Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog » YouTube

Video: US TV reporter loses it – technology failure?

Laura Oliver — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:22:07 +0000

Courtesy of YouTube user MindElation, the clip below has been doing the rounds, but it’s worth a Friday viewing. The footage shows a US TV reporter losing his cool while presenting a live report – which his anchor later attributes to a technology failure. As the description says: “Every newscaster has similar things happen, but if they’re lucky it’s never captured on video.”

Similar Posts:

YouTube and Al Jazeera English create video archive of Iraq elections

Laura Oliver — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:38:53 +0000

Al Jazeera English’s latest project in partnership with YouTube’s CitizenTube channel really is a great showcase for the power of video as a medium and how aggregated, short-form video can be a valuable addition to coverage of a news event.

AJE and CitizenTube have been collecting videos from Iraqi citizens before, during and after Sunday’s nationwide parliamentary election in the country:

Each of these videos features the perspective of a regular Iraqi, whose viewpoints and experiences are rarely shared in the news reports coming out of the country. Through video, we can listen to their voices, see their faces, and gain a better understanding of what it was like inside Iraq on this important day.

The videos are featured on CitizenTube’s YouTube channel and as part of Al Jazeera English’s interactive site on the Iraq elections under the header ‘Iraqi voices’. Some will also be featured on AJE’s TV broadcasts.

While internet in the home is by no means ubiquitous in Iraq, as this OpenNet Initiative report on the country suggests, many Iraqis took to uploading YouTube videos during the last conflict. The Iraqi government also launched its own channel on the site last year.

Similar Posts:

New York Times: Behind the anonymous video nominated for a Polk Award

Laura Oliver — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 08:39:15 +0000

The New York Times speaks to the first uploaders of the video of the collapse and death of Neda Agha-Soltan after she was shot during anti-government protests in Iran.

The anonymously filmed and uploaded video last week won a George Polk journalism award – the first time in the awards’ history that a work produced anonymously has taken a prize.

This is a snapshot of how “viral” news can spread and, as Steve Grove, head of news and politics for YouTube, says, how readers and citizens are participating in documenting news events.

Full story at this link…

Similar Posts:

A video every regional newspaper editor (and journalist) should watch

John Thompson — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 19:39:52 +0000

Former Birmingham Post editor Marc Reeves made the following speech “Does business news no longer make for a good business?” to Warwick Business School back in October 2009 (while he was still in post).

Although ostensibly focused on business journalism, it is also a succinct analysis of the current state of newspaper publishing and the true nature of its economic model, with some suggestions for what could well become a blueprint for the future recovery of the industry.

You can also read a full transcript of the speech on Reeves’ own blog.

Similar Posts:

MediaWeek: YouTube connects news organisations with cit-j video

Laura Oliver — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:21:11 +0000

YouTube has launched an open-source platform for news sites, YouTube Direct, to let them solicit content from the video-sharing site’s users.

YouTube Direct has already been trialled on some news sites, including Politico and Huffington Post, as ‘a virtual assignment desk’: news organisations can use the tool to request video content and then decide what clips they use.

Full story at this link…

Similar Posts:

YouTube Biz Blog: YouTube extends advertising partnerships to individuals

Laura Oliver — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 09:13:51 +0000

The video-sharing website has extended its YouTube Partnership (YPP), which is intended to help channels on the site make money from their clips, to individual users.

The importance of this is perhaps best summed up by the announcement post’s title: ‘In the future, everyone will monetise their 15 minutes’.

If individual, ‘prolific’ users of the site can make revenue from what they share this once more cuts out the middleman – they no longer need mainstream media for distribution and the MSM may be less able to cash in from viral successes. If savvy users realise they can monetise it, will they be less likely to share their postings with commercial outlets?

Full post at this blog…

Similar Posts:

Jon Bernstein: Five lessons from a week in online video

Jon Bernstein — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:41:40 +0000

It’s now four years – give or take a few weeks – since broadband Britain reached its tipping point.

Halfway through 2005 there were finally more homes connected to the internet via high speed broadband than via achingly slow dial-up. Video on the web suddenly made a lot more sense.

And given that we’re still in the early stages of this particular media evolution, it’s not surprising that we are are still learning.

Here are five such moments from the last seven days:

1. If you build it they will come…
…provided you build something elegant and easy to use. And then market it like crazy.

This was the week that we learned how the hugely successful BBC iPlayer has overtaken MySpace to become the 20th most visited website in the UK . The iPlayer is now comfortably the second most popular video site even if its 13 per cent share is still dwarfed by YouTube’s 65 per cent.

If you want more evidence of success just look at the BBC’s terrestrial rivals. ITV, Five and even Channel 4 – which had a year’s head start over the BBC – are now aping the look, feel and functionality of the corporation’s efforts. No hefty applets to download – just click and play.

Of course, this model – a different player for each network – will look anachronistic within a few years. Maybe less. Hulu arrives on these shores soon.

2. Don’t do video unless you’re adding value
If you are going to put moving pictures on your newspaper website it’s a good idea to ask why? And the answer should be that it adds something to your storytelling.

Last week the Independent completed a deal that sees the Press Association providing more than 100 90-second clips a week, each focusing on a single news item.

Nothing wrong with the quality or content of the video that the Indy is getting, but where’s the added value? Unless the video has some killer footage or a must-see interview, why would a reader of a 500-word news article click play? I’m not sure they would.

As someone eloquently put it on my blog:

If it’s visual, it needs pictures and maybe video. If it’s verbal, sound will do. For everything else, words are cheaper for the producer and quicker for the consumer.

3. You can’t control the message
Singer Chris Brown chose YouTube as the medium to deliver his first public pronouncements following February’s assault on his now ex-girlfriend Rihanna.

He plumped for the video-sharing site rather than a TV or newspaper interview presumably so he could control the message – no out-of-context editing of his words and no awkward follow-up questions.

To some extent he got his wish. Within 24 hours of posting his 120-second, unmediated mea culpa, it had been viewed nearly half-a-million times.

More significantly, however, the video had received over 12,000 comments and most were hostile.

4. Brands love YouTube
In an oddly defensive post on its YouTube Biz Blog, the people behind Google’s file-sharing site set about busting what it claims are five popular myths.

Putting ‘Myth 4′ to rest – namely that ‘Advertisers are afraid of YouTube’ – the post asserted:

Over 70 per cent of Ad Age Top 100 marketers ran campaigns on YouTube in 2008. They’re buying our homepage, Promoted Videos, overlays, and in-stream ads. Many are organizing contests that encourage the uploading of user videos to their brand channels, or running advertising exclusively on popular user partner content.

We wait, breathlessly, for a follow-up post so we can discover how many of these elite brands made a return on their YouTube investment.

5. Death becomes you
Nearly a month after his passing, Michael Jackson’s life is still being celebrated online. Eight out of this week’s viral video top 20 are either Jackson originals or owe their inspiration to the singer.

A case of the long tail occupying the head. For a few weeks at least.

Jon Bernstein is former multimedia editor of Channel 4 News. This is part of a series of regular columns for Journalism.co.uk. You can read his personal blog at this link.

Similar Posts:

YouTube and Google News come together for publishers

Laura Oliver — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:04:47 +0000

YouTube is offering news outlets featured in Google News the opportunity to become an official partner of the site – with an aim to increase video views on both YouTube and Google News.

According to a post on the Google News Blog, a partnership will offer the chance of prominent placement of a news organisation’s videos on YouTube’s news page; and, if the videos are embeddable, the opportunity to appear as a featured video on Google News.

News outlets can apply to be part of the YouTube Partner Program, which will also include an advertising revenue share program – as explained by the program’s ‘partner benefits’ page:

“Share revenue from relevant InVideo ads overlaid on your videos and banner ads running next to your videos to earn money

Participate in co-marketing & branded entertainment opportunities with top brand advertisers.
Utilize your own sales to sell your own ads.

Meanwhile, as reported by MediaWeek, Bauer and IPC Media have become two of the first magazine publishers to sell ads around their YouTube content on the site. They follow Channel 4, which struck a deal with the video-sharing site last month.

Google News Blog: A Call to News Publishers: How to Share Your Video.

Similar Posts:

Google Blog: Citizentube tracking ‘way people using video to change the world’

Judith Townend — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:15:23 +0000

Google plugs Citizentube, a Youtube blog ‘devoted to chronicling the way that people are using video to change the world.’ Google’s post uses these as examples of the type of material the blog will showcase:

“[D]id you know that a nine-year-old recently used YouTube to successfully campaign to save his local kickball lot? Have you seen the video of a Guatemalan lawyer who predicted his own assassination on YouTube moments before it happened? Or did you know that YouTube and Google have launched a new technology platform for political debates, which allows you to submit and vote on the most important issues you want to discuss with political candidates?”

Full post at this link…

Similar Posts:

Too old to become a journalist: The NCTJ exams

Amy Oliver — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:04:03 +0000

I finished my NCTJ course at Lambeth College a couple of weeks a go (hurray! And thank God – I don’t think I could have done another day of such intensive brain cramming).

My last week was spent doing back-to-back exams. For those about to embark on the law (court reporting and general reporting), PA (central and local government) and news writing exams you have my condolences. For those thinking about doing the course here’s what I wish I had known before I sat them:

Law
My absolute top tip? Start revising in the first week if you’re doing the fast-track course and probably if you’re on a longer course as well. That might sound obvious, but you will be so overwhelmed with learning shorthand that law can often seem like a subject to put on the back burner.

Get home from the lecture and look at your notes. Look at the handouts. Look at relevant case law in McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists and make a note of which case studies you’re going to learn for that particular topic. Do everything you can to get the law into your head.

Don’t be swayed by what the press are doing either: there was always fierce debate about this in class especially if a victim had been identified and, according to the law, shouldn’t have been. Go with what the book says just for the exam and leave your own opinions at the door.

Learn the strict liability rule and the elements of what makes a defamatory statement. You will need to write these out verbatim and it’s best to get them in your head early. Why not write them out in shorthand?

Attempting to learn the law syllabus is a bit like standing at the foot of Everest. The exam differs from public affairs (PA) in that you have to know it all and can’t really second guess what might come up and hope for the best.

Having said that, there are obvious headline topics: contempt, defamation etc. On my exam a lot of the questions were defamation-based so those areas would seem like the ones to concentrate on.

Go through old exam papers. The answers are quite logical, but it’s easy to miss a section of the law because you don’t realise it applies. If you’re doing a distance course you can buy past papers from the NCTJ.

Finally have a look at this YouTube video – it features Cleland Thom, who taught law and marked exam papers at various colleges and is now legal adviser to around 50 different newspapers, websites and radio stations. Here he gives his two pence on how and what to revise and how to pass. I came across this video at around 2am on the eve of my law exam when the desperation started to kick in. Hopefully it will be of more use to others.

Public Affairs
Again start looking at this early. It is so easy to put it off because of the shorthand and also because some topics are like having a conversation with the most boring person alive. The good news is that you don’t have to answer all the questions on the exam paper.

This should mean that you don’t need to bother learning some topics, but a word of warning here: make sure you do more than the bare minimum. If you’re relying on luck and probability you may get your fingers burnt. It’s good to have definite subjects that you know inside out and then have back up topics, just in case.

Getting yourself familiar with how central government is structured is also really useful. The teacher may assume that everyone in the class has a good general knowledge of things like the differences between the House of Commons and Lords so if you have no clue, swatting up can make other things easier to understand.

The exam, like law, must be handwritten. I don’t know about you, but I hadn’t written an essay with a pen for years. Get used to writing at length for long periods and do practice exam questions. Again those on the distance course can add to the NCTJ’s coffers further by buying past papers.

Good old Cleland Thom dishes out yet more advice in his handy ‘how to pass PA’ video.

Newswriting
To the uninitiated, you may think this will be an easy couple of hours to spend your life. Wrong. Spell someone’s name wrong and you’re likely to fail immediately.

The NCTJ try and trick you as well: my favourite one in the practice exams has to be the use of ‘Pinky and Percy’ rather than Perky for two, on-the-run parakeets (don’t ask). The younger contingent of the group didn’t have a problem with this obviously having no reference point to the cartoon. Watch out oldies.
Be careful with county and country as well. I got that in my exam and, luckily, realised at the last minute.

Apart from accuracy the most important thing to learn is what the actual news values are in the question. You will be given a press release with additional quotes from various sources. The news is often buried and not obvious and, with my exam, pretty much non existent.

Practicing writing papers and going through the marking guide and with others is the only way to get to grips with it. There might be more than one newsy element in the release so best to bung both as far at the top as possible. Also be aware that a news element can sometimes appear in one of the quotes.

And, you guessed it, Cleland Thom has even done a video on the news exam. He really, really wants you to pass.

Also watch out for the syllabus guidelines that come with the portfolio. These proved invaluable to me.

Good luck and have a holiday standing by for when it’s all over.

To read previous posts in this series, visit the ‘Too old to become a journalist’ feed.

Similar Posts: