Tag Archives: YouTube Inc

Guest bloggers for FT’s Davos coverage

The Financial Times has signed up a host of guest bloggers for it’s coverage of this week’s World Economics Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, which starts tomorrow.

Sir Martin Sorrell, Kofi Annan and British foreign secretary David Miliband will all be posting alongside FT editors and correspondents – you can read Sorrell’s first post at this link.

The site has set-up an ‘in depth’ microsite to host its coverage, which will also feature video reports and can be followed on Twitter @FTDavos.

Elsewhere YouTube got its users to pose video questions to the forum via its Davos channel – the most voted submission was from Pablo Camacho, a student and independent writer from Bogotá, Colombia, who will now attend the event on behalf of the site as a citizen reporter.

News channel’s cit-j footage of Oakland shooting goes viral

The video of the police shooting of Oscar Grant III in Oakland, California, has spread quickly over YouTube in the last week, greatly influencing the nature of the media reports. The most popular video is the clip that originally aired on news channel KTVU, a FOX affiliate in the San Francisco Bay Area.

WashingtonPost.com reports:

“Handheld video-enabled cameras and cell phones at the ready, alert witnesses at the scene caught the shooting and the moments that preceded it from different angles.

“In one of their videos, an onlooker yells at a woman recording the scene: ‘Put it on YouTube!’

“Local and national television stations have aired and re-aired excepts from the raw and grainy videos, which have taken on a new life online.”

Imagine if such footage existed in cases such as the UK police shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes: how would reportage or subsequent events have been different? Would the UK media have used the footage in the same way?

Also – does film like this show that we have reached a point where video quality can be disregarded when it’s a strong news story?

Watch the YouTube video ‘Bart Police shooting in Oakland KTVU report‘ here:

YouTube and Pulitzer announce five Project:Report finalists

Project Report, the journalism contest organised by YouTube and the Pulitzer Center to reward non-professional journalists producing videos, is drawing to a close.

Until January 9, viewers can vote on videos produced by the five finalists, who have progressed through two previous rounds of the competition, producing a different short film each time.

Entries include videos about Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender (GLBT) groups in the US, sexual abuse by priests and a community of developmentally disabled adults.

Videos can be watched and voted for on the YouTube Project:Report channel and the winner, who will receive a $10,000 grant to report on any topic, from anywhere in the world, and a scholarship at the Pulitzer Center, will be declared on 11 January.

RSF: YouTube blocked again in Turkey

The Turkish Telecommunications Council has endorsed the fourth court order blocking access to YouTube. According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF) “the authorities claim that content posted on YouTube is either disrespectful to Kemal Mustafa Atatürk, the Turkish Republic’s founder, or supports the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).”

Swedish Journalism Awards winner… for YouTube Rock

As reported at Media Culpa, the annual Swedish Journalism Awards gave its prize for ‘Innovator of the Year’ to Dagens Nyheter’s Fredrik Strage, for his YouTube list which rates “The 100 biggest rock moments on YouTube”.

Media Culpa notes how rival Svenska Dagbladet has used the idea too, for its top political moments collection.

Here’s no. 1 from Strage’s list to liven up your Friday afternoon.

In Swedish it is described as: ‘The Cramps uppträder på mentalsjukhus’.