That was the moment Jim MacMillan (pictured), a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, veteran of 17 years at the Philadelphia Daily News and former embedded journalist of the war in Iraq, realized the game had changed.
He uttered those words two years ago to a fire chief at a scene in Philadelphia while shooting video and still photos for the Daily News website. Pursuing a Web-first strategy was relatively new for the paper. And that was the confusion, said MacMillan.
"If I barked 'Daily News,' it said something about the cultural and social authority [of my presence] and where they could find the pictures the next day," he said. But explaining that he was shooting video for the Web and pulling video stills for print, and that the video could be found online via a series of clicks on the site, lacked the same efficiency and charm. "Trying to boil down the shorthand in the middle of a crisis is really difficult," he said.
MacMillan, who is finishing up a year teaching at the University of Missouri J-school, said that moment was emblematic of his transition from a street photographer covering crime in Philadelphia to a "social media" journalist who at last count had more Twitter followers than Katie Couric.
The epiphany took place in April 2008, some months after MacMillan had returned to the Daily News from a fellowship, after which he taught himself video and Web skills. As the paper's first video journalist, he was working that day with a Sony HD video camera, using still images from the video for the newspaper.
MacMillan shared the despair of many newspaper videographers at the time: The craft was still new enough that few media websites displayed video prominently, which meant a lot of innovative work went unseen. "You couldn't find my content," he said. There were "no distributable media players and no RSS feeds" on the Daily News site to help the videos get shared and discussed around the Web.
As much as he was concerned with distribution, the technology of remote electronic newsgathering was also a challenge. MacMillan was working at the time to fit a TV live truck into a backpack so he could stream video directly to the Web from anywhere in town. In 2007 that required a laptop, digital video camera, wireless modem and a fair amount of luck. Now, of course, the live truck fits in his pocket in the form of an iPhone.
A blook is a collaborative system to fill the gap between a blog and a book. It fuses opinions from us and you to create a polished and comprehensive set of topic discussions.
Well, it's an onscreen flipbook collection of essays by academics and professionals who talk about the pros and cons of government bailouts of newspapers and citizen journalism and ... well, go look for yourself.
On the OurBlook website, you can find blooks on all sorts of topics, and read and watch video of the interviews with their contributors. Here are some that pertain to journalism:
Advice for newspapers that want to live to see the future? Nothing especially original, but here it is, in a nutshell:
Step 1. Abandon print (unless you're USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times or Washington Post). It's obsolete.
Step 2. "Carve out a niche that makes the paper's web site dominant, irreplaceable and one of a kind." Translation: local news. (We would add: Dynamic multimedia and videojournalism.)
Step 3. Start charging (via subscriptions or micropayments).
And, as you can judge from the book's cover (pictured) -- if you click to enlarge it, and read the fine print -- one thing we'll definitely still need in the future is editors.
Cision is a global PR institution that recently conducted a U.S. survey to figure out where reporters and editors are getting their information these days -- especially now that there are fewer journalists and an overabundance of data to sort through and verify.
It probably comes as no surprise that they are coming to depend on the immediacy and ease of using online social media sources for research.
According to a report synopsis by Jack Loechner on his Center for Media Research blog:
Among the journalists surveyed, 89% said they turn to blogs for story research, 65% to social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and 52% to microblogging services such as Twitter. The survey also found that 61% use Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia. Most journalists said that social media were important (15%) or somewhat important (40%) for reporting and producing the stories they wrote.
The groups placing the highest levels of importance on social media for reporting and producing stories were journalists who spend most of their professional time writing for Websites . Those at Newspapers and Magazines reported this less often. The differences between Magazine journalists and Website journalists is statistically significant.
While the results demonstrate the fast growth of social media as a well-used source of information for mainstream journalists, the survey also made it clear that reporters and editors are acutely aware of the need to verify information they get from social media.
84% said social media sources were "slightly less" or "much less" reliable than traditional media; 49% say social media suffers from "lack of fact checking, verification and reporting standards."
One Source Does Not a Story Make
Without denigrating the validity of Cision's presumptive conclusion -- that journalists therefore need assistance more than ever from professional PR specialists -- let's also not forget that journalists are duty-bound to garner info and quotes the old-fashioned way, by banging on doors and wearing out shoe leather, even if metaphorically.
Though the survey didn't specifically address broadcast or video journalism, we must say that we see way too many video stories that depend solely on one source. These would never pass muster as text stories, and any reputable editor would kick them back to the lazy reporter. Videojournalists should always look for opposing viewpoints, or at least alternative perspectives. One simple rule of thumb is, "Let's hear from the people above, below, and around the central character." Who affects him, and who does he affect?
So if your story is about a teacher, let's hear from students and parents, the school principal, alumni, other teachers. In addition to seeing what others have to say, let's unobtrusively watch the protagonist interacting with other sources -- in their own environment, with natural sound. Showing, and not just telling, makes stories not just more credible but also more memorable.
Think of the movies and novels you enjoy, and how boring and meaningless they would be if each one was about only one character. The same holds true for videojournalism. Multiple perspectives and meaningful interactions are key to successful nonfiction storytelling. One source is not enough.
Mashable: The Social Media Guide reports that Hulu and Facebook are shattering online video records, according to the Web analytics firm ComScore.
While YouTube draws 125 million viewers per month (one billion views per day!), Hulu and Facebook are closing in with double-digit percentage gains that shatter their previous video-viewing records.
There were 27.94 billion videos viewed in October, up 7% from September. Out of that, Google/YouTube is still on top with 10.52 billion videos viewed.
The big mover in October though was Hulu. In September, the News Corp/Disney/NBC joint venture delivered 583 million views. In October, that number shot up by 31.8% to a total of 855 million video views. This is by far a record for the TV video website....
The biggest winner seems to be Facebook. In September, it had 31.18 million unique viewers. In October, that number skyrocketed by nearly 25% to 41.15 million uniques. Once again, this is a record for the world’s largest social network, and one that speaks to how powerful Facebook is becoming in the video space...
We urge newspapers that are still not convinced about the future of video, and pulling back on resources instead of investing in its future, to look at these eye-popping statistics:
* 84.4% of U.S. Internet users watched at least one online video in October.
* The average person watched 10.8 hours of online video in October.
As Mashable notes: "Online video continues to grow and the end is nowhere in sight."
Tell us, how much video do you watch every day? How much for business? For pleasure? How much at work? At home?
We still hear folks whining about having to wade through a lot of video swampland to get to the good stuff. It's faster to scan a page of headlines, and a few sentences of text, to decide what to read -- but committing to watching a video is a bigger investment of time and attention. We realize that, and that's why we created KobreGuide -- to help you find that golden needle in the haystack every day!
Have you received your Google Wave invitation yet? Only 100,000 were originally issued a month ago, and buying one on eBay only ensures that you get bumped further to the front of the waiting line. What's remarkable is that, though everyone wants it, few can explain what exactly it is. It's that radical.
The best definition we've heard is that it's what email would be if it were invented today, and not 40 years ago.
For four decades, email has been a linear conversation -- one person talking to one or many. And once those participants start copying and forwarding and replying, the conversation can quickly become a mess, with all the wrong people getting dragged into it, and all the necessary people getting left out of critical parts of it, and missing what they need to know.
(Think of how cluttered your emailbox gets with office messages that consist of "Thanks!" being CCed to 47 people.)
A "wave," on the other hand, is a collaborative real-time conversation that takes advantage of all the latest Web developments, including social-media tools and multimedia, so that rather than passing the conversation around, people join and leave the central conversation, and bring (drag-and-drop and embed, rather than attach) what they need with them (e.g. documents, images, videos).
Participants can IM in real time, so that others can actually see what you're writing as you type it (no need to click "Send"). Latecomers can "play back" the conversation to see how it has developed, and what they've missed.
But that's a simplistic explanation that only scratches the surface, so watch Google's own introductory video for developers. It runs only 80 minutes:
Too overwhelming? Try the 8-minute version:
Still confused? So are a lot of other people, as evidenced by this hilarious Website that compares Google Wave to every other difficult to comprehend phenomenon: "Easier to Understand Than Wave."
Samuel L. Jackson to the rescue! Google Wave Cinema presents 'Pulp Wave Fiction,' in which we get to witness the dialogue from a notorious movie scene cleverly evolve as a Google wave:
And now, two high-profile techies, Gina Trapani and Adam Pash, have collaborated on The Complete Guide to Google Wave, an easy-to-read eight-chapter Wiki manual which you can enjoy for free on the Web. "Because Wave is such a new product that's evolving quickly, this guidebook is a work in progress that will update in concert with Wave as it grows and changes."
We envision Wave as a potentially powerful tool for video collaboration -- multiple shooters in remote locales can easily use it to strategize and plan a complex undertaking, and even to upload, view and edit footage for their joint project.
Ready to ride the Wave? You may have to wait your turn, as invitations are still rolling out, but why not apply for yours now? Just fill out the simple form here.
You want to travel to exotic lands where you can create videojournalism projects ... but you don't have the dough.
SalaamGarage, which leads small groups of visual journalists on worthwhile expeditions around the globe, is an expert at figuring out how to finance them.
SalaamGarage is a citizen journalist organization that partners with International NGOs and local non-profits. Participants (photographers, writers, videographers, etc.) create and share independent media projects that raise awareness and cause positive change in their online and offline social communities.
The two methods for raising awareness and money documented here each have their advantages. Facebook is quicker, easier and does not require any technical background. Hosting your own site and blogging with WordPress is more technical, but it provides more customization options.
SalaamGarage's upcoming India trip is full, but they still have a few spaces left for their 2010 excursions to Vietnam and Guatemala.
Sign up now -- and start searching for your financial underwriting.
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...
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