We're proud to announce that KobreGuide is officially an affiliate of the New York Video School (NYVS), an online education center created by pioneering videojournalist Michael Rosenblum.
NYVS provides anyone with a video camera an easy and affordable way to learn to make films and videos like a Hollywood professional.
As a NYVS member you'll have access to video courses, critiques, tutorials and a learning community that will help you quickly become a master at video editing, video production, videography, iMovie, Final Cut Pro and much more!
NYVS instructors have worked with PBS, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, ABC, CBS, the New York Times, and many other leading media institutions.
Among the benefits of registering for the NYVS online curriculum:
* Learn video with hundreds of online tutorials * View the latest video news and events * Find opportunities to use your videos * Participate in online video contests * Post and search for jobs and internships * Find places to make money creating video
NYVS courses have been grouped into five categories: Storytelling, Shooting, Editing, Practical Use, Video Basics
Andre Malok, a videojournalist at the Newark Star-Ledger, took Rosenblum's popular VJ video training bootcamp two years ago. He recently produced this stellar 24-minute online documentary (below), "The Wreck of the Lady Mary." The in-depth video represents a rare high-quality blend of reporting and interviewing with shooting and editing. Remarkably Malok accomplished it all single-handedly, using techniques and skills that you can acquire at NYVS.
The Lady Mary left the Port of Cape May on the morning of March 18, 2009 on a routine scallop fishing trip. The vessel with its crew of seven traveled 66 miles to a restricted scallop fishing area. Early on March 24, the boat sank to the bottom of the ocean, and six of the seven crewman were killed. Was the boat swamped in rough seas? Or did a passing container ship strike the boat without ever knowing it? After months of investigation, the Star-Ledger explores the mystery of the wreck of the Lady Mary.
For more info on NYVS, or to enroll in courses, please go here.
What's remarkable about the 13 recipients of this year's Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards for national broadcast journalism is that, amidst the usual alphabet-soup suspects (ABC, CBS, PBS, BBC, NPR), we find the Las Vegas Sun.
Videojournalism stories on the Websites of print newspapers (such as the Detroit Free Press) have started winning Emmy Awards, which were previously bestowed only upon TV productions. But this is the first time that the prestigious DuPont award has gone to a print newspaper -- in this case, for "Bottoming Out," an online multimedia package about gambling addiction.
The cornerstone of the three-part package is a video self-portrait by Tony McDew, who documented his own Las Vegas casino slot machine addiction with the hope of helping others, and in the process ended up quitting gambling himself.
The series is strengthened by a powerful video diary following one man’s descent into gambling addiction with strong interactive engagement. The Las Vegas Sun explored problem gambling three ways — through the experiences of an addict; by examining what happens inside the brain of an addict; and by considering the role of slot machine designs in feeding gambling addictions. The web site also provides support and resources to help gambling addicts.
Part 1:Tony's Story The pull of a drug, a push to the brink
Part 2:The Physiology Illness theory gaining ground for gambling addiction
Part 3:The Machines Could the game be partly to blame for addiction?
There's some bad blood brewing between law enforcement agents and photographers -- both professional and amateur. Though the law is generally on the side of the photographers, it's obviously difficult for them to press the issue in the heat of the moment when a burly security official is overstepping his bounds and trying to prevent him from shooting pictures or video.
The First Amendment protects the right of citizens to take photographs in public places. Even after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, law enforcement agencies have reiterated that right in official policies.
But in practice, those rules don't always filter down to police officers and security guards who continue to restrict photographers, often citing authority they don't have. Almost nine years after the terrorist attacks, which ratcheted up security at government properties and transportation hubs, anyone photographing federal buildings, bridges, trains or airports runs the risk of being seen as a potential terrorist.
Reliable statistics on detentions and arrests of photographers are hard to come by, but photographers, their advocates and even police agree that confrontations still occur frequently. Photographers had run-ins with police before the 2001 attacks, but constitutional lawyers say the combination of heightened security concerns and the spread of digital cameras has made such incidents more common.
The situation has reached a boiling point.
The National Press Photographers Association this week announced its support for a House resolution to protect photographers from police interference. Read about it here.
NPPA's leadership was pleased to see that U.S. Representative Edolphus Towns of New York's 10th District introduced House Congressional Resolution 298, which recognizes that the videotaping or photographing of police who are engaged in potentially abusive activity in a public place should not be prosecuted in state or federal courts.
NPPA's leadership asked Rep. Towns to take the next step in protecting photographers' First Amendment rights by changing his Resolution, suggesting that Towns instead introduce his proposal as a Congressional Bill.
What's clearly needed is better education of rank-and-file officers on the street by the law enforcement agencies that hire and train them. Often well-intentioned police overstep their bounds and harass innocent shooters simply because of their own ignorance of the law, and some vague notion that anyone taking a picture is somehow a security threat.
Further, police are inappropriately citing wiretapping laws, wrongly claiming that shooting pictures constitutes illegal electronic surveillance. NPPA's general counsel, photojournalist Mickey H. Osterreicher, wrote about this issue this week for the Media Law Resource Center: "Photography Restrictions Run Rampant."
Although the First Amendment has been under constant attack since its ratification, incidents occurring over the past few months might lead one to believe that the War on Terror is taking its toll on a mistaken enemy. In Houston, a homeowner filed a civil rights complaint because he was arrested for "illegal photography" after a taking pictures of a police sergeant who followed him into his own home. A student photographer at Ohio State University was handcuffed and charged with criminal trespass by university police after attempting to photograph two cows that were roaming the campus. School employees and police told him he was not allowed to take pictures of the incident, despite the fact that he was a student photojournalist working for the school paper and he was on public property.
In Miami two photojournalists were told by private security for the transit system and Miami-Dade police officers that they were not allowed to photograph in and around the metro stop. Police also barred the pair from entering the station although they had metro tickets and threatened them with arrest if they did not comply. Another similar incident occurred in Atlanta where a person was ordered off a train and off MARTA property by a transit employee for taking pictures. Almost as disturbing was a subsequent post by a MARTA customer service representative who justified the action as a result of “the 9/11 attack and the subway bombings in Spain and the UK.”
Illinois, Maryland and Massachusetts are just three states where police are using obscure wiretap laws to prosecute people for recording the activities of police officers on public streets and roadways. In Boston one man was arrested for “illegal electronic surveillance” after he recorded audio of police officers making a drug arrest. In Baltimore, several people face felony charges for recording their own arrests. All of these incidents happened in public.
Osterreicher goes on to cite, in devastating detail, the numerous reports of government interference with press coverage of BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
While these incidents only create anecdotal evidence, they do seem to point to a shift in how free speech is viewed by both law enforcement and the public. In many cases police officers make up new laws. In other incidents the police and the public seem to truly believe that they are enforcing or articulating laws or unwritten policies that do not actually exist. Still other cases appear to be an abuse of discretion as authorities ignore well founded constitutional principles. It is therefore incumbent upon the legal community to directly address these cases as soon as possible.
Educating the public, and its sworn protectors, seems to be the most feasible solution, he argues.
While assaults on the First Amendment continue it also appears that a commonsense approach in individually redressing even the most egregious of these abridgements has yielded some positive results. Continuing vigilance against this uninformed attitude along with efforts to make the general public and law enforcement aware of the dangers that accompany such infringements will help protect these precious freedoms.
Meanwhile, ABC reports on the "Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police," offering as evidence this video that motorcyclist Anthony Graber shot with his helmet-cam -- of him being stopped for speeding by a plainclothes state trooper with a drawn pistol. He was arrested for posting the video on YouTube, an "offense" for which he faces 16 years in jail.
State police officers raided Graber's parents' home in Abingdon, Md. They confiscated his camera, computers and external hard drives. Graber was indicted for allegedly violating state wiretap laws by recording the trooper without his consent.
Arrests such as Graber's are becoming more common along with the proliferation of portable video cameras and cell-phone recorders. Videos of alleged police misconduct have become hot items on the Internet. YouTube still features Graber's encounter along with numerous other witness videos. "The message is clearly, 'Don't criticize the police,'" said David Rocah, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland who is part of Graber's defense team. "With these charges, anyone who would even think to record the police is now justifiably in fear that they will also be criminally charged."
Carlos Miller, a Miami journalist who runs the blog "Photography Is Not a Crime," said he has documented about 10 arrests since he started keeping track in 2007. Miller himself has been arrested twice for photographing the police. He won one case on appeal, he said, while the other was thrown out after the officer twice failed to appear in court.
"They're just regular citizens with a cell-phone camera who happen to come upon a situation," Miller said. "If cops are doing their jobs, they shouldn't worry."
Again, the conclusion is that the friction between camera-wielders and cops is getting worse, mainly because of a widespread misunderstanding of the law.
Law enforcement officials have a hard time explaining the gap between policy and practice. The disconnect, legal experts say, may stem from a dearth of guidelines about how to balance security concerns with civil liberties.
"Security guards are often given few rules to follow, but they have clearly gotten the message that they need to be extra vigilant," said Kent Willis, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia. "In the end, it seems you never know how a particular security guard is going to react."
Last year, New York City police sought to clarify the rules on photography with a directive to all officers. It said that photography is "rarely unlawful" and that officers have no right to demand to see photos or to delete them. Like Washington, New York is a potential terrorist target but also a major tourist destination, and as a result, the directive said, "practically all such photography will have no connection to terrorism or unlawful conduct."
Police officials say officers who seek to stop photography are driven by safety concerns and the fact that the presence of a camera can spike emotions.
Now photographers are fighting back en masse.
Photographers are challenging unwarranted restrictions by collecting hundreds of photos that prompted police questioning, detention or arrest; the pictures are posted on online photo sharing sites such as Flickr.
Local photographers are also testing trouble spots, especially outside federal buildings, many of which are guarded by the Federal Protective Service, an agency in the Department of Homeland Security that has 1,225 officers and 15,000 contract guards to secure more than 9,000 buildings nationwide.
Photographers say police need to be told explicitly not to prohibit photography, because officers often don't respond well to impromptu citizen lectures on constitutional law.
The Washington Post details 10 local incidents where photographers were erroneously asked to stop taking pictures, including this one:
A Union Station security guard interrupts the taping of a TV news segment with an Amtrak official. The official was trying to explain that photography is allowed at Union Station. The incident illustrates the problems photographers encounter at the station, which is controlled by multiple entities. Amtrak controls only the ticketing area and waiting area. A parking management firm has jurisdiction over the parking garage. The guard who interrupted the interview worked for a real estate firm that oversees the retail and dining areas. (Photographs inside a store or restaurant require permission from its proprietor.) All three entities say they allow photography in public areas, but photographers are often told inconsistent information.
This seventh edition of the annual report on the health and status of American journalism, courtesy of Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, will keep you busy all weekend. Trends, attitudes, behaviors, analyses. It's comprehensive, and massive. Think 180,000 words.
Our goals are to take stock of the revolution occurring in how Americans get information and provide a resource for citizens, journalists and researchers to make their own assessments. To do so we gather in one place as much data as possible about all the major sectors of journalism, identify trends across media, mark key findings, delve deep into each sector and note areas for further inquiry.
This year’s report is the most interactive it’s ever been, and contains a number of new features...
Facebook has overtaken Google to become the most popular website in the United States for the first time, according to new data from Hitwise, which measures Internet traffic. For the week ending March 13, the social networking juggernaut registered 7.07% market share, beating the search giant's 7.03% market share.
The market share of visits to Facebook.com increased 185% last week as compared to the same week in 2009, while visits to Google.com increased 9% during the same time frame. Facebook briefly topped Google last Christmas and New Year's, but this is the first time the website's weekly numbers have beaten Google.
The new data is sure to unnerve Google, which has been trying to crack into the social networking market -- with controversial results. For Facebook, the data will add further fuel to its push to go public sometime in the next year or two, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg has suggested. Analysts predict that when Facebook does go public, it could see an immediate valuation of $35 billion -- a figure which could rise to $100 billion by 2015.
The USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism has teamed up with the Center for Investigative Reporting to launch a multimedia series titled “Hunger in the Golden State.”
The series, to debut March 19, will run in newspapers, on radio stations and online news outlets statewide over the next three weeks.
Over the course of six months, USC Annenberg journalism graduate students interviewed dozens of state and local-level food bank officials as well as the Californians who struggle with food shortages every day. The reporting unearthed new numbers that show hunger is rising at an unprecedented rate nationwide, affecting millions - including those in affluent areas - but is invisible to many.
The stories explore food waste, nutrition in schools and ways to help Californians fighting to ward off hunger. The project reveals that nearly one in eight people in California has asked for food assistance in the last year. Food banks and social services are overwhelmed, reporters found.
The Los Angeles Times teamed a staff reporter with a student to produce a story explaining how California leaves millions of federal dollars on the table because of problems in the way the state runs its end of the food stamp program.
The New York Times. Video. Three years ago, that seemed like an oxymoron, save the Times’ occasional forays into TV experiments. Now, Times TV pops up in front of us on airplane TVs and news video has become an emerging feature of Times sites. As Apple and NYT staffers plot behind closed doors in the Times building, we can expect that Times video will be a key element of the iPad NYT launch.
Behind what we see, though, are some critical developments in processing of digital video, the behind-the-scenes heavy lifting that often determines time-to-market, and business failure or success.
For the Times, it’s not a matter of harvesting decades of archived film; it’s about making the most of its last three years of a video push. The Newsonomics are these:
Make more licensing income off the video. ...
Better usage of companies’ own produced video (and partnered video) on their own websites, apps, and tablets. ...
Put your content into new marketplaces. ....
Lastly, the outsourcing here is essential. News companies are in learning mode — what is it they do best?; what do they leave to others. In this case, the Times and others are applying my Newsonomics Law #9: Apply the 10 Percent Rule, the heavy lifting of journalism can be aided and abetted by smart use of technology.
Video is in the air — C-SPAN’s release of its volumimous archives reenforces that notion — but as usual, it’s the less-glamorous, behind-the-scenes work that will separate the winners from the companies stuck in text mode.
Google and Intel have teamed with Sony to develop a platform called Google TV to bring the Web into the living room through a new generation of televisions and set-top boxes.
The move is an effort by Google and Intel to extend their dominance of computing to television, an arena where they have little sway. For Sony, which has struggled to retain a pricing and technological advantage in the competitive TV hardware market, the partnership is an effort to get a leg up on competitors.
The partners envision technology that will make it as easy for TV users to navigate Web applications, like the Twitter social network and the Picasa photo site, as it is to change the channel.
Some existing televisions and set-top boxes offer access to Web content, but the choice of sites is limited. Google intends to open its TV platform, which is based on its Android operating system for smartphones, to software developers. The company hopes the move will spur the same outpouring of creativity that consumers have seen in applications for cellphones.
Google is expected to deliver a toolkit to outside programmers within the next couple of months, and products based on the software could appear as soon as this summer.
Danish police had been searching for Rumenian murder suspect Marian Clita for a good 24 hours when Norwegian journalist Andreas Lunde Googled him, found his phone number and got him on the line.
In a scoop that almost beggars belief, ABC Nyheter’s Andreas Lunde, tracked down the man wanted for the brutal murder of Norwegian Scandinavian Airline stewardess Vera Vildmyren in Copehnhagen, a man sought by both the police and the press, with a simple Google Search.
“I found a blog post he had commented on, using his name and phone number when doing so, put the Rumenian land code in front of the number and called,” Lunde told Danish TV2 News.
Clita picked up the phone, confirmed he was indeed Marian Clita, professed to be unaware the police was searching for him, but, when asked if he had any knowledge of the murder, said he would get a taxi to the police station in ten minutes – and kept his word.
More newspapers and media organizations are having each of their reporters maintain individual Twitter accounts for professional use. By following these reporters -- ranging from network anchors and hotshot columnists to small-town weekly general assignment reporters -- readers can get a sense of developing news stories, with links to updates.
Now one site has corralled them under one big roof. At MuckRack.com, you can find an overwhelming but well organized array of journalists' tweets, representing news sources ranging from ABC and AP to Wired and the Wall Street Journal.
What if you could get tomorrow's newspaper today? Now you sorta can, by tracking the short messages on Twitter written by the journalists who do the muckraking for major media outlets. Muck Rack makes it easy to follow one line, real time reporting.
Muckracking? Frankly, we don't see much of that here -- or anywhere these days, for that matter. But on Muck Rack you can follow not just individual reporters and theiremployers, but also specific "beats," which include major cities and also topics (e.g. Politics, Arts, Sports, etc.).
Using mostly word images found on street signs in Sydney and New York, Jason van Genderen shot "Mankind is No Island," this cleverly crafted musically-driven short video below, on his cellphone. It won the top award at TropFest NY, the self-described "world's largest short film festival."
While it is not characteristically videojournalism as we normally showcase on KobreGuide, we are smitten by its resourceful sequencing of words and piano so that it plays like a visual song of sorts -- with an unexpected emotional wallop. No interviews, no dialog, no nat sound -- but it will probably speak to you more about how we ignore the homeless than the hundreds of interviews you've already seen on the topic. It's a triumph of editing to the beat. The heartbeat.
The 3:30 short has already racked up nearly a half-million YouTube views. For those who fret that videojournalism is unprofitable: Van Genderen shot this on a $57 budget, and won $20,000 TropFest prize money.
A tip of the hat to KarmaTube, for selecting "Mankind" as its Video of the Week. And be sure to hear this behind-the-scenes ABC radio interview with videomeister Van Genderen.
What’s in Your Bag with John Lehmann
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John Lehmann is award winning photojournalist with the Globe and Mail in
Canada. John shares with Munetake Kayo what he carries while working, and
why he c...
Videographer job at University of Texas System
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Matt Flores, a former colleague at the San Antonio Express-News, called me
today asking if I know anyone interested in a videographer position at the
Unive...
We're proud to announce that KobreGuide is officially an affiliate of the New York Video School (NYVS), an online education center created by pioneering videojournalist Michael Rosenblum. 
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