Monday, April 4, 2005

It's not Al Gore TV, it's 'Current.tv' Former Vice President Al Gore's soon-to-launch youth-oriented cable television network has a new name and weblog. Current.tv, formerly called IndTV, was announced Monday in San Francisco. (Thanks to UT School of Journalism & Electronic Media's technology director, John McNair, for spreading the word by e-mail.) Here are the Reuters story and the CNET story. Current also has a Google tie-in, feeding news about of "topics people are actually searching for right now." Google itself has been testing a video search service for a couple of months and just announced that it will have a video upload feature. (We'll get back to Google in a minute.) Emphasizing an interactive and participatory model of TV, the Current.tv site invites anyone to submit a story, with a minimum $250 payment if any part of it is broadcast. For people new to digital video storytelling, Current promises "a comprehensive online training program developed by some of the best young creatives in the industry." The website adopts the "citizen journalist" tag popular among bloggers and tries to capture some of the participatory media-creator spirit of weblogs, RSS feeds, podcasting and videoblogging. For example, Current.tv issues a challenge to prospective contributors: "Let's redefine what's considered 'news' and how it's told. Shoot a story that traditional news media won't touch because it's too big, too small, or too something. We're looking for honesty, humor, and, of course, the facts." Closer to home, Gore will be presenting a documentary award April 16 at the Nashville Film Festival, according to the Nashville Business Journal. His choice for the award was "Farmer John," which he described as a "moving account of the importance of organic farming, told with insight and humor through the life of a very unique and committed individual." At Current.tv, the emphasis will be on short videos, not just longer documentaries. Its website mentions NYU professor Mitch Stephens book, The Rise of the Image, the Fall of the Word, in introducing the concept. (Stephens talked to a couple of my classes in Boston three years ago about his idea that fast-cut video could be a storytelling medium for news, not just for music videos. It's a fascinating concept, even if it dazes people over 30.) Stephens argues that when printing was as old as TV is now, the world still hadn't seen the first novel... suggesting that video as a form hasn't found its full expression yet. (Of course it's a bit ironic that Stephens wrote a book about this, but I recommend it. The excerpt linked above is a good introduction.) The blogging at Current.tv is by Robin Sloan, whose name you may remember from the "future history of news" Flash movie called EPIC 2014 , predicting an era when "The New York Times has gone offline" and a new medium has evolved from TiVo and the Google-saturated Web. (If your computer doesn't like Flash, here's a transcript.) Hmm... Google... Along with Gore, Current.tv is backed by investors including Joel Hyatt, former finance chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and Gore has to keep saying that the network will not be "a liberal network or a Democratic network," but an independent alternative to conglomerate ownership of news media. Footnotes & updates: Finding an alternative to the news media establishment is not a new theme for Gore. While Googling around for those earlier clips, I ran across this 1997 text by the then-vice-president on "Public Interest Obligations for Digital TV," a good link for the bookmark list in case I get to write more about this. See paidcontent.org for more on this and other interactive TV news from the National Cable & Telecommunications Association trade show. Among other things, Rafat Ali points out some similarities between Google's video archive plans and the recently-announced OurMedia.org, which offers free Web storage for photos, video and audio to "spur the citizens media revolution." Updated April 5, 11 a.m. 6:46:57 PM     News? Oops, I stumbled into another blog... I dropped in to see a new community newspaper website in Bluffton, S.C., blufftontoday.com, and wound up becoming a Bluffton blogger without really meaning to.  I've never been to Bluffton, but when I followed a few links intending to comment on (and compliment) the new publication, I was actually creating a weblog. I left behind a short comment, but I'll probably restrain myself in the future and just be a "lurker" on my visits to Bluffton Today. I want to see how well the site takes off with local residents, not interlopers from Tennessee. Besides, I have enough trouble finding time to keep up with SouthKnoxBubba's BubbaBlab. While the local papers aren't officially involved, some of their staff members pop in now and then. The Bluffton site reminds me a little of  experimental papers going back to the MIT Silver Stringers project (1996) that encouraged local senior citizens to create an online paper,   but today the software is much easier to use, and there are a lot more folks exploring the idea of community-generated news, readers-as-writers or "citizen journalism." Here's a bit from its "about" page: This is a place where you take the lead in telling your own story. As a registered BlufftonToday.com user, you get your own weblog, your own photo gallery, and the ability to post entries in special databases such as events and recipes. In return, we ask that you meet this character challenge: be a good citizen and exhibit community leadership qualities. It's a simple and golden rule. Act as you would like your neighbors to act. Meanwhile in Vancouver, another user-editable "newspaper" called Now Public invites readers to read, supply or demand news, whether they're in Vancouver or not... and to vote on story priorities. For example, a blogger might post a story and request that someone supply a photo to go with it. Or someone might ask for coverage of an upcoming event. The site uses a "smart media format" to tag photographs and video clips with links to their creators and rights-to-use information. At NowPublic, bloggers can convert their work into photo assignments, recruit local volunteers and even set budgets for material they would like to feature. The NowPublic community votes to prioritize assignments and filters real time coverage emerging from eyewitnesses and people close to the real story. "We Media" author Dan Gillmor calls the project "probably too ambitions, but I mean that as a compliment." His own site is a great place to watch for developments in citizen journalism. 12:55:29 PM

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