Bill Silcock (Dr. Bill) called this to my attention: a panorama shot of Barack Obama's speech last night. The viewer can move the image in any direction. To see a larger image without going to The New York Times site, click on the image above.
I happened upon this Frontline documentary on Monday night when I got home. It traces the Iraq war from the beginning up until 2006 or 2007 (I can't remember which). It was called Bush's War. It was incredibly disturbing. What the administration thought they could do and how it spiraled out of control really puts the whole situation in a different light. The thing that was very cool was that they have all the complete interviews on their website and all kinds of other features that they kept promoting during and after the documentary. Also, you can watch the whole thing on line. I haven't had a chance to explore the website, but I thought it was a good example of broadcast taking advantage of multimedia.
The elections, as was hoped, have spurred some interesting multimedia reporting tools including this one from Slate that maps where candidates are across the country. When you click on map markers, you're directed to local news reports of the event and you're given where/when information in a pop-up. My husband's overseeing multimedia coverage for a Virginia paper of this event that senators Clinton and Obama will attend. Security concerns prevent the shooters (photographers or videographers) and reporters from leaving the event, even to go back to the newsroom (which is nearby), should there be equipment failure; each journalist takes his or her laptop along with other gear, such as a camera, mic, recorder, etc. They are expected to file (send in their stories, pictures, etc.) digitally from the site. Yesterday, one reporter was issued a new computer with which he's not yet familiar; he'll take a backup laptop as well.
As of this morning, roughly three days after its release, a music video based on Obama's much publicized New Hampshire primary speech has had about two and a half million views, 1,454 blog posts and 11,864 comments, according to tracker Viral Video. Some of those blog posts make much of the political implications -- Buzz Machine (rhetorical element of campaign), for one -- notes Yoni Greenbaum in Editor on the Verge.
You just don't get commentary like this on TV...
9:55: In the usual "offbeat" final question slot, the two were asked if they would form a "dream ticket." They both have some fun with it and don't rule it out. Obama has some good quips while Hillary fritters it away by plugging an upcoming TV event. But then amazing moment at end, as Obama gallantly pulls back her chair as she gets to her feet. Then they whisper to each other and nearly embrace. It's almost sexy.Editor & Publisher blogged the debate. It's interesting reading -- the blog is available here.
From Editor & Publisher: NEW YORK Two new citizen journalism sites are offering coverage of the 2008 presidentiral election, according to EditorsWeblog.org.
OffTheBus.com (OTB) is a project launched by The Huffington Post for the campaign. Arianna Huffington and Jay Rosen of New York University publish OTB.
OTB has a low start up costs of $150,000. Like much of The Huffington Post, the writers will not be paid.
Even though the contributors will not be trained journalists, Huffington says she doesn't expect it to be a free-for-all.
Huffington has made it clear that if someone writes an opinion it can go on the site’s blog. She doesn't expect her correspondents to be completely neutral on campaign issues. She does, however, expect them to be clear when they have a bias.
A similar site for campaign coverage is Scoop08.com, which plans to debut this Sunday. The site was created by high school and college students and targets its younger demographic.
UNC masters student Carla Babb produced a video for a campus TV broadcast as well as for an MTV contest, for which she uploaded it to YouTube. In the video, she interviewed Edwards campaign workers and others about Edwards' choice of HQ location -- in a lovely, upscale, area of Chapel Hill. Did it conflict with his goal of representing the poor and disenfranchised? she asked. After the video was seen on YouTube, a campaign rep called her and asked her to take it down. Babb referred the spokeswoman to Charlie Tuggle, the UNC prof who oversees the newscast and who is her adviser. Tuggle refused. He reported that the campaign threatened to cut off student access to Edwards news. A campaign spokeswoman says this has gotten silly but had no comment on Tuggle's allegations. Since then, the story has bloomed in distribution and the video is approaching 100,000 views at this writing. The NYTimes, Washpost, AP, News&Observer and a host of other sites have done stories on it. What do you think?
This is one of the YouTube debate questions from Dr. Carpenter's class. Posted last week! UPDATE Oct. 12: 5,742 hits.
Another example of the growing "norm" of multimedia reporting with multiple points of entry. The text story, "Iowa a key test for Democrats," is packaged with the video and reader comments and is well larded with hypertext links throughout. ADDED: And you can see the same story run on a CBS News Web page -- no video, though. Guess CBS welcomes the writing but keeps the video production to itself?
Check out the announcement and take note of Politico's political coverage. It's one of the hottest sites around and has great potential. Excerpt:
Kotecki has already begun producing a daily video version of Mike Allen’s "Playbook," and will soon be hitting the trail to offer Politico.com readers a different way to view the election.
The Economist hailed Kotecki as “probably the world's foremost expert on YouTube videos posted by presidential candidates."
Google is road-testing a major initiative capable of hijacking a good deal of the web traffic the mainstream media ordinarily would get during the 2008 election in the United States.
Yahoo, Huffington Post and Slate sponsored a forum on Sept. 12, moderated by Charlie Rose, in which Democratic candidates responded to questions about issues of current concern. The videos are gathered on Slate, along with transcripts and commentary. We live in interesting times...
Slate V has been posting short videos where audience reaction is charted over what they are viewing (see the squiggly lines in the image of Vick's apology). Another Slate video "reports" reaction to Hillary Clinton's first ad. The surveys were done by MediaCurves. Survey info is given at the start of the videos. For the "ad," 450 people were monitored. Enough to generalize? Probably not...
Isn't news wonderful? With perfect timing with regard to last night's discussion, a story is out about unintended effects of the OG video. It's not going down so well with the candidate's family. His daughter asks, doesn't Daddy already have a wife?
I'm looking forward to Cronkbyte reigniting with the start of a new grad class. Alums and guests are most welcome to continue their contributions as well. If last night's lively and rich discussion of how Internet video is changing the political environment is any guide, we're in for a rewarding 16 weeks.
As promised, here are the links to videos we watched and talked about:
* Emergency Cheese's latest,
* all of James Kotecki's Emergency Cheese political videos,
* "I got a crush on Obama," Obama Girl,
* Hillary Clinton's "Sopranos" spoof,
* Grey Blackwell's "Law and Order," (Flash animation)
* Two of Slate V's "Damned Spot" episodes,
* The "Dean Scream" as recorded from the audience, and
* The DS as recorded by Fox (similar to recordings from other large news organizations).
After I got home last night, I found an article that lends credence and context to the "audience" recording.
Last, here are some bonus links to videos I held off on last night:
* Hillary Clinton: "Vote Different" ad,
* Apple Computer's 1984 commercial, launched during the Super Bowl.
* "Great moments in presidential speeches"
The Mother Jones Politics 2.0/Fight Different section for the assignment can be found here (or at least you can get to the parts from there).
Thanks for a great opening night. See you next Monday.
Last I checked, as in about 1 minute ago, James Kotecki had 531 subscriptions to his video series (Emergency Cheese) critiquing political videos. And 11,392 views. He's broadcasting on YouTube and has political candidates paying attention. One more huge example of how the news/current events media world is changing -- not to mention the political scene. That's the topic of a video, "The forced and fascinating marriage of technology and politics," posted on the ASNE (American Society of Newspaper Editors -- which is considering a name change to reflect newspapers' migration online) blog for its conference, in session as I write and for the rest of the week. The ASNE Reporter video refers to Kotecki, another indication he's made his mark. I just upped his subscription rate by one.
