TRAINING CITIZEN JOURNALISTS

unmediated.org is reporting that eight people, including one Canadian, are among the first wave of participants in an OhMyNews training seminar.

Hailing from Britain, Australia, Canada and the United States, the group heard two one-hour lectures on OhmyNews International (OMNI), citizen journalism and the basics of journalistic writing.

The topics discussed included how the OhmyNews model of reporting complements "professional" journalism, how to tailor a reporting style to a particular story and the kinds of common pitfalls new reporters should avoid.

OhMyNews reports:

OMNI went online Feb. 22 with the aim of duplicating on a global scale the success of the Korean edition, which started with 727 citizen reporters nearly five years ago. OhmyNews now has 36,000 reporters submitting about 200 stories a day.

Just under 100 OMNI citizen reporters send stories from such nations as Iran, Colombia, England, Japan and Germany. OMNI hopes to have built a global network of 1,000 correspondents by the end of next year.

I'm trying to track down a Canadian citizen journalist for an interview for this blog. As they say, watch this space.
10:42:23 PM  LINK TO THIS POST  

SKIN-CRAWLING TIME

This is the weirdest freaking thing I have ever heard: someone has cut and pasted words from Bush and recreated U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday. After listening to it, I feel like I have to go wash my ears out.

SOURCE: fimoculous.com.
10:02:29 PM  LINK TO THIS POST  

STEWART REDUX

A couple of interesting Blog World musings on the fallout over Jon Stewart evisceration of Tucker Carlson and Crossfire last week.

Jeff Jarvis at Buzz Machine called it "the single best piece of media criticism I have seen in years. And it's all the better because it's face-to-face" in a weekend post and then took a look at the how of it all today.

What's fascinating about the Jon Stewart takedown of Crossfire is not just what he said but how his message got distributed.

Terry Heaton reports that there have been almost 400,000 downloads of the segment at iFilm (which is how I saw it) ... in addition to countless (literally, countless) BitTorrent downloads. This was a flood of viral distribution that came from viral promotion.

Welcome to the future of TV!

In old TV, a moment like this came and if you missed it, you missed it. Tough luck. In new TV, you don't need to worry about watching it live -- live is so yesterday -- because thousands of peers will be keeping an eye out for you to let you know what you should watch (we call that metadata now) and they'll record it and distribute it.

Jarvis suggests CNN dropped the ball by not being out in front of those offering the video.

The really stupid thing is that CNN didn't do this themselves: Hey, we had a red-hot segment with tsunami star Jon Stewart strangling our guys with a bow tie; you should watch; here, please, look at this free download because it will promote our bow-tie boy and our brand and our show and give us a little of that Stewart hip heat. That's what CNN should have done.

Makes sense: Slap CNN logos all over the screen (maybe tag it with an ad or two) and you own it.

The other aspect of the story is that Stewart is getting a little slapback. Some are taking him to task for hiding behind the trope "we're just a comedy show," when his Daily Show is really a fairly potent political force and part of the political/entertainment theatre that he attacked.

Rex Sorgatz at fimoculous.com says Stewart may have made a bad move and has five reasons, including:

You can't seriously criticize Crossfire for being a blowhard screamfest and then call the host a "dick head." Dude, that's like ironic in the bad way. (It's also monstrously funny.

Okay, his other four reasons are more serious. Worth a read and a think.
9:36:14 PM  LINK TO THIS POST  

NEWSPAPER ON AIR

A Delaware newspaper is going multimedia in a big way — a twice daily Internet newscast. Stacy Lee, a staff writer at OnlineJournalism.com, reports:

The Webcast features an anchor who covers breaking news and top stories with exclusive online videos, photographs and links by News Journal reporters and photographers. The Webcast is especially relevant since Delaware has no television station that focuses on Delaware-only news.

A newspaper does Internet TV. That's one of the interesting thing about "new media" — what it is gets "reinvented" every week or so.
8:59:43 PM  LINK TO THIS POST