Nicomedia

A slickly produced reminder of the potential that blogs offer those whose voices are routinely repressed. Some of the images strongly recall Persepolis, a great animted film set in Iran, adapted from a graphic novel of the same name (here is its website).

I found it at Antony Loewenstein’s blog.

Iran: A nation of bloggers from Mr.Aaron on Vimeo.

Innovations in Newspapers is a blog written by Juan Antonio Giner (fouder and director of Innovation International Media). Giner clearly stills get excited about print – a rare spark of hope amongst current media commentary – and in his blog lauds innovation caviar while remonstrating with those responsible for what he considers rubbish.

Giner is a prolific poster. While his posts are brief – often photos with a comment or material quoted from other sources – he manages to post numerous times daily.

Giner has a sharp eye for design, and plenty of his posts highlight good front covers and pages, and at times he is not afraid to be critical.

The US Election kept Giner busy – understandably considering what a major media event it was. Lots of posts at Innovations in Newspapers showed Obama front pages from around the world and photos illustrating the spike in demand for newspapers following Obama’s win. This huge interest in election newspapers Giner followed keenly. It was a boost to those arguing for newspapers continued relevance – The Australian reported that Nov 5 editions were selling for upwards of $600 on Ebay.

So what would Giner say about innovation in Australia’s newspapers? While The Age has some great slideshows and multimedia (like the Art Deco piece) and The Australian makes the occasional video, our best broadsheet papers seem to treat innovative content as an aside. The multimedia sections of the the papers’ websites are not adequately signposted. 

Giner uses photos to good effect in his blog – illustrating for example voter turn-out at the election. This photo I think is great (see here for the original post).

Global Voices is a site developed by Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and is committed to revising the media inequities that see so much space given to American and European stories by the big news services.

GV looks to the blogosphere for a grassroots view of issues that are affecting communities around the world. Regional editors keep abreast of blogs in their area (or subject matter) and post daily links to interesting content.

Featured stories on the home page cover issues normally overlooked by Western media, and offers alternate perspectives to the mainstream. Generally the stories start with summary information from the author followed by a selection of blog excerpts on topic, with possibly photos, audio and video as well. See these stories for some fresh perspective:

New Zealand: Time for a change as well? - about the recent election there
Obama the revenge! - the view from Pakistan
Obama’s Victory: Reactions from Tanzania

A blogger profile of the author of Wahda Masyra – an Egyptian Girl, Shahinaz Abdelsalam provides a sharp reminder about how liberating the internet can be to people living in countries which implement repression and censorship. She actually speaks about the possibility of going to jail for the opinions she voices in her blog, which is a world away from my lax attitude to blogging.

Shahinaz Abdelsalam

It is ironic, or just plain frustrating, that I’m blogging about video and cannot for the life of me get video to work in this blog. I can at Blogger. I cannot at Edublogs. Highlights my ignorance.

Mobile journalism is a lot more exciting than my 2.0 woes. A mobile phone is a versatile tool for a reporter, giving her flexibility more difficult to come by with a typical camera+tripod+camera operator etc set up. While footage captured on a mobile camera is great for creating a sense of urgency or action, the shaky nature of handheld filming means the result is difficult to watch for sustained periods, and maybe not always suitable for broadcast. Mobile filming does give more of a subjective view and a sense of involvement, compared to the more objective, audience-as-observer style.

At a Reuters Mobile Phone Reporting seminar a journalist – Matt – made the comment that mobile journalism is in its infancy and there is definitely room for improvement. He suggests incorporating a tripod and steadycam, as well as a better lighting system.

Obama in NH 10/16/08 from stevegarfield on Vimeo.

Steve Garfield is an American journalist who is experimenting with mobile journalism – posting videoblogs and streaming footage live from his phone to his site. Here are his tips for videoblogging.

Reuters is also investing in mobile journalism, though it doesn’t appear that it is being utilised for serious news reporting.

In February, MediaShift identified “5 videoblogs that do it right“. Looking at the diverse examples highlights how inadequate the term ‘videoblog’ (and its derivatives) has become. So many sites these days use a range of content that the idea of splitting them into blogs and vlogs seems reduntant. We are after all talking about multimedia.

Alive in Baghdad is for me the easiest of the sites to endorse. The weekly video dispatches fill a problematic void in media coverage of the Iraq war, and provides invaluable insight into the everyday lives of Iraqi’s living in a warzone, It humanises the conflict in a way typical news media footage of the aftermath of carbombs and abused prisoners in Abu Ghraib never can.

The death of one of AiB’s reporters, Ali Shafeya, in December last year highlights how perilous the environments in which journalists work can be. This is particularly pertinent in light of today’s story about ABC correspondent Peter Lloyd’s post-traumatic stress disorder and the trouble in which he finds himself as a consequence.

The other videoblogs – Mobuzz TV, Ask a Ninja, Wine Library TV and Rocketboom - all serve as good reminders of the wealth of content that is on the net, if only you look. Content aside, the production values were universally high – which comes at a formidable expense judging from Mobuzz TV’s fundraising drive at the moment.

Rocketboom, which became an “overnight sensation” in 2004, publishes daily video in short episodes. The tone is ironic and punchy and I can see why it has become so popular.

 
Understandably all these sites, except AiB, are American. I’d like to see what vlogs are out there from Australia and other (I guess English-speaking) countries.

While Singapore’s The Strait Times online operation is comparable to any of Australia’s newspapers web presence, Stomp is less concerned with serious news coverage and more focused on capturing the youth demographic. It is not a traditional news service; much of its ‘citizen journalism’ content in the Singapore Seen section is reminiscent of the sort of stories you might see on A Current Affair or Today Tonight  in Australia.

Stomp is moving towards social networking and Club Stomp, its social networking site, is one of the most popular sections of the website. While being sensationalist in tone and content, it is arguable that Stomp is contributing to creating community in Singapore, with its commitment to publishing user-generated content, plus Club Stomp and the popular talkback forums.

Australian newspapers have also developed new sites in an attempt to engage young audiences. One of the regularly cited contributing factors to the demise of the newspaper in modern society is that young people just don’t read them – something of which I was sceptical until I heard a young Triple J talkback caller recently tell Youth Minister Kate Ellis that if the government want to communicate with kids these days it has to be online. Forget newspapers! It struck me perhaps because throughout my youth the Saturday paper has been something of a ritual.

The absence of a young audience spurred Fairfax to develop The Vine. While its focus is on entertainment – music, fashion, films etc. – it does have a News section and invites readers to send in newsworthy content. The Vine’s Community section publishes user-generated content – blogs, photos, video etc. – and seeks to give regular contributors exposure for their work through pages such as Featured Citizen (today it’s The JamTeam but their profile looks a bit thin) and Top Contributors. There is also Vine TV and Vine Radio.

It is a comprehensive site, but I suspect it hasn’t secured as much youth traffic as it would have liked. That could be partly due to a lack of publicity.

I will try to embed another slideshow I did – this one Slideroll – but I think I am Flash-deficient so it doesn’t seem to work on my computer??!!! But I checked today at uni and the video I thought wasn’t working on the blog was, so I’ll just run with it tonight.

I liked Slideroll too. It was easy – I elected not to have the pan and zoom option on this slideshow but it is something I have noticed Fairfax like to use (but maybe in this instance to disguise the fact that it isn’t a video, it’s Obama’s speech to a photo montage. I like this gallery better). The visual movement does create interest, but sometimes I think it looks tacky.

Does a collage feature qualify as a gimmick? I could spend hours arranging my digital photos into pointless collages, and I would have today if I wasn’t supposed to be studying (but also streaming Obama on CNN at the same time).

I like Picasa’s interface and I’m sure if I had a bit more time this afternoon I would have worked out how to do whatever it was I was aiming to – and I would need to figure that out first. Frankly, I am a little bemused by the wealth of options one has on the internet these days and I’m prepared to spend some time working it all out. I think I have used photobucket in the past, and this seems to have many more creative and purposeful possibilities.

Here is what I did do.

From Movies

On the other hand, couldn’t be happier about this…

The imminent US election has the world media transfixed. It’s hard to imagine the marathon campaign will be over in a day or so.

In 2000 George W. Bush won office in a controversial election result – one that some, like doco Outfoxed,  have suggested may have been helped along by the major news services in the US. I can’t see that happening this time around, particularly with the change in media habits in the last eight years.

Microblog site Twitter is providing some great election forums: Election 2008 and Twitter Vote Report. Both these sites publish unmediated (or less mediated) information about the election, offering a fascinating on-the-ground insight into how people are thinking and voting.

Current TV will broadcast tweets marked #votereport in their election coverage, which again will possibly subvert any malevolent corporate over-riding agendas that may influence the election’s outcome. If any such thing exists.

The internet is ripe for hoaxing. A great example of a reputable news source being caught out recently is the Kyle Doyle fiasco. I first heard of it on the front page of The Age website – the big cheesey photo that lives on left screen was of Kyle Doyle’s face. Apparently he’d been busted by his boss chucking a sickie via his Facebook status. The next day however it was claimed – by Doyle’s employer AAPT plus Doyle and his boss – to be fake.

Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to have deterred The Age from filling its site with crap tabloid content.