Rants and raves about the behind-the-scenes stories, photos, video projects and obsessions that impinge on the life of a Los Angeles investigative reporter/documentary filmmaker.
In the wake of the "Platoon coming into a hot LZ" story that Hillary floated last week - and that rose up to bite her in the ass, and make her a reliable butt of jokes for a few news cycles - comes this bit of multimedia storytelling.
It kinda threw me for a loop, at first - I was trying to see what message it was that the map was trying to tell me. And then, I realized that this was a more sophisticated use of the web than the traditional use of infographics, that normally serve to cram complex information at you in as short a time as possible.
No, this is use of multimedia that is far more demanding - it demands that you have the time, patience and attention to really browse through all the data collected here, and that you arrive at a conclusion on your own (should you so wish).
And also, should you also not wish. Because if you were only interested in a few segments of the story (such as, what the hell was Hillary doing in Dakar? GIving away a trophy to some dust-caked winner of the Paris-to-Dakar rally?) - well then, you can just skim & browse over the map and pick out the bits of information that you are interested in and that are relevant to you. A more trenchant hypothetical would be if you're a foreign minister of one of these countries, and you want to see how long it's been since the Clintons swung by on an official visit.
Anyway - brilliant use of non-linear storytelling techniques, and the possibilities offered by the web. This is an infographic that works on a lot of levels, from the most sophisticated, to the most casual interest. And yeah, it kinda sucks you in after a bit - you want to keep mousing over all the points and trying to imagine from the sparse description what the hell was going on during that visit back in the '90s.
The posts here have been pretty sporadic - it's my hope that the imminent arrival of a Nokia N95 cellphone (the new & slightly improved N96 is pictured to the right) will inspire me to put the thing thru its paces to see how useful a tool it is to multimedia journalists looking for an all-in-one gadget to cover the news.
There has been a mad rush to the streaming video space this year - there must be much love in Vulture Capitalist circles for streaming vid sites right now. Can't rightly tell you why - I guess someone out there is still clinging to the old biz model of there being some kind of value in live broadcasting.
Well, when everyone is toting one of these devices around at all times, in all places, the media landscape is going to look at lot more like the world envision in such books as Farewell Horizontal, where everyone is a freelancer, broadcasting live at all times, and when they manage to stumble across an interesting live event, they immediately package it, upload it to an aggregator, and get credits for the number of people who pick it out of the flow and pay attention...
...and no, this is not some forgotten Hope & Crosby "Road" movie, co-starring Ginger Rogers & Betty Grable.
This is a "Guest Post" by Janine, and I'm running it here because it's well-written and also because I'm so frickin' burned out right now that I would have great difficulty stringing together an account half as coherent as this about some of the surprises we've encountered here during our "World Tour 2007-8" of Colombia for Andiaros and the government agency SENA. Earlier today, I was able to show the roomful of very young journalists here just how easy it is to use the TypePad software to post something to a blog (BTW - the pic that appears there was take about 2 months ago, in Moscow, at a restraurant located on "Clean Lake" across from the Moscow offices of OLMA.)
Anyway, here's Janine:
This picture was taken by Dave through the window of a military checkpoint that we hit on the way to Baranquilla, a medium-sized city about an hour's drive from Cartagena. W
e hit a nasty rainstorm on the way here so it took us nearly two hours. As we drove, our driver told us about how the road was impassible only a few years ago because of the Guerillas/Narcotraffickers. Now there are Colombian military stations every several kilometers along the way that protect the road and have made it possible for people to make the drive without fear.
To help us appreciate how things have changed, he told a personal story about a bus trip he took to Bogota a few years ago. Part way there, the bus was stopped by guerrillas who boarded the bus and demanded everyone's Cedulas (the national ID). They then consulted the laptop they carried with them, looking up each person's name in a database to see if they were related to anyone rich enough or powerful enough to make them worth kidnapping.(Dave and I noted this was an impressive use technology, albeit for all the wrong reasons.)
As the Guerrillas checked IDs, they had one of the children on the bus go around and collect everyone's shoes, which he explained they did routinely to make it harder for anyone to run away, especially when they are being led through the jungle at night and stepping off a path in the dark could cause serious damage to bare feet.
But what really amazed us about the story, was that apparently the guerrilla's radio discussion about the bus was picked up by the US-supported Colombian army, which then called for a Black Hawk helicopter to be sent to help them. That radio message was in turn intercepted by the guerrillas, who took off once they realized they'd been discovered and that the helicopter was on the way. (An interesting case of spy vs. spy, and a moment that I think represents well the turning point that led to these roads being so much safer.)
Unfortunately for the passengers on the bus, the guerrillas had already poured gasoline all over the inside of the bus, which they planned to set on fire before they left. They didn't take the time to burn the bus. but the passengers had to ride to the next town in a bus full of gas fumes so strong it made most people sick. Still, I'm sure they all agreed it was better than being kidnapped and walking barefoot through the jungle.
Today, he said he drives down these roads without fear, happy to see the Colombian military on the side of the road. And I have to admit, Dave and I both appreciated the soldiers a bit more after his story.
For my part, I've been amazed by how much more peaceful things are here than they were just 6 years ago the first time I came to Colombia. Everyone we've talked to about security has commented on the improvements, how President Uribe has made such a difference by cracking down on corruption and guerrilla activities, and how great it is that they can now go out at night and travel the roads around the country without fear.
More and more, I'm noticing that the news here in Russia (and yes, I do try to watch the news on TV here, despite the language barrier) seems to exist in some strange parallel universe. When I switch back and forth between the BBC World News, CNN International, and then the Russian news on RBK and Channel First, there is a massive disconnect. Maybe it's just because we're in a particularly delicate election year - an editorial that ran in the Moscow Times recently talked about all the simmering uneasiness regarding Putin's succession (the original ran in Vedomosti, and I can only hope that the editor who wrote it isn't re-living a Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch right now).
Trying
to guess the identity of President Vladimir Putin's choice as his
successor and how he or she will come to power is a game that just
continues to grow in popularity. Speculation is also swirling over
whether the next president will use the system Putin has created to
determine national and international policy, ditch the system
altogether, or keep parts of it.
Analysts
at Renaissance Capital, for example, believe the successor will either
follow the "Brezhnev model" and try to maintain the status quo, or will
be a reformer, following what they label the "Peter the Great model."
These comparisons are a bit surprising, but not because of the nature
of historical parallels.
This issue is becoming particularly urgent because under Putin, a lot of people have amassed staggering wealth. Quite naturally, they'd like to keep it. And now that they have this much money, they can certainly shell out a few bucks here and there to, shall we say, "influence" things to continue going pretty much as they have in that past. Which is why speaking out about the theft, corruption, murder, intimidation and bombings here is becoming quite perilous.
Politics under these conditions is a third rail for established media. But there is still a great deal of interest in what is going on in this country that isn't being talked about in the media. And as nature abhors a vacuum, so too does the media ecosystem.
Masha Lipman, a political expert at the Moscow
Carnegie Center, says that web forums like Live Journal provide an
arena for free debate that is no longer available in much of the
conventional media.
"There is indeed a lot of free exchange on
the Internet," Lipman says. "The question in Russia is not that there
are no outlets where free expression is possible. The question is that
the Kremlin has radically marginalized all outlets that pursue even
reasonably independent editorial lines.
"Russians are the
second-largest group of users of Live Journal, a popular U.S. blogger
site. In Russia, the site currently has more than 1.1 million users and
67,500 interest groups. On September 5 alone, 1,600 new users joined
Live Journal in Russia and almost 500,000 new comments were posted.
Censorship Impossible?
"Actually,
I think the Internet is one of the reasons Russia is still not an
authoritarian regime, because you cannot really shut down the Internet
without very serious measures," says Yulia Latynina, a political
commentator whose columns are frequently posted on Live Journal.
Just this week, a blogger got thrown in jail for two years for advocating revolution. The Kremlin has, belatedly, realized that they need to try to clamp down on the discussion online - but the tools that they've employed to do so have only ensured that more and more ordinary Russians are getting interested in what it is that was said that caused so much of a reaction.
However, the censorship is getting subtler and more insidious. Apparently, the Kremlin is paying bloggers to go into LiveJournal and produce pro-government content. Not out-and-out propaganda - the average Russian has very sensitive antennae that can pick up a bullshit press release a mile away. But apparently, they are getting sophisticated about producing content that subtly reinforces what the government wants you to see, hear and think.
The U.S., of course, has problems along these lines - it has long been an article of faith that bloggers and internet sites that promote the pro-Bush stance have been getting secret payments and support from the government and Bush's allies. There's even a phrase for it: "Wingnut Welfare."
Still, it is inspiring to see that even under these conditions, the ordinary people on the web are brave enough, and inspired enough, to defy the attempts to brainwash them, to suppress them, to intimidate them. In this way, at least, the web is struggling to live up the hype of being the invention that allows freedom to reign ... although I fear that the increasing sophistication of the governments to stack the ideological deck are only going to get more insidious.
BusinessWeek says out loud what many in newspapers have been wondering: When will the industry just concede defeat and migrate to the web?
Not soon, I think.
All the case studies that I've been doing show that there is life yet in those thin sheets of ink-covered cellulose. As Bob Cauthorn put it years ago, "The problem isn't with the format. If that was the case, the readers would just be going to the online editions. The problem is with the content." In other words, newspapers aren't focusing on giving their readers the news that they want/need - news about things that are relevant to them. Instead, we get the damn Paris Hilton-fest, the John Edwards haircut story, etc. etc. OK, yeah, these stories "pop a number."
But as I pointed out 10 years ago now, this kind of news is empty calories. It's a bowl of Chee-tos, drowning in Mountain Dew, topped off by the cream filling sucked out of a dozen Twinkies for breakfast.
Just like junk food, the junk news has a deleterious effect on the consumer - and now, finally, on the provider. The Paris Hilton-esque stories provide a short-term boost, but in the long term, I think the readers are turned off. They get sick of the spectacle, of the empty hype. How many times have you heard people complain about overblown, overhyped, empty stories in the last decade or so? How many times have you complained yourself?
Contrast this with the case study that I did on the Point Reyes Light, where the local paper really dug into stories that the community cared about, and did it in a way that reflected the community's values. A newspaper that actually prints news about people that you know, or know of ... a newspaper that prints stories about things that happen to people in your community, things that you've heard about ... a newspaper that makes that little bell in your head go "Ding!" every morning, when you see a story that you know that you have to pay attention to because it's happening right down the street ...
That is a newspaper that you go back to.
Because you know that the next time you go back to it, that paper is going to give you something that you can actually use, rather than a story that screams for your attention, and at the end, makes you feel shallow, ashamed and used.
At the risk of overwork the information = food metaphor too much, but I see parallels between the increasing movement to get some sanity back into our Fast-food Nation diets, to try to cut down on the "obesity epidemic" -- such as the announcement today that the sugar-filled food manufacturers won't be aiming as much advertising at kids as they were before. And that Mickey D's is putting apple slices into happy meals, rather than trans-fat soaked french fries ... maybe American news consumers, aka "The People Formerly Known As The Audience," are slowly voting with their eyeballs, their mouse clicks, and their cancellation of ever-cheaper subscriptions, no matter what kinds of special offers the increasingly desperate circulation departments throw at them.
2007 does not look materially kinder than 2006 for any of these papers. One senior executive describes the climate like this: "If you told me 24 months ago that revenues would be declining as much as they are today, I'd say you were smoking dope." Print newspapers require maintaining a costly status quo—paper, presses, trucks, and mail rooms—that, if only through rising gas prices, will only get more expensive.
WHEN, EXACTLY, do you junk something that no longer works? And which major paper should go first—not today, but within the next 18 or 24 months?
San Francisco Chronicle, I'm looking at you.
Killing print requires acknowledging not just that the old mode is dead but also that the future means less revenue and shrunken staffs. This is why it makes sense soonest at a money-losing newspaper already grappling with those realities, and one in a major city that generates enough local ad dollars to support a sizable online business.
They go on to suggest that the Chronicle, in particular, leverage its great sfgate.com site to just boldly make the jump. They say that maybe killing the paper edition and just going gonzo into the web edition, thus saving on paper costs, delivery trucks, printing presses, ink, etc., will save money, and that with the paper basically being the only game in town, advertisers will be forced to follow the paper onto the web-only platform if they still want to reach the Chronicle's readers. And that the paper could also just buy "tons of unsold local ad investory from teh likes of MySpace and Yahoo and then resell it profitably..."
Hmmm. There is a part of me that says that maybe the time has come for making a Big Bold Move. After all, how much worse can it get? The last five years have been disastrous, and the future ain't making me wear shades either. I think that the time is coming when a major - or formerly major - newspaper is going to finally be the first penguin off the glacier. I think that the Chronicle is actually a pretty good candidate for that type of a move - but I think that it's something that's going to have to be handled the way that Apple handled the release of the iPhone. It has to be explained and talked about in advance, it has to be done as though it is going to be a game-changing move, and that way it accrues a sense of being Something You Must Pay Attention To. If the move to the web is seen as being done only out of utter despair, then the audience will turn away.
It's like in Hollywood, where the one thing that nobody can stand is even the faintest whiff of desperation ... if the readers think that the web is something that is being tried only because nothing else the Chronicle has done has worked, well then, what kind of a message does that send to the readers? Does that make the new&improved online edition, into which all remaining resources are about to be poured, look like something great, new and vital? Hell no. It makes the online edition look like the wood shavings curling up under the fingernails of the newspaper, as it scrabbles desperately at the cornice, before falling off into the abyss. Who wants to be associated with that? Certainly not any advertiser.
Ken Brown also has a related, interesting take, in that he sees that journalists have to kick the Messiah Complex habit, and start thinking of themselves as providing a service for the readers ... and that if they don't properly provide that service, well, the customers certainly can, will and have gone elsewhere:
While the distinction may seem semantic, I think the industry's
mistaken impression of itself underlies its fear and loathing of
readers' migration online.
As a product, newspapers are doomed
-- and their demise is coming a lot faster than many of us realize. But
as a service, journalism and the journalism business have unprecedented
opportunity. The sooner journalists start thinking of their business as
a service, the better equipped they'll be for the changes ahead.
There is something both sad and comforting to drive down the streets of Moscow and see a Sbarro sIgn in Cyrillic
First impressions – there are a lot of signs in English here
–
almost as many as there were in Amsterdam. Despite the old-world concrete
frowning feeling of the Passport Control Center in the basement of the airport,
you can’t feel too intimidated if, while standing in line, you can look up to
see two brand-new Panasonic HDTV plasma screens playing an endless loop of ads
for expensive consumer products.
Apparently, it’s a big deal here to have dirty keys on your
piano – luckily, they have special attachments to the vacuums (courtesy of some
Russian company) designed expressly to clean the keys on your piano.
There were lots of Mercedes and BMWs in the airport parking
lot – alongside a tricked-out Lincoln Navigator with oversize chrome rims. Someone here has been watching MTV.
There are a lot of big car dealerships on the outskirts of
Moscow – it looks a little like Tony Soprano-area New Jersey that way. And the people scurrying around these
environs look a little like extras from the Sopranos as well. Near the airport, the highway is smooth and
new. Closer to Moscow, the streets are
rutted, jammed and potholed & patched.
The radio stations in English play a very eclectic mix –
from The Bangles doing “Eternal Love” to Beyonce and Eminem.
I can’t get over how many international brands there are
lining the big highway into town. Pioneer car stereos, Samsung computer monitors, DHL couriers, even a
Sbarro (although that was the one sign that was in Cyrillic – I just knew it
was Sbarro cheapass pizza from the color and typography of the sign. Now there’s a case study in branding, if
anyone wants to tackle it.)
The river (Volga? Home
of the storied Volga Boatmen? I think I
faintly heard their signature dirgelike chanting…) is sluggish with ice still –
I didn’t want to look too much like a tourist, and take a picture on the way
in. I later overcame my reticence in
this area – only to find that I had neglected to pack the cable to scarf the
pix off my camera – luckily, the Vaio has a nice little slot in the front where
you can click in the fragile little wafer. It kinda clicks in like the glass
doors on stereo cabinets – you know, you push once and it goes “cli-CLICK” and
is kinda recessed, and to remove it you push on it and it goes “CLI-clunk” and
pops out. And the damn thing was only
$14 at Circuit City?
Anyway, back to the ride into Moscow. There are still the
big high-density apartment buildings lining the roads – but not as many nor as
dense as I had been led to believe. Which is no big deal, really.
It’s weird to see these fearsome Red Army soldiers in full
battle rattle on the street, getting yelled at for knocking over a ladder.
I can quite connect what I’m seeing on the streets to the
world I saw in the movies or on TV. Can any of these be the snow-choked streets
that the Bolsheviks marched down in 1917?
This city just sprawls – block after block of frowning brick
buildings, with Westernized ads and signs; some in the process of being spruced
up. How much blood and history took
place on these streets? Is history ever
done with us? Or are we all making history right now, every second of the day,
without really being cognizant of it? Freaking out and thinking all the while
that we’re desperately improvising and that at any minute the whole house of
cards is going to collapse on us. Meanwhile, the past seems to have so much clarity. There's a lesson here for those wondering about what to do about the digital revoiution...
In about 12 hours, I get on a KLM jet for 15 hours of confinement (broken up by one short layover - just enough to get the blood clots in the femoral arteries moving) on my way to Moscow to start the new consulting gig for Innovation. I'll be experimenting with posting to this blog from there - it has been way, way too busy these last two weeks to post the way that I've wanted to ... and the failures of TypePad in South America are the subject of an "Open Ticket" with my beloved bloghosts.
In the meanwhile, here are a couple of pics from Chile and Argentina to take up some space on this blog and make it look lively.
This first shot is of a canyon that I did the zipline/canopy tour down, zig-zagging back and forth, whilst trying to take some kind of video. In fact, I do have a short video of this, which I will also try to post in the next week or so. God willing and the creek don't rise...
After 15 hours of agony on the American Airlines flights back from Buenos Aires, I am back in L.A., and working hard already on trying to arrange for the next big international webmedia trip - this one to Moscow. The forms that the Russian Consulate requires travelers to fill out to get a visa are absolutely amazing in the amount of detail that they demand. It's worse than filling out a job application - at least there, you don't have to mail them your passport, and hope to Christ that they send it back to you before your flight takes off...
Anyway, I have tons of postings and photos that I have to put up in this space, along with links to pages that I'm putting up at the main Hard News site - my PowerPoint presentation is already up there at www.hardnewsinc.com/chile if you want to take a look at it. I will also be posting my list of sites that I think are interesting, and the reasons I think so, along with a list of all the tech toys that I use/recommend.
Tops on my list of new fave technologies has to be Skype. Folks, Skype saved my ass. Free calls of whatever length to anyone else with a Skype account? Man, you just can't beat it. If you haven't gotten a Skype account yet, go to www.skype.com and sign up.
Me? I gotta go back to applying for travel health insurance (apparently, the Rooskies won't let you in the country unless you have some sort of health policy).
Well, my first multimedia presentation in Chile was probably the hardest, but the gathering seemed energized by what I was saying. I wasn't sure before I started if what I was going to talk about would be too simple and obvious, but apparently the assembled managers and directors found at least some meaning and originality to what I had to say.
I challenged the journalists there to come up with one way to encourage and incentivize conversations; and I have to say that for a group that was thrown into the deep end of a pool, and asked to come up with something on the spot, they did rather well. More than that, I think that the process of getting together and talking about what they think the future of newspapers and radio stations could or should be can't be bad.
Now on to more presentations here in Santiago and in Concepcion. I'll post more when I finally get some time in my hotel, they're keeping me busy here.
It kinda threw me for a loop, at first - I was trying to see what message it was that the map was trying to tell me. And then, I realized that this was a more sophisticated use of the web than the traditional use of infographics, that normally serve to cram complex information at you in as short a time as possible. 
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