Group items tagged

"Creating a Transmedia Symphony I re-read the article in Wired on transmedia today, and found it as good a read as the first time. Coming to the last paragraph I read Jeff Gomez's comment about transmedia and the birth of a new Mozart, "We are going to see visionaries who understand the value of each media platform as if it's a separate musical instrument, who'll create symphonic narratives which leverage each of these multimedia platforms in a way that will create something we haven't encountered yet." This rings true for me as an analogy of what many of us are trying to create. The question that popped up in my head was, however, "but hey, how do you create a "normal" symphony?". Lo and behold, a Google search later I found this wikihow on, yes, how to create a symphony. After reading it, the analogy rings truer still. So, to translate the creation of a "normal" symphony to the creation of a transmedia symphony, these would/could be the steps to take:"

"Is photojournalism dead? The debate has been raging for decades, and, ever since former Magnum Photos director Neil Burgess called time of death, it has taken the web by storm. But do young and emerging photographers really care? "

"Michael Kamber is an award winning photographer who currently works for the New York Times, here he outlines his view of the state of photojournalism today. This is the first in a series of articles to be published this week, each one by a different author looking at the world of photojournalism from a number of angles."

Africa through a lens is a set of thousands of images taken from a broader photographic collection of Foreign and Commonwealth Office images, held at The National Archives. Starting with some incredible early photographs from the 1860s, the images span over 100 years of African history. These images are now available, for the first time, to view online.

"January 12 marked the anniversary of the devastating earthquake that shook Haiti last year, killing more than 230,000 people and leaving several million inhabitants of the small island nation homeless. Though natural disasters are common, the humanitarian response this time was different: New media and communications technologies were used in unprecedented ways to aid the recovery effort. A report recently released by Communicating with Disaster Affected Communities, with support from Internews and funding from the Knight Foundation, takes a critical look at the role of communications in the crisis and recommends ways to improve the effectiveness of utilizing media in future disaster relief efforts. (The Knight Foundation is a major funder for MediaShift and its sister site MediaShift Idea Lab.)"

note there are 2 sessions archived together here with a one hour gap in between so harry's talk starts at the 1.39.39 time marker so is a long way into the archive

"Here is a link to New York Times photographer Damon Winter's photo series, "A Grunt's Life", which won the third place award in the Pictures of the Year International "Feature Picture Story - Newspaper" contest. No one seems to be questioning the quality of Winter's work; rather, there was been a stir of debate regarding the series' lack of objectivity in capturing the "reality" of the War in Afghanistan. Does the old school, discolored, oversaturated, plastic toy camera feel of the photographs, which was created through the Hipstamatic app on Winter's iPhone, detract from their validity? "

Ian is a great art director who has worked on the Independent mag, Sunday Times and Life

Episode III - Enjoy Poverty is the second in a series of three films by Martens that raise issues regarding contemporary image production. For Episode III Martens travelled for two years with his video camera in the Democratic Republic of Congo, an area marked by humanitarian disaster, questioning why the Western 'poverty' industry are benefactors rather than the people in the images. Working with Congolese photographers, he attempts to guide them in earning a living from poverty photography - a project doomed to failure. Episode III was screened at London's Wilkinson gallery for several weeks this winter, and during that time Martens also spent an evening discussing his work with ArtReview's J.J. Charlesworth. This is the second and final part of that

Read the Report After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account. -Maj. General Antonio M. Taguba (USA-Ret.), preface to Broken Laws, Broken Lives In PHR's new report, Broken Laws, Broken Lives, we have for the first time medical evidence to confirm first-hand accounts of men who endured torture by US personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay. These men were never charged with any crime.

The Beauty of the Slideshow - Now Available to Everyone By Stanley LearystanleylearycloseAuthor: Stanley Leary See Author's Posts (38) Recent Posts * Still Images Plus Audio Can Be More Effective Than Online Video * Teaching Is a Great Way to Learn * Telling Stories with a Telephoto Lens * If Your Pictures Aren't Good Enough, You're Not Close Enough * What Kind of Photographer Are You? Stanley Leary is a Black Star photographer who has been telling stories for more than 20 years as a photojournalist. His work has appeared in Newsweek, Business Week, Sports Illustrated, Wired, Chicago Tribune, NY Times, World Book Encyclopedia, Information Week, Popular Mechanics, Technology Review, Atlanta Journal and Constitution, and many other publications. in Video and Multimedia on January 20th, 2008 Even before the Internet, I appreciated the slideshow. I created presentations with multiple projectors and audio, and I was always impressed with what the combined media could communicate. Even compared to video - where you move right through a moment so quickly you can miss the subtlety of it - the slideshow has its unique charms. The problem, in the old days, was that you had to have the audience present to deliver the program; it was a lot of work for a small number of people. The printed page reached a much larger audience. Today, with the Web becoming the leader in delivering the news, we are no longer limited to printed words and still images on the page. Rather than publishing a quote, we can deliver audio of the interviews and the experience, giving a story authenticity in a way that we couldn't achieve before. We can create slideshows for everyone - to watch whenever they choose.

Still Images Plus Audio Can Be More Effective Than Online Video By Stanley LearystanleylearycloseAuthor: Stanley Leary See Author's Posts (38) Recent Posts * Still Images Plus Audio Can Be More Effective Than Online Video * Teaching Is a Great Way to Learn * Telling Stories with a Telephoto Lens * If Your Pictures Aren't Good Enough, You're Not Close Enough * What Kind of Photographer Are You? Stanley Leary is a Black Star photographer who has been telling stories for more than 20 years as a photojournalist. His work has appeared in Newsweek, Business Week, Sports Illustrated, Wired, Chicago Tribune, NY Times, World Book Encyclopedia, Information Week, Popular Mechanics, Technology Review, Atlanta Journal and Constitution, and many other publications. in Video and Multimedia on March 27th, 2009 I've written before about multimedia slideshows, and how nice it is that today they are available to everyone via the Web, when in the past they were generally created for small groups. In this post, I will make the argument that multimedia slideshows can be a more effective way of communicating than online video. Advantages of Multimedia Slideshows Today nearly 70 percent of Americans are considered visual learners. That only leaves about 30 percent who learn primarily from words-only communication. But does that mean we should skip past slideshows and go straight to video? I don't think so.

It's easy to mope and groan about the economy, our industry, and the inevitable changes that are taking place. But, let's look at the glass half full and get inspired to make the most of the situation, eh? Listed below are 15 inspirational packages and sites for you to peruse. I have featured many of them in the past, but hopefully this collection will motivate you to get excited about your potential and what lies ahead …

Collaboration the Key to Future of Investigative Journalism Mark Glaser by Mark Glaser, April 5, 2009 Tagged: future, investigative reporting, logan symposium, public media, uc berkeley BERKELEY -- The second day of the Logan Symposium at UC Berkeley is more of a half-day with one panel devoted to the future of investigative journalism and a brunch at the Frontline World offices near campus. Just like last year, I had trouble getting an Internet connection in the journalism school library so had to live-Twitter the panel and put up this blog post later. (You can see the earlier report on yesterday's sessions here.) The panel was lively, and included a lot of optimism for the future of investigative journalism despite the business cratering for newspapers and their investigative journos. The panel was moderated by Lowell Bergman, and included David Fanning of PBS Frontline, Esther Kaplan of the Nation Institute, Bill Keller of the NY Times, Chuck Lewis at American University, Robert Rosenthan of the Center for Investigative Reporting, and Buzz Woolley, chairman of the board and primary funder of Voice of San Diego. The following are my notes from the panel.

Long-Form Multimedia Journalism: Quality Is the Key Ingredient As a producer of social documentary projects-viewed on digital platforms-Brian Storm talks about the excitement of doing journalism in this way, at this time. A conversation with Brian Storm MediaStorm describes its mission as ushering in the next generation of multimedia storytelling by publishing social documentary projects incorporating photojournalism, interactivity, animation, audio and video for distribution across multiple media. Brian Storm is the president of MediaStorm, a production studio located in Brooklyn, New York, which publishes multimedia social documentary projects at www.mediastorm.org and produces them for other news organizations. In an interview I did with Brian on December 30, 2008, he spoke about how he envisions the future of long-form, multimedia journalism from the perspective of its creation, distribution and economic viability. An edited version of our conversation follows.

MediaStorm: Visionary Journalism Weaving Stories Producers start by cutting audio, creating a "radio edit" of the story. Then they work with the journalist to craft a working narrative. A cohesive story emerges, and then it's time to pair the images with the audio. For that, they use Final Cut Studio. "Final Cut is our workhorse," says Storm. "Our producers live inside Final Cut all day long. It's a simple and powerful tool. It does everything you need it to do, yet I can teach a new producer how to create our type of project in a day." Images are exported out of Aperture at twice 1080p resolution, giving producers the flexibility they need to experiment with shots. "We pull everything into bins in Final Cut, and we use a lot of labeling to organize it," says Storm. "It's very simple: We use green for a picture that's in, red for one that's out, blue for a maybe. We have a very visual environment inside Final Cut to get things done quickly."

This article was looks at the role of new media in Sri Lanka and mentions other places. It briefly looks at the politics and history of the conflict in SL and the problems (assassinations, kidnapping, threats and deportation by the government and police)  of conventional reporting from SL. Can Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) and new media help promote human rights and good governance?\n\nNew media and ICTs can be used by illiberal regimes as well as by civilians, but overall it can be used to strengthen democracy, record violence and holds those responsible up for public scrutiny. Mobile phones are redefining our idea of what a journalist is. online reports and bogs are unstoppable because they are decentralized. there are all ways more bloggers if a few are arrested and there are ways around the system even if some sites are blocked.\n\nSri Lanka has many mobile phones among low income groups. It also has low internet costs. But there need to be understanding of the potential of this media. people need to be motivated to participate in governance and policy beyond just at election time.\n\nInternet is 2 way communication making people feel more connected. everyone has a equal voice. Blogs can be used to show conflict and phones with cameras can add images. New media and citizen journalism is different to e-goverment initiative (where gov will open up info for public and present it online)\n\nNew Media and Citizen journo can play important role in info, relief and conflict management and in providing news pictures from disasters and conflicts. SL citizens found a ways to express concerns when mainstream media was cut off. Currently most material comes from english speakers in urban areas, but has the potential to give voice to all citizens. It is also very useful for collecting ststs such as deaths etc.\n\nRealtime video over highspeed internet offers more possibility of having many TV camera man rather than just 1 film crew.\n\nGroundviews.org

The venerable profession of journalism finds itself at a rare moment in history when, for the first time, its hegemony as gatekeeper of the news is threatened by not just new technology and competitors but by the audience it serves. Citizens everywhere are getting together via the Internet in unprecedented ways to set the agenda for news, to inform each other about hyper-local and global issues, and to create new services in a connected, always-on society. The audience is now an active, important participant in the creation and dissemination of news and information, with or without the help of mainstream news media.

Photographic truth and manipulation February 23rd, 2009 We know photographs can be false yet we want them to be true. Indeed, the desire for photographic veracity has persisted, perhaps even intensified, even as knowledge about image manipulation becomes more widespread. Reflecting on the Oscar ceremonies, MediaGuardian has documented the widespread use of Photoshop to enhance celebrity photographs in fashion and gossip magazines. Every cover, says one media insider, has been altered to some degree, with some of these changes exposed in the "Photoshop Hall of Shame" and "Photoshop Disasters". So common is the practice that when an October 2008 Newsweek cover of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin was not airbrushed, conservative anchors on Fox television complained that this amounted to liberal bias. (Fox knew about the political power of such changes because it had earlier manipulated the photos of two New York Times journalists it wanted to discredit).

Searching By Looking Elsewhere Published May 11, 2009 BBC , Data , Infoskills , SEO , Search 4 Comments A couple of weeks or so ago, I got an email requesting a link to something I'd spoken about at a department meeting some time ago (the Gartner hype cycle, actually). Now normally I'd check my delicious bookmarks for a good link, or maybe even run a Google web search, but instead I ran a search for 'gartner hypecycle 2008′ on Google Images… …which is when it struck me that searching Google Images may on occasion lead to better quality, or more relevant, results than doing a normal web search, particularly if you use a level of indirection. In particular, it can often lead to a web document or post that provides some sort of analysis around a topic. (Remember, Google image search links to the web pages that contain the images that are displayed in the image search results, not just the images.)