There’s a lot to absorb in David Dunkley Gyimah’s report on the future of internet video at dotjournalism.uk. Titled We’re cannibalising an old CNN newsroom adage and updating it: ‘kill what you can eat, no waste!’, the piece takes a look at recent past, present and future for video as a news force on the internet.
This isn’t your typical everything’s-rosy-on-the-net report. It includes, for instance, this:
Competition for eyeballs is getting tougher as there are just so many sites for your average netizen to visit. The key to success? Aggregate; build a city like Global Voices or atrophy.
With broadband set to ape television the sad prospect of a digital winter for diversity looms.
That’s if satellite and cable TV’s story in the 90s is anything to go by. There will be more-of-the-same in online content production, rather than an explosion of original material.
That caution aside, he’s still excited about the potential:
… the door’s still open for diversity in a pluralistic environment, but creativity is key.
But for this to really happen we need to realise that vloggers, bloggers, videocasters and mashers are an addition to the news status quo.
We need to acknowledge that technologists have become as integral to story telling as traditional scribes.
The explosion of video on the net has, so far, escaped to a large degree the phony journalism vs blogging war that consumed (and still consumes) way too much energy both on the web and in newsrooms. Rightfully seeing the new players as “additions to the news status quo” — and not competition — is the way to go.
Gyimah’s piece is another of those must-reads that we need to keep in the mind’s eye as we ponder the evolution of journalism.
TAGS: JOURNALISM, VIDEO, RETHINKING MEDIA
