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Today YouTube launched the Reporters’ Center channel, featuring videos with journalistic advice from the likes of Bob Woodward. As TechCrunch reports, it serves YouTube’s interests well “when more and more people take up the habit of filming whatever happens in their neighborhood and upload the videos to the wildly popular sharing site afterwards.”
YouTube’s Reporters’ Center is a smart way for YouTube to build up its ‘News’ category - after all, videos of the Iran protests on YouTube last week had hundreds of thousands of views within a couple of days.
Citizen reporting impacted much of the news media’s coverage of the protests. Without the citizen-shot videos on the Internet, much of the world might never have seen the extent of the violence occurring on the streets of Tehran, particularly with the media censorship being enforced by the state.
The fact that so many people are coming to YouTube to search for news is proof that the future of journalism lies in video. Newsy, which seeks to present the essence of a news story by analyzing various media perspectives, is well positioned to take advantage of this trend.
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In his post “Drowning Upstream,” Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine argues that businesses seeking to avoid the ravages of the internet are headed in a doomed direction by virtue of the fact that they should be designed to take advantage of the internet in the first place. Jarvis writes,
“I’ve said often that protection is no strategy for the future. An industry whose strategy for the future is built on trying to keep us from doing what we want to do and resist the flow of the internet is an industry that is merely biding time. That should be the lesson they learn from newspapers and music.”
As a person who consumes television solely from the internet and dvds delivered to by mailbox by Netflix, I have to agree that cable television as it is currently sold is a dinosaur on the brink of extinction. Consumers are learning to expect the same media menu offered by iTunes when it shook-up the recording industry by allowing users to buy single songs instead of albums that featured a few hits and a lot of filler.
What Jarvis fails to explicate fully is that audiences are also growing savvy to watching media around their schedules, instead of clearing time for the communal television hours that ruled in the heyday of prime time. It’s not just a channel issue, it’s a program issue. Sites like Hulu and TV.com are appealing because they remove the constraints of the network line-up, but that also means that they effectively remove the bookends of the evening newscasts from the daily television intake of Americans.
Jarvis calls for the unbundling of cable, but does not mention that the value of news programming on cable is met, if not surpassed by the quality of news available solely on the internet. As demand for pick-and-choose cable television increases, so does the need for services that curate the spectrum of digital media found on cable and the internet. I am not referring to the baseless punditry that has become a staple of cable news shows, but a service that scours the internet, cable, and satellite channels to provide a diverse range of credible perspectives on the news stories of the day.
Newsy.com offers a business model that is unique among media companies because they are infinitely adaptable in their curation of open-source content into two-minute online video packages for the internet, cable television and mobile devices. Newsy does not claim to be a comprehensive news provider, nor is it simply a recommendation service like iTunes Genius. Newsy.com takes viewers to the next level by telling the stories among the thousands of headlines returned from a typical search for news on the internet.
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Whether you are liberal or conservative, Froomkin’s firing should be a source of disappointment. First off, the following should be clarified: Is Dan Froomkin, recently fired from The Washington Post, a liberal? Absolutely.
However, in his journalism, Froomkin also largely transcended party loyalty, instead remaining loyal to ideas rather than people–a fairly rare trait. He was, above all else, a watchdog journalist, and he was an equal-opportunity critic when it came to applying his standards to all politicians, including Democrats.
In a recent article in The Washington Post, Glenn Greenwald quotes The Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen (emphasis Greenwald’s):
“Indeed, far-right complaints notwithstanding, Froomkin has spent months scrutinizing the Obama White House, cutting the Democratic president no slack at all.”
Read the entire article here:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/06/19/washpost/
In the marketplace of ideas, let Froomkin’s perspective stand up against the conservative William Kristol’s, Krugman’s against Krauthammer’s. But don’t silence someone because of their political leanings, as appears to be the case with The Post’s firing of Froomkin.
As Greenwald writes:
“Post writers disliked Froomkin because he pointed out the radicalism and deceit of the Bush presidency and (both with his words and actions) highlighted their profound failure to do so, and because the neocon-Right complained about him to the Post.”
Is there anything that insults our nation’s democratic sensibility more than the silencing of dissenting voices? Whether that silencing comes from the government or news organizations should make little difference.
No side of the political spectrum has a monopoly on wisdom, and the second an individual begins to believe his or her political party is always correct, they have shut themselves off from the ability to learn. The marketplace of ideas may be imperfect, it may be messy, but in a democracy, it is the best we can ask for. We should never seek to silence the voices with which we disagree, but rather engage and even learn from them.
At Newsy, our objective is to take news events, provide varying perspectives on them, and then let the audience decide. Our only agenda is to provide a sufficient amount of views to let the audience ascertain the core truth about the news. Of course, this works best with an audience willing to hear all sides before making up their minds.
Froomkin surely wasn’t right all the time. But his perspective was valuable, if only because it was unique. In all likelihood, Froomkin will reemerge, but until he does, the marketplace of ideas is one perspective poorer.
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In The Atlantic Monthly, Michael Hirschorn wrote an interesting piece about The Economist download star trek dvd magazine.
Here’s the money quote:
“True, The Economist
virtually never gets scoops, and the information it does provide is available elsewhere … if you care to spend 20 hours Googling. But now that information is infinitely replicable and pervasive, original reporting will never again receive its due. The real value of The Economist lies in its smart analysis of everything it deems worth knowing - and smart packaging, which may be the last truly unique attribute in the digital age.”
While I am not sure I agree with Hirschorn on the original reporting front, I absolutely concur that “smart analysis of everything it deems worth knowing – and smart packaging” is enormously valuable and that overlaps very closely with our vision and goals here at Newsy.
Read the full article here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200907/news-magazines
Enjoy.
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Yep, we’re growing and we have a huge opportunity for the right person - please take a look at our vice president of editorial job description. If the shoe fits, then please email us at max@newsy.com - if you know someone who would thrive in the role then please forward it on to them. We are thrilled to be hiring this essential role and are looking for the best person on the planet to join our team.
Vice President of Editorial at Newsy.com
Newsy.com is a multiperspective video news service provided by Media Convergence Group, Inc. A leader in online and mobile video news, Newsy.com is based in Columbia, MO and partnered with the Missouri School of Journalism. We are a privately funded start up and provide medical benefits, stock options, an extraordinary work environment and a state-of-the-art digital newsroom.
The vice president of editorial is responsible for developing and executing the editorial voice, editorial brand and editorial vision for Newsy.com and reports to Newsy’s president.
Primary Responsibilities:
* Leading the editorial team and responsible for the content, editorial products and direction of the website.
* Innovating ahead of the competition - defining and winning our strategic category.
* Analyzing metrics and audience research and proactively anticipating the needs of our viewers and customers.
* Representing the website to external organizations interested in the website, public forums and panels and to outside media.
* Training, supervising, mentoring and evaluating members of the editorial team. Teaching an advanced level editorial course to undergraduate and graduate students at the Missouri School of Journalism.
* Generating story ideas, writing, editing and publishing of content.
Qualifications:
* Excellent writing and editing skills, and demonstrated ability to conceive and execute creative and innovative editorial projects.
* 10-15 years of senior editorial leadership experience with demonstrated success in building and delivering editorial voice and vision.
* Deep understanding of the video news market for online and mobile devices.
* Proven people management experience.
* Driven work ethic and self-starting attitude - strong mentoring skills.
* Exceptional ability to innovate and desire to learn new software and technologies, listen to audiences and quickly drive and adapt to change.
* Excellent communication and collaboration skills, a true team player.
* Passionate, ethical, honest, flexible and humble – a real news junkie who will build an innovative and remarkably useful news service.
Please send resumes to: max@newsy.com
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Last week we announced our innovative partnership to deliver exclusive content to Mediacom subscribers. News on-demand will be rolled out first in the Columbia and Jefferson City markets and later expanded - longer pieces of Newsy videos will run on a local Mediacom channel called Connections.
The Columbia Daily Tribune highlighted our unique entrepreneurial operation:
http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2009/may/28/video-startup-to-put-content-on-local-cable/
Other coverage garnered from the release include:
http://www.multichannel.com/article/277058-Mediacom_Inks_Pact_With_Video_News_Web_Site.php?rssid=20059&q=newsy.com
http://www.mediabistro.com/webnewser/video_sites/newsycom_launches_partnership_with_mediacom_117485.asp
