Slate.com’s new online video magazine

Continuing on the theme of new media, here’s something interesting happening at Slate: Andy Bowers the man who started Slate’s popular podcasting programs has left the podcast for a promotion to start Slate V (the V is for video), a new online video magazine version of Slate.com.

Yes, folks at Slate know there’s tons of video content out there. You already know about Youtube and you may have even heard of Funnyordie.com (if you haven’t, I highly recommend it). But the problem with sites like those is the perennial problem of the Internet: Too much junk to sift through.

So the idea with Slate V is that they’re going to give us video content that’s a cut or two above the usual YouTube-grade home videos. I checked it out, excited for a new avenue to high quality video. I wasn’t impressed by the first video, a hybrid of live footage and animation that followed the format of Dear Abby, except it’s called Dear Prudie .



It’s mildly amusing, I guess. But the video doesn’t add much. I think the medium of audio or text works just fine for advice columns. What can video add to that really? Not much, in my opinion.

But another video by Bowers about the role of web video in the presidential campaign was fantastic. Check it out:



Here's one more worth watching: an analysis of a campaign commercial that features Bill Clinton stumping for Hillary Clinton, was smart, interesting and even funny. They could use footage from the commercial and even compare it to a commercial from back when Bill was running and Hillary stumped for him.

Both of these videos were a much better use of video as a way to enhance coverage in a way that plain text or audio would fall short. Very interesting, thought-provoking and great examples of how web videos can add value to news websites.

Too bad, Slate has to pay for this new content by forcing viewers to stare at an obnoxious still photo of a car advertisement for what feels like at least 30 seconds, (long enough to make me want to click to a different site). And the video kept breaking up as it was loading and it caused my web browser to crash about six times. I eventually gave up. But what I found in a few of the videos has made me decide to revisit later, and you should too.

I’m also a big fan of Slate’s podcasts. So check them out too while you’re at it. I really like this one called Google’s Buried Treasures . It’s about all the cool things you can do on Google that most people don’t know about.

Signs of blogging as mainstream media

Blogging has officially gone mainstream. I say this because blogging – more specifically live-blogging – is being done from the campaign trail, AND it’s being done by New York Times reporters.

Now if that’s not a sign that blogging is part of the transformation of journalism, I don’t know what is.

So those of us who are interested in, or addicted to, up-to-the-minute news on campaign 2008, we have a source. But here’s a question: Since these reporters are New York Times reporters, will they provide anything different or better than the average blogger?

Check it out. What do you think? Click here

June 10, 2007, 3:26 pm
Sunday Sampler Platter
By Brian Knowlton
Colin Powell made news on Sunday, calling for the immediate closing –- immediate as in “this afternoon” — of the Guantánamo detention center. The former secretary of state also said that he had met twice with Senator Barack Obama as the young Democratic presidential candidate sought foreign-policy advice. And the retired general and Bush administration veteran left open the distinct possibility of endorsing a non-Republican
candidate. ...

The fourth estate under fire

For the past half a decade or so the news media has been under fire, taking shots from bloggers, consumers and from members of the news media themselves. The complaints vary widely. The Jayson Blair / New York Times incident brought questions of credibility and trust to the forefront. The Dan Rather / CBS blunder instigated widespread concern over accuracy. Fox News makes us wonder daily about objectivity. And the consolidation of media outlets forces us to think about profitability.

The response by members of the traditional media or the “corporate media,” as some prefer to call it, runs the gamut from looking at the bottom line to looking the other way. But what we should have done long ago was to look to Philip Meyer, the Knight Professor of Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

For years Meyer has been trying to tell mass media outlets what they ought to be focusing on to keep up in the information age — it’s not doing journalism on the cheap or blindly staying the course. According to Meyer, the quality of the product is where journalists and news companies ought to be focusing.

“Journalism, in order to survive in all this noise, has to offer something better,” Meyer wrote in USA TODAY in September 2004. “It needs to be a more credible, highly processed product.”

Blogging has allowed the everyman/woman to hold giant news companies accountable and has offered consumers more variety and quantity of information. Journalists can no longer ignore their own flaws. It’s easy to make excuses about lack of time to vet stories or lack of support from editors. This is a tough job, but if we want to continue to be journalists, we have to find ways to do it better than the average person who will do it for free. Meyer has been trying to tell us how: Be transparent, be professional, be trustworthy, be accurate to a scientific level and offer data analysis and critique the controversy.

Journalists have been humbled as Meyer says in his column below. Now is up to us to be better.


Closely watched media humbled
January 2005
By Philip Meyer
Some of the chattering heads on television would have you believe that journalism in the USA is falling apart. It's not. Instead, it is assuming a new form.

The recent reporting scandals are not a sign of new corruption as much as a sign of new transparency. …

What gives bloggers their power is not their access to information but their ability to put it on the public agenda. …

Now, even its agenda-setting power is being taken away. Bloggers do it better because they reinforce one another, adding bits of fact and encouragement.

Agenda-setting power had a negative side. By ignoring their own deficiencies, the mass media could keep us from thinking about their weaknesses. But that's no longer possible. There's a new kind of competition, not among media giants, but among innumerable sources of information and ideas all trying to be heard.

The agonies of the old mainstream media are part of the process of adapting to this new reality. We still need strong national voices that earn our trust, and the mass media need not become obsolete. But they will have to understand that it is a different kind of game.

When Edwin Lahey was Washington bureau chief for Knight Ridder, he liked to say, "The greatest virtue is humility, and the shortest route to humility is through humiliation." The old media aren't getting worse. They're just getting humble.

For the entire story click here