Where's my Video Camera When I Need It?

Just as there is subtly of craft in writing, or computer programming, or cabinet making, there is a subtly of craft in being a web journalist.
Source: howardowens.com

In 2007, I think I got worn down a bit by "...journalists sitting on the side lines thinking, “This web stuff isn’t important. Let me just cover my stories and meet my print deadlines.” Source: howardowens.com

In 2001, I didn't have a TV and used the web to follow the events in NY, Washington and Pennsylvania. The web news in the USA was too slow and the servers got jammed. BBC provided the same coverage that I later viewed on television, but more succintly. There wasn't the incessant repetition that serves no purpose but to take events out of any kind of context. I got a camphone and figured out (it wasn't easy in the early days of GPRS connections) how to post images to the web in real time. I carried my video camera and did lots of recording. I'd record in short chunks, and later put these up as "documiniteries" where there would be a text explainer, a video illustration or sound bite, and a navigation structure. Sigh, poor, pitiful me. Few of the journalism teachers I worked with paid any attention to this work. Have you ever created a interactive multimedia narrative only to find that lots of old schoolers, let's call them digital immigrants, don't know how to use them, and they literally "look" at them, instead of clicking, interacting, and co-creating the narrative with you, as is necessary for interactive work?

This short entry by Howard Owens that I've linked to in this post, calls me back to where the heart of my work lies -- on the internet and figuring out how to tell effective, non-fiction narratives. And Steve Rhodes in beachwoodreporter.com, analyzing newspapers in Chicago notes:

"Newspapers are dead. They didn't have to be, but their window of opportunity closed long ago. And don't let them tell you at the funeral that they died because of shifting reader habits and the Internet. They will have died at their own hands, spurred by cowering, closed-minded, frightened and immature minds.

So, it is back to streets and where's my vest with all the pockets for my cameras and recorders, for me in 2008. Remember what General Grant said "Illegitimi non carborundum" (don't let the bastards grind you down) and get back to work.

What about you and your work?

NowPublic

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