dear all, thanks for the congratulations, Wendy. Will be sure to pass it on.
And wanted to speak to this self-org thread. This conversation is reminding me of an interview I saw on C-SPAN the other day with Michael Rosenblum (http://www.rosenblumtv.com/). His work, it looks, is about applying- if one can say that- the principles of self-organization to the production of TV news. As a TV junkie (at least a former junkie), he contends that there has never been good TV news, nor good television. While I don't recall him speaking directly or in detail about what's wrong with TV, he suggested in so many words that it's about the c-word, Control. He offers a different model: instead of paying a mediagenic personality like Katie Couric 14 million dollars a year to work twenty-two minutes each night to read the news off the teleprompter, why not train 140 journalists, pay them $100k dollars each and send them to make their own news? The barrier to entry is now tantalizingly low, he explains. A broadcast-quality handheld video cam can now be had for little over a $1,000. And broadcast-quality editing software usable on a laptop is so simple to use that even a child can use it, he contends. He has been offering six-week video journalism "bootcamps," running through the essentials of video journalism, shooting, editing, etc. and offering to all kinds of people, including major TV network stations who are open to shifting to this new, decentralized, (ostensibly) self-organizing model of TV news production. Two things especially stuck out for me from the CSPAN interview: - him sharing the experience of offering this six week course to a retirement community. And after the retirees had finished producing their first pieces and they screened the final results, he asked, which TV did they prefer, the one they watch daily or the fruits of their own labor. The answer, of course, resoundingly, was their own work. And why? Because it was much sloooooooooooooower! - his experiences having lived and worked abroad, including spending a month with a Gazan family- if I recall correctly- having learned some Arabic before going and really winning their trust to tell their story. He spoke to what many have thought but you may never have heard on TV: there are probably tens of thousands of hours of home video available shot by average Iraqis. And yet we don't get to hear their stories unedited. All of this has me wondering where are the synergies between OS/OST and Rosenblum's work? appreciatively, hussein * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
