-winning photo & video department at The Star-Ledger in Newark, NJ. With over 20 years experience in photography and video, Jeff invented several professional video camera accessories aimed at helping visual journalists.

"The original J-Rod Twin Mount was designed to reduce handling noise on compact professional video cameras. The benefits of using The J-Rod mounts go way beyond that -- they provide you an extra mounting point to attach a radio receiver and a shotgun microphone in a rubber band mount, as well as enable you to move the microphone back to keep it out of wide shots.

"In its fourth year of production, The J-Rod has evolved, and several mounting solutions are now available. Visual journalists, event videographers, wildlife videographers, indie filmmakers, and entire television newsrooms in over 30 countries have benefited from The J-Rod mounts."

You’ll find a rave review at indieV.org , with favorable comments from satisfied customers, including Eric Seals of the Detroit Free Press :

“I bought the twin hot shoe mount for my Panasonic hvx200 and it is a great addition to the camera, freeing up the factory hotshoe mount for a light or other things.”

During his time at The Star-Ledger, Jeff was part the newsroom team that was awarded the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting for the resignation of New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey. He held key roles in the development and launch of the video department and its many projects, including Ledger Live, the Star-Ledger daily newscast, and the 2005 Heart Gallery of NJ.

Jeff left the Ledger in 2008 and currently works at Ramapo College in the School of Contemporary Arts and maintains his avid passion for shooting & producing still photography & video. He is currently the Director of Production for The Heart Gallery of NJ, Do1Thing.org, and a member of Design for Social Good.

Please take a look at the variety of accessories Jeff has to offer at TheJ-Rod.com and see if there’s something that will improve your video shooting experience.

The Sky is Falling: Who's Left to Cover It?

This week's media news:

• The Christian Science Monitor is ceasing publication of its weekday paper.


• Time Inc. is cutting 600 jobs.


• Gannett, the nation's largest newspaper publisher, is laying off 3,000 (ten percent of its work force).


• The Los Angeles Times newsroom is slashing yet another 75.


• The Newark Star-Ledger is reducing its editorial staff by 40 percent to prevent closing.


• TV Guide, which Rupert Murdoch unloaded in '99 for $9.2 billion, was sold for one dollar -- one-third the cost of a single issue.

Tragically, print media is in big trouble -- and the companies that own publications were too shortsighted to invest in multimedia production that could have bolstered and monetized their online presence. Consequently, their Websites simply do not have the value of their print equivalents, and as the print product shrinks and disappears, it's questionable as to what will happen with the Websites. There won't be anybody left to provide content for them -- and despite conventional wisdom, that content doesn't create itself. In short, they're doomed. Unless they start getting smart and investing immediately in high-quality multimedia and video journalism.

In Mourning Old Media's Decline , the New York Times' David Carr explains the economics of why, in terms of revenue, a Website can't replace a print product. As you read this, ask yourself if things might have been a lot different if publishers had sufficient vision to build their multimedia capabilities, and produce more online packages of the quality that you see regularly showcased on KobreGuide.com ?

For readers, the drastic diminishment of print raises an obvious question: if more people are reading newspapers and magazines, why should we care whether they are printed on paper? The answer is that paper is not just how news is delivered; it is how it is paid for. More than 90 percent of the newspaper industry’s revenue still derives from the print product, a legacy technology that attracts fewer consumers and advertisers every single day. A single newspaper ad might cost many thousands of dollars while an online ad might only bring in $20 for each 1,000 customers who see it.

The difference between print dollars and digital dimes — or sometimes pennies — is being taken out of the newsrooms that supply both. And while it is indeed tough all over in this economy, consider the consequences.

New Jersey, a petri dish of corruption, will have to make do with 40 percent fewer reporters at The Star-Ledger, one of the few remaining cops on the beat. The Los Angeles Times, which toils under Hollywood’s nose, has one movie reviewer left on staff. And dozens of communities served by Gannett will have fewer reporters and editors overseeing the deeds and misdeeds of local government and businesses.

At the recent American Magazine Conference, one of the speakers worried that if the great brands of journalism — the trusted news sources readers have relied on — were to vanish, then the Web itself would quickly become a “cesspool” of useless information. That kind of hand-wringing is a staple of industry gatherings.

But in this case, it wasn’t an old journalism hack lamenting his industry. It was Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google.