One of the greatest developments of the past few years is the ability for just about anybody to become a citizen reporter on YouTube – whether that means posting video from inside Iran in the midst of a media blackout or going around the often biased mainstream media here in the U.S. to break news and deliver your message unfiltered directly to your target audiences. Or just asking your local Member of Congress why he secured a particular pork-barrel earmark, and exposing him as a jerk in the process.
Now the folks at YouTube have set up a new “Reporters Center,” which they say is designed to help you report the news. It’s a decent idea and it includes several videos featuring helpful tips from people who have had success reporting news on YouTube.
Curiously, however, the channel also features videos from some of the old media’s most sclerotic institutions: the New York Times, CBS News, and the Washington Post. In one video, NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff offers advice about how to cover a global crisis. Tips include not arguing with guys with big guns, and remembering that “Americans typically don’t care about thousands of people starving. But they can be made to care about one individual.” As if people in every other country don’t also make a deeper connection when a story is personalized – so why limit the statement to “Americans?” It’s exactly this kind of sneering anti-Americanism that is leading the old dinosaur media into bankruptcy, so why turn to them to explain what works on YouTube?
In another video, Katie Couric offers advice on how to conduct a good interview: “It’s important to be a gracious host… I always try to be very warm and welcoming…” You know – just like she was in those Sarah Palin interviews.
So go ahead and check out YouTube’s Reporters Center and start being a citizen journalist. Just stick to the videos from real citizen journalists – not the ones who are being put out of business by them.
Filed under: Online Video
In a shameless attempt to bump at least one Michael Jackson video off the list of the world’s most viral, here’s Billy Mays driving through McDonalds… sadly ironic…
Filed under: Online Video
At the moment, 16 of the 20 most viral online videos in the world either feature or are related to Michael Jackson. The only political video on the chart is Neda dying in the streets of Tehran.
Last night I DVR’ed ABC’s prime-time health care “conversation” with President Obama, and when I got home from dinner I fast-forwarded through the hour-long show. As I did, I noticed that Obama certainly seemed to be doing a disproportionate amount of the talking, so I pledged to watch the whole thing in the morning with a stopwatch in hand and calculate the percentage of the program that Obama spent filibustering the “conversation.”
This morning, I woke up, grabbed my stopwatch, and checked the online news to make sure nobody else had already quantified Obama’s talk-a-thon. I’m glad I did, since Drudge had already linked to this report from the fine folks at the Business and Media Institute.
The report confirms exactly what I suspected last night: that Obama sucked up the vast majority of the time to pitch his health-care plan, regardless of what questions were asked. Not exactly what I’d call a balanced conversation:
Filed under: Uncategorized
Astronauts in the International Space Station fly directly over an erupting volcano off the coast of Japan. More photos here. In a related story, Al Gore and Nancy Pelosi today called on the EPA to sanction the volcano for contributing to “climate change.”
Here are a few scenes I shot at this afternoon’s big Iranian demonstration outside the White House. As you’ll see, it was large, energetic crowd – at least several hundred strong – with protestors chanting slogans like “Democracy for Iran,” “Human Rights for Iran,” and “Down With the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
Many people held up posters bearing the image of Neda, the Iranian woman who was killed while protesting in the streets of Tehran this weekend. Others held up signs that read “Mr. President, Have You Heard The Cry for Democracy in Iran?” and “Please! President Obama, Help Innocent Iranians!”
Of course, a lot of unsuspecting tourists who happened upon the scene feverishly snapped photos and video. Interestingly, however, I didn’t see any broadcast TV news camera there – even local stations who could have used the footage to provide a local angle on the international story.
Cato’s Dan Mitchell explains in this new online video why the Left’s constant call for higher taxes on the so-called “rich” is a very bad idea.
In the process, he also illustrates how organizations, candidates and elected officials can quickly and easily transform what would historically be a plain old newspaper op-ed into a more interesting mode of communications that will reach thousands of additional key opinion leaders around the world.
On Obama’s loophole-ridden call for greater spending restraint:
“This is like quitting drinking, but making an exception for beer and hard liquor,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan watchdog group.
Bartender! Over here, please!
HT: Club for Growth
Filed under: Uncategorized
This morning between 6:00 and 6:30 am, a major thunderstorm rolled through Northern Virgina – just as polls opened for rush-hour voters in today’s Democratic gubernatorial primary.
Now check out below what’s hitting the same area as potential evening rush-hour voters are on their way home.
With Terry McAuliffe and Brian Moran needing as many votes as possible in Northen Virginia, will these two huge rush-hour storms in NOVA provide the margin of victory for rural, downstate candidate Creigh Deeds?
UPDATE, June 10, 7:41 a.m.: OK, so Deeds won, but Mother Nature didn’t exactly provide the winning margin.
Big “news” this morning: President Obama plans to “save or create” 600,000 additional jobs this summer!
At least that’s what you’d think by scanning today’s headlines. Reuters reporter Doug Palmer takes the President’s bait hook, line and sinker:
“President Barack Obama said on Monday that accelerated stimulus spending would create or save 600,000 jobs over the next 100 days,” Palmer wrote before parroting White House claims that the spending will quickly lead to new economic activity at national parks, veterans centers and Superfund sites from coast to coast. He then goes on to include five quotes from Obama and Vice President Biden, while only including one recycled quote from Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell.
Mark Silva provides similarly uncritical coverage at the LA Times, providing a basic rewrite of the White House’s announcement and including three Obama and Biden quotes vs. one from McConnell.
At no point do either Palmer or Silva point out that stimulus spending was already scheduled to accelerate this summer (as AP does here,) nor do they question whether it’s even possible to measure the White House’s new and arbitrary metric of created or “saved” jobs. For that, we need to turn to the Wall Street Journal, where William McGurn writes:
“Of course, the inability to measure Mr. Obama’s jobs formula is part of its attraction. Never mind that no one — not the Labor Department, not the Treasury, not the Bureau of Labor Statistics — actually measures “jobs saved.” As the New York Times delicately reports, Mr. Obama’s jobs claims are “based on macroeconomic estimates, not an actual counting of jobs.” Nice work if you can get away with it.”
Indeed.
UPDATE, June 10, 12:00 p.m. – Cross posted on National Review Institute’s Media Malpractice blog.
