One of Jon Stewart’s staples of humor on The Daily Show is showing how politicians contradict themselves by airing side-by-side video clips — what the politician just said today, vs. what he/she said a few months ago that completely contradicts the current stance. I’ve admired this technique, and long wondered why traditional news organizations shied away from this. (In the Youtube era, bloggers and others do this stuff often, so I have a hard time fathoming the logic of holding back.)
So I was pleased to see a NYTimes.com video report that used Stewart’s technique so effectively: “The McCain/Romney Rapprochement.” The reporter showed clips of GOP candidates John McCain and Mitt Romney criticizing each other’s issue positions during the GOP primary campaign, and today sending conflicting messages as McCain considers Romney for his VP pick.
Perhaps The Daily Show (and The Colbert Report) are beginning to have an impact on traditional media.
I must say, this Katie Couric Youtube channel of behind-the-scenes looks at the CBS anchor’s life when the “real” cameras aren’t on is pretty cool. Obviously, Couric is comfortable with any camera on, so it’s not a big deal, apparently, for someone to be following her around with a pocket video camera.
Here’s an example:
We’ll see if she keeps this up. At least Couric is “trying to get into the 21st Century,” as she says in this clip. ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson quips, “I’m still in the 19th Century.” Umm, that’s a problem, Charlie.
OK, perhaps the second sentence is paraphrased, but I really like it. “‘Dog bites man’ is newsworthy if you know the man, or dog,” so nicely sums up what I’ve been thinking for some time about what many have termed “hyper-local” journalism.
Yes, dog bites man, or 5th-grader hits winning home run, or woman wins teacher of the year award at Smith Elementary are boring items to nearly everyone — but not to the people involved and the people who know them. For the latter group, it’s important stuff.
We now have the technology available online (and for mobile devices) to deliver that boring-to-everyone-but-me stuff to the right people. We don’t need to produce a weekly give-away print product filled with boring dog-bites-man stuff, because we can deliver it to the people for whom it’s important, interesting, and vital — and not bore everyone else.
To critics of hyper-local news or “citizen journalism,” I will argue that it can be powerful stuff when and only when it’s targeted well. I can envision a future — and I look forward to it — when services are available to send me news on my smartphone letting me know that the guy down the street got bit by a dog.
Pop17.com’s Sarah Meyers recently did a nice little piece about how to produce a show like hers for very little money and low-end equipment. Useful stuff for small-media entrepreneurs, as well as any media company wanting to do more web video programming without busting budgets.
For most mainstream news publishers, as they produce video, the inclination is to host that content on their own websites. Makes sense, right? You own the videos, they should be where you have complete control over them. Right?
Actually, not necessarily. These days it makes the most sense to post video on Youtube, which has become the de facto standard for web video. Continued
Live streaming video. Next big thing. Sarah Meyers of Pop17.com explains it well:
When Youtube adds this sometime this year, as Meyers discovered it will, it’ll become huge. Hey, mainstream media companies: Jump on this now. Don’t wait for yet another big Internet trend to go huge before deciding then to experiment (as has happened SO many times before with other things). Let’s move a bit faster this time, eh?
Chris Pirillo is an example of leading the way on live streaming video. Experimentation is the order of the day with this. Yeah, Pirillo at his desk occasionally talking can be pretty dull. But there are interesting uses for this, you can be sure. I’d just like to see some media companies do some of the innovating.
How could traditional news and media companies best use live streaming video?
I’ve mentioned before how important it is for media companies to get their content out there — meaning everywhere, including on any blog that will carry it. (It’s the “atomization of media” thing.) I see that MSNBC.com is taking up that charge, as you can see in the screengrab below. I’d wanted to post one of its videos on this blog and went looking for its embed code; found this instead. Oh well, at least they’re working on doing the right thing!
So I spot this link to a video about a competitor in the recent North Pole Marathon and bike race who decided to skinny-dip in the Arctic Ocean (because, if you’re gonna do a marathon and ride in a bike race at the pole, you might as well swim, too, to get the full “triathlon” experience). And there’s something about global warming awareness behind the guy’s dip in the frigid water. OK, this I gotta see. …
Alas, Youtube — in a fit of zero tolerance about nudity, I guess — has zapped the video. “This video has been removed due to terms of use violation.”
Oh, good grief. This is like those zero-tolerance policies at some schools, where the 2nd-grader gets suspended for having a plastic knife in his Spongebob lunchbox.
Practice some common sense, Youtube/Google! This is not pornography. Are you editing what gets published so as not to offend the Taliban? Get a grip, already!
As expected, there’s already video of Saddam’s hanging — I mean the actual death — online. A blog reader pointed me to this. It looks like someone had a video camera phone with them and surreptitiously shot the few minutes before the actual hanging, because the camera moves around a lot and after the floor drops and Saddam falls, there’s a period of black and lots of voices before the camera manages to focus again on his face and broken neck.
A check on Youtube turns up only images of Saddam up to the point of having the noose put around his neck — the same images as seen on TV, provided by Iraqi state television, which don’t include the actual point of death.
As I’ve said before, mainstream news editors can no longer expect to be the sole arbiters of taste when it comes to what the public sees in events like this. The full gruesome reality is available online and likely will be from now on when it comes to big news stories. The camera cell phone truly changes everything, because they’re now everywhere, and are easily concealed. (I don’t know that this was a cell phone video, but it sure looks like it.)
While someone alerted me to the video, it isn’t hard for anyone to find. A quick search on Technorati turns it up, although using Google it’s a bit trickier. It takes only the smallest amount of Internet savvy to find the graphic video of Saddam’s moment of death.
UPDATE: The link to the hanging video above was removed. However, do a Technorati search as I describe above and it’s easy to find.
That’s a no-brainer, as far as I’m concerned. The answer is yes, when you’re talking about online. If you’re thinking of publishing gruesome photos on the font page of your newspaper, or video of the actual hanging on a news broadcast, then (especially in the USA, where we’re still puritanical about such things), don’t do it unless you’re prepared for a public backlash from more sensitive readers and viewers. But there’s no logical reason that I can see not to make it available online — where you can precede it with graphic warnings about what an online visitor will see if he/she clicks that link.
There are a few reasons for this:
This is big news, obviously, and it should be covered fully — and that includes offering images that may offend some.
The photos and videos of the hanging no doubt will be readily available somewhere on the Web. To not make them available (with appropriate warnings) just marks you as an anachronistic editor who’s still trying to enforce his/her own sensibilities on a public that no longer needs editors dictating what they do or do not see. The new-media ethic lets news consumers make up their own minds.
This will reflect my political bias, but I think that US citizens, especially, should see the results of their tax dollars at work. Electoral outcomes in the US have created the mess in Iraq, and I think that American citizens should see everything that their votes have wrought — from Saddam’s hanging to the gruesome violence and despair that is today’s Iraq.
The news media should not sugar-coat the reality of today’s world.
