Over the last few days I have come to re-affirm a deeply held belief:
The end of the newspaper era is the beginning of decentralized news reporting, where ‘timeliness over quality’ is the rule of the day.
I have always believed in the Media Singularity which is the ultimate outcome of increasingly cheaper technology combined with ever expanding online distribution. I just never thought it would come so soon.
Of course we have been creeping along this path for some time now with excellent examples as far back as 2005. But it hasn’t been until this year that a ‘perfect storm‘ of economic recession, advanced cell phone technology and cheap HD technology has cracked the giant fortress of traditional top-down media.
2009 will be known as the year that media shatters into millions of fragments, with millions of citizen journalists beating seasoned journalists to the punch by transmitting from the scene of the crime/crash/emergency/flood/fire/standoff, using only their cell phone.
(Shot with a Kodak Zi6, then uploaded to YouTube.)
A few of these citizen journalists will even be able to tell a complete story and articulate what is happening in an informative manner. (Unlike myself in the above video where I say ‘Fire Ambulances’ instead of ‘Fire Trucks.’)
Live.
With their cell phone.
Let me explain this transition in steps.
(This way it will be much clearer to those that have been holding out for multimedia to save the newspaper or for the amazing quality of the Canon 5D Mark II or Red Cameras that can do both still and video.)
Step 1: Flip Video Camera + YouTube + YouReport + Vimeo + etc.
This year, many of my articles have focused on small cheap 720/1080 HD camcorders such as the Flip Video Camera, Flip Mino HD, Kodak Z16 and Creative’s Vado HD.
These video cameras appeal to the amateur with their simple all-auto operation and ease of use when uploading to YouTube. A total beginner can shoot and upload decent HD quality video to the internet for millions of people to find and watch. Cheap and easy video technology poses a threat to professional journalists who are just now learning to shoot video for their paper using incredibly complicated HD work-flows that include wireless mics, DV Tapes, and expensive MacPro towers for editing in Final Cut Pro.
Many pros have great equipment and meet deadlines for producing weekly multimedia video in addition to still photos…but it will be all for naught because viewers don’t care about quality, they care about immediacy (Just look at the hit-counts for many amazing multimedia stories produced in-house at newspapers.)
To the photojournalists/TV people out there:
Get used to it. It’s only going to get worse.
On your current path to making beautiful, technically perfect multimedia stories, you will be absolutely crushed by the amateur who is there at the news event BEFORE YOU, sending text messages, Tweets, and gathering stills/video with some sort of video camera, cell phone or point and shoot camera with video…essentially gathering your news and eating your lunch.
And they will do it gladly, with gusto and for free. And there will most likely be multiple points of view and levels of quality for any event due to the number of people at the scene recording something.
Step 2: Enter the iPhone 3G
With the launch of the iPhone, cheap still photography meets cheap distribution, on a device that allows the user to take a photo, edit it on their phone, and upload it to Flickr or share it with friends via Twitterific instantly. The iPhone has brought together what I consider to be the two ultimate tools that a photojournalist truly needs in an immediacy driven world: a camera and an instant distribution network.
Is a two megapixel iPhone photo good enough for national news? YES.
If I still worked at a newspaper I would definitely consider shooting an iPhone photo immediately and getting that to my editor before shooting with my DSLR.
Step 3: Cycorder + Qik + Flixwagon: The Last Nail in the Coffin
This last week I jailbroke my iPhone using QuickPwn. It was super easy compared to the relative complexity of previous jailbreaking attempts using the previous PwnageTool.
This allowed me to install Cycorder which is a free app that makes your iPhone into a Flip Video Camera (essentially.) With Cycorder you get 15fps recording with sound at 384×288 in an elegantly compressed video format. The file size, video size and frame rate make it ideal for web viewing without any modification. Just upload it to YouTube once you get home…
(Shot with my Iphone + Cycorder.)
or better yet,
…broadcast LIVE using Qik or Flixwagon!!
(Shot with iPhone + Qik.) (ed: I realize I cut off my chin in this vid. Didn’t quite point my phone correctly…)
These two programs allow you to share what you are experiencing live with anyone who is on your Qik or Flixwagon channel. Some people have already used this to great success.
To me this is live news reporting at its best and on par with the video phone reporting that I have seen more and more of on TV when they are unable to send a full camera crew and truck to a live news event.
Many will say that the quality isn’t there or that people won’t figure out how to do this, but just consider what is possible now with available technology. Everything is in place, it is only a matter of a few years before the citizen journalist overwhelms the pro.
Even if 5% of citizen journalists are good at what they do it will still outnumber traditional reporters significantly.
I’ll leave you with this thought:
With millions of iPhone owners out there who will all eventually know how to send live video, take great pictures and distribute instantly through the Internet with their cell phone, how many years will it be before the news is 90% crowd-sourced?
-Kirk
Similar Posts:
- Rocking the iPhone…almost there.
- How to make a tripod for your iPhone
- The Future (?) of Journalism in the Age of Youtube
- A Fire Runs Through It.
- iPhone Rolling Shutter: A Creative Constraint
- NAB 2009: TV Production in the Age of YouTube
good post. totally agree. I am surprised there are still people out there who would dispute what you are saying.
J
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There will always be demand for high-quality, credible (to the extent that traditional news media *is* credible) news sources. This is why Wikipedia will never be the ultimate information source, at least not in its current incarnation, for the simple fact that “just because you read it doesn’t make it true”. That phrase has never been so spot-on as it is in this Internet Age. Same applies to some guy reporting live with his cell phone and providing commentary.
For what it’s worth, I think the beginning of the end that you’re citing was more markedly brought about with the genesis of the blogosphere. The tools and applications you discuss are simply a continuation of the “every person has a voice” paradigm that the Internet affords.
“With the launch of the iPhone, cheap still photography meets cheap distribution”. I’m sorry, but the iPhone’s got nothing to do with it. It’s simply one of many devices, many of which proceeded it (and are far better than it is) that allow for what you’re discussing. Apple garners plenty of buzz as-is…please don’t tout it as something more than it is: a sub-par, cellphone/camera/3g device with a pretty form factor and UI.
Cheers
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your live cellphone broadcast does not answer any basic questions as to what is happening. You show fire trucks, but don’t know if there is a fire. All you say is that there is chaos, but don’t show anything to prove it. How useful is “news” that doesn’t provide any information?
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Kirk I love you and you know it, but you just QUOTED yourself.
Happy New Year!!!
Dave
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To Reid-
You bring up some good points. People do want high quality. But when a story is breaking, say the Tsunami in Asia or the London Train Bombings, people value expediency over quality. They want to know immediately what is going on. Sometime after the event professionals show up on the scene, so the video/narration quality does improve over time. However nothing replaces timeliness.
I don’t think the expediency of the cell phone video or live blogger will eliminate the traditional journalist. I do think that it will drive down the pay for such journalists and force many out of business. To say this new-ish technology doesn’t have substantial effect is unrealistic.
You are correct about the blogosphere being the first real test of the traditional media. An army of Davids (bloggers) now have the power to take on the Goliath’s.
With the proliferation of the iPhone and other smart phones, as well as the Flip Video camera, the average citizen journalist can now go beyond writing about a situation in a blog to covering the event personally, creating an independent newscast. This is a big difference.
I chose to symbolize this shift with the Cycorder/Qik + iPhone example becuase the iPhone, although not the best smart-phone available, nor the first, is now the most ubiquitous. The iPhone brought the smart-phone to the masses, with a tremendous amount of advertising, catapulting it past BlackBerry in terms of market share.
The next few years will tell us if crowdsourcing works for news gathering. iReport and similar citizen journalist initiatives are being launched through traditional media, and independent news agencies are springing up all over the place. Can they make a profit and survive? Will one outlive the other?
It’s early to tell, but my money is on a t least a 50/50 split of news dominance between old and new media.
To Anon-
I think you missed the part where I make fun of myself for the fire truck video. It is meant as an example of a timely video of a breaking news event. In case of a real news event, this video, along with other citizen generated videos, would likely be the first videos broadcast as more information and analysis came in to a news station or website.
I didn’t make that clear enough and that is my fault. Citizen journalist videos would most likely be gathered in a blog or website where details of the breaking news incident would be revised as more info comes in…exactly the way it is done in traditional media when an unexpected story breaks, sans the professional reporters and equipment.
To Dave-
Where did I quote myself? I am confused. Happy New Year to you too!
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Interesting that shortly after this post, you’re points is almost proven with the Hudson river plane crash and a “citizen” journalist got his iPhone picture of the event distributed by AP and on several Magazine front pages.
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Ummm…I have cycorder and I don’t see anyway to do anything with the video other than record it. How do you hook it up to YouTube or Qik?
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Kirk Mastin Reply:
December 14th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Hi BD,
Qik is a separate program from Cycorder. Qik has lower resolution but can stream directly to your personal Qik channel.
-Kirk
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For 2 months I have used a cellphone, 2 Xactis and YouTube (see URL) to tell the story of a rural community mental health center slated for closure by the state. How can I heighten the impact when the MD legislature comes back in session next month?
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Kirk Mastin Reply:
December 14th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Hi Robin,
I’m excited to see you using what you have to get started with your video work.
I watched several of your videos and here are my suggestions:
1. Use a tripod when possible, shakiness can distract the viewer.
2. Use B-roll over your interviews. B-roll is anything you layer on top of the interview to visually show what the speaker is talking about. It could be video, an illustration, a still photo or animation.
3. Tell the story in an unexpected way. Tell it as a story. Make a comedy out of it. Do the exact opposite of what you think you are expected to do.
4. Pre-plan your video in a storyboard with a beginning, middle and end. This is simplifying things a bit, but if you would like to know more please email me.
Good luck with your work. It is for a great cause!
-Kirk
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