Adam blends social web strategy consulting, customer relationship management strategy, digital public relations and business and product development for an innovative set of consumer client brands.

Adam’s book ‘There is No Secret Sauce’ has quickly become one of the definitive books on social media strategy today.

See more of Adam’s work at Adammetz.com

Produced by Kirk Mastin | lofihistyle.com

FUTUROOM is an experiment in hyper-local and Social Media news reporting on a national level in the Czech Republic.

This is a story of how a national news organization was built from the ground up, based on hyper-local journalism and social media.

The finished film will be posted as soon as it is done.

Technical details:

This film was story-boarded and shot in four days.

I used a Canon HF100 camcorder, a Sennheiser Evolution G2 wireless lavaliere kit, a Manfrotto Modo tripod, and for some sequences, a Sony T500 point and shoot camera.

Total value of my equipment: $1350

Is this truly lo-fi? In this case I would say yes. This is the cheapest I could make this type of film: HD, great sound and steady shots with a tripod.

This entire setup fit inside of my small laptop bag. I had a portable shooting/editing setup wherever I went, and it was incredibly discreet and convenient.

I hope to shoot many more projects with this same setup.

-Kirk

Lo-Fi, Hi-Style in Prague: Kirk Mastin Speaks at FUTUROOM.CZ from Lo-Fi, Hi-Style on Vimeo.

Straight out of the program:

Futuroom Office

In the beginning, I thought that all a newspaper had to do to save itself was to embrace multimedia and video.  However, after being a proponent of this approach for over three years, I began to see that this was also not working. Newspapers were still dying and it seemed there wasn’t a heck of a lot anyone could do about it.

Newspapers were becoming obsolete because of the medium on which they are printed:

• Newspapers take a lot of capital to create. Think: printing presses, ink, trucks, man-power.
• Newspapers do not allow for comments, hyperlinks, video, or real-time updates. It’s a one-way conversation.
• Newspapers are out of date the minute they are delivered.

By all measures, the newspaper is inferior to the instant delivery of news over the Internet and mobile phones because the news is trapped in the inferior medium of PAPER.

Kirk Mastin in front of a Soviet era radio tower in Teplice, in the Czech republic.

A few weeks ago, I spoke at a conference in Prague called “Brave new world: media and businesses facing the crisis.” The conference was organized by Futuroom with support from Atex and Google.

(I was asked to speak about my ‘lo-fi’ approach to quickly making compelling video, using amateur equipment: cell phones, point and shoot cameras, Flip Video cameras etc. I believe that by focusing on the fundamentals of storytelling, planning, and technique, anyone can make a great video in a short amount of time.)

Images from the Futuroom Media Conference in Prague, in the Czech Republic.

Up to the moment I spoke in Prague, I really didn’t think I had much to say in terms of HOW the newspaper could be saved. In all honesty I had given up on newspapers at that point.  Instead, I was there to tell journalists how to keep up with prolific 18-year-old budding filmmakers and citizen journalists, who were beginning to change the way in which video is created, consumed, and monetized. I was there to tell journalists how to survive once they were laid-off.

I was there to show journalists a way to survive  the ‘newspocalypse.’

Maybe it was jet-lag, but at the time I spoke at the Futuroom conference I still didn’t understand onto what I had stumbled.  As the day wore on, I realized that the Futuroom project was actually DIFFERENT than any other approach I had heard of to save journalism.

The Futuroom approach did not rely on ever more byzantine ways of protecting and profiting from original content (such as the AP is attempting.) It also did not focus on crafting new ‘micro-payment’ or subscription based revenue models to create new revenue for relatively archaic traditional news services.

Nase Adresa journalists interview festival goers in Teplice.

Instead, Futuroom’s plan is to encourage hyper-local reporting, as well as genuine interaction between professional journalists and citizen journalists.

The bold claim of Futuroom is to have the most hyper-local news available, by combining forces between traditional journalists and citizen journalists at the most local level.  Futuroom understands that citizens are already participating in creating news stories.  Instead of pushing back against citizen journalism, Futuroom works WITH citizen journalists, creating a new hybrid newspaper model.  In light of this, Futuroom is building cafe/newsrooms where citizen journalists will collaborate with professional journalists to provide constant, hyper-local coverage.  (Futuroom will also train and equip citizen journalists…more on this in the next post.)

People reading the first edition of the hyper-local newspaper, Nase Adresa: Usti. Usti, Czech republic.

In return, small communities get extremely relevant and local news coverage.  Also, advertisers are able to target very specific customers.  And the national newspaper that Futuroom produces from these hyper-local branches, will be unparalleled in depth and national coverage, with only supplemental international news pulled from the wire (AP, Reuters, AFP, etc.)

It is too much to go into here, but suffice to say, I extended my trip to Prague.

During my time in Prague, I taught an impromptu documentary ‘lo-fi, hi-style’ video course, trained the first wave of Futuroom journalists, then stayed on an additional fours days to film a documentary about Futuroom.

I did this because I believe Futuroom may hold the key to the future of journalism.

They are taking truly bold steps in the Czech Republic. I was there to witness the very beginning of this project.  It is my goal to show you, and the world, what is happening there through my short film.  I want you to be the judge as to whether or not the Futuroom system makes sense.

To me it is the only thing new under the sun in terms of journalism and I can’t wait to share it with you.

-Kirk

Related articles by Zemanta

• Google launches Czech journalism project (guardian.co.uk)
• The changing media landscape, article round-up (thisisherd.com)
• A Latte With Journalism on the Side (nytimes.com)
• Hyper Local Journalism in the Czech Republic (prathambooks.org)
• Google Offering Training Services for Hyperlocal News in Europe (readwriteweb.com)
• Distributed Journalism: the Future of News? (horsesass.org)

January 15th, 2009, a plane crash lands in the Hudson River. Less than ten minutes after the crash, a man named Janis Krums snaps a photo of the downed plane and uploads the photo to Twitpic. As the ferry boat heads to the crash site to pick up survivors, Krum’s photo becomes the defining photo of this event, running on the front page of newspapers around the world.

So who is Janis Krums? Who is this person who has captured one of the most important breaking news stories of 2009?

Janis Krums is your competition. And this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Remember the amazing photos from inside the collapsed tunnels during the London train bombings?
Or the flurry of Twitter and cell phone text messages from inside the Taj Hotel during the terror attack on Mumbai?
How about the amateur video shot by a passenger, capturing the murder of an innocent man by a policeman in the San Francisco BART train station?

The amateur IS the journalist and the amateur is everywhere. All the time.

How did it get this way?

First: The technological barriers to entry have disappeared.

More and more cell phones have the ability to record and send video. Applications such as Qik and Flixwagon allow cell phone users to transmit live video straight to the Internet. The implications of this are staggering. It is only in the last few years that traditional broadcast news networks have begun to use satellite phones to transmit live video without the need for a news crew or news van. Now this technology is common-place.

Secondly: Distribution barriers have disappeared.

What used to take miles of cable and access to a select few channels licensed from the FCC, or huge printing presses, endless amounts of paper and a complex system of newsstand and home delivery, can now be done with a few keystrokes and reach a more targeted audience than TV ever could.

For those wishing to create their own mini broadcast news network, it’s as easy as purchasing a Flip Video camera, setting up a Tubemogul account, and hosting it all on a custom WordPress website. All of this for under $200!

The destruction of these barriers has flipped the media economy on it’s head. Imagine the traditional media as a funnel. At the top there are world events, below that, the journalists who create stories from these events. Journalists then feed their stories into their respective news outlet, and that information is delivered in a one-way stream to the public. This entire time, the range of news items has been selectively narrowed down to what the news outlet thinks the public should know.

With the rise of amateur content, the funnel has been flipped upside down. Information is no longer scarce and flows from the public up the funnel. The most popular news items are eventually noticed by the media who then write about it or link to it on their website. News is now flowing both ways, and no story is ever complete.

Obviously a teenager with a Flip Video camera is not going to put the BBC out of business. And there are many valid critiques of citizen journalism.

Two Critiques of Citizen Journalism

Production Quality

As YouTube has shown us, people do NOT want what we think they want.

Timeliness, brevity, and emotional impact, are key traits of the most viewed YouTube videos. In nearly every category, videos that excel in these three traits have the highest view count.  This runs counter intuitive to what we EXPECT people to value.  In traditional journalism we expect people to value in-depth, long-form, fact-checked and tightly edited reporting.  We expect people to value accuracy over timeliness.  We expect people to value high production values over spontaneous raw footage. But this is not so.

YouTube hits such as Susan Boyle, from ‘Britain’s Got Talent’, is a testament to what people really want.  People do not go to YouTube for the highest video quality.  They go to YouTube to be informed, entertained, shocked, or moved during the small window of time they have to watch something at work or in between daily tasks.

The days when people planned their dinners around the evening news are over.  People want short, informative, or entertaining ‘snackable’ bits of content that they can watch whenever they want.  The appointment-based broadcast model is coming to an end.

Accuracy and Objectivity

Citizen Journalism has been criticized for being inaccurate and opinion based.  True, stories such as the false claim that Steve Jobs had a heart attack, leaked one day over Twitter, sparked a massive sell off of Apple stock.  This certainly damaged the reputation of citizen journalists around the world.  However, the power of a social network based news distribution model is that any story that is released is subject to near real-time correction by readers.

(Time lapse of the first few hours after the London Train Bombings, showing the real-time article writing and correction.)

Wikipedia is created by the masses.  Yet, according to the magazine ‘Nature’, Wikipedia is more accurate and up-to-date that the Encyclopedia Britannica.  Much of our news will be this way soon, where a story is never really finished, it’s only in ‘beta’. Forever.

Many professional journalists scoff at the masses on YouTube.  In doing so, they do themselves a huge disservice.  The popular video creators on YouTube may not be trained broadcast journalists but they have added to the vocabulary of successful video production and more importantly successful distribution and engagement with an online audience.

You have to recognize this new vocabulary or risk becoming irrelevant.

So what can you do?

Broadcast journalists have a great skill: the ability to craft amazing and accurate reports out of chaotic and sometimes nebulous news situations.  This skill is a huge advantage when it comes to making compelling online video. But this skill alone is not enough.  There are new skills that you must learn to compete with people like Janis Krums and the video equipped masses.

The first skill to learn is how to shoot and edit a story using the equipment you have on hand.

Just as great works of art were created with the simple pencil, great stories can be created using Flip Video cameras, cell phone cameras and digital point and shoot cameras.  Sometimes it is impractical to carry a large camera or walk into a situation with a large crew.  Sometimes news breaks when you least expect it and you have no crew or proper equipment.  In these situations you must be able to work with what you have, and you should always carry SOMETHING on you that can take a photo or video and get it online right away.

Shooting with amateur technology introduces creative constraints.  Constraints such as bad low-light performance, weak audio and non-stabilized optics.  Each of these constraints can be overcome and by doing so you will become better at capturing breaking news and crafting compelling stories.  Technical constraints will enable you to look past the technical aspects of making a video, and focus more clearly on why you are shooting what you are shooting, and exactly how it will capture the attention of your audience emotionally and intellectually.

Put away the good gear and see if you can make something amazing with cheap equipment.  You will be surprised how this sharpens your storytelling skills.

Secondly, journalists must understand how to use social networks and video distribution networks to their advantage.  Currently, most traditional media establishments have only a crude framework for promoting content online.  Posting video on the official news website and writing a few blog entries is not enough.   News stations must get up to speed with how video monetization and distribution works.

How many times must the BBC or ABC news see their original content posted illegally on YouTube, racking up hundreds of thousands of hits under someone else’s name?

Those views could have been making the news station money if they had only torn down the wall to their content.  Content wants to be free and will be free. They have to attach some advertising to it, get it out there themselves on many networks, and monitor the number of hits, charging advertisers accordingly.  It’s money that is being left on the table.

Successful independent YouTubers and film makers already understand this and encourage people to take their content and re-post and re-use it all over the Internet.

Dying from Behind a Walled Garden

If your station or institution wishes to keep its content behind a ‘walled garden,’ then you must start thinking about your personal future as a journalist. You must become your own brand.  You must understand social media, viral video, and how to produce award winning content on your own.

The successful one-person video creator needs to focus on a specific type of content, something that they care about, are an expert in, and have access to. Content needs to be created for smaller screens, made in a shorter amount of time and with less resources.  Story, emotional impact, and/or educational value, must be the driving principles when creating content.

Your videos need to also have certain technical qualities:

• Under 5 minutes.

• Descriptive and enticing titles.

• Be tagged correctly.

• Have the best encoding and thumbnail possible.

(Here, Here, and Here are some great resources.)

Making great content is not enough.  You must create an online identity, a brand if you will.  This requires a beautiful and fast-loading website that serves as your resume, your social network headquarters, and most importantly as a place to gather your audience.

You as a Brand

Things you can do to create your own brand:

• Create a custom installed WordPress website. Load it up with social widgets. Network.

• Create and brand your own independent stories and distribute them to multiple video websites using Tubemogul (or a similar one-stop distributing platform.)

• Find where the type of person you target hangs out online and market to them.

• Create valuable educational content for free and for pay.

• Blog about what you know. Become a thought leader. Become the news source, the one that people turn to as an authority.

• Start Twittering, and build connections to people that will rave about your content.

Branding and marketing yourself will make you a sought after content-creator no matter what happens to the traditional media during these times of change.

There is no guarantee that traditional media will remain in it’s current form or have jobs for all those graduating from college.  Trends suggest that most traditional media jobs will be a thing of the past.  But you can thrive.

In fact you can do better than your predecessors.

Your core skills of integrity, personal vision and storytelling are in demand and hard to come by.   If you step outside of the box known as the traditional media and become more than just another journalist or camera operator, you will have the opportunity to innovate and re-define what news is and what shape it take in the future.

Traditional mediums may be dying, but great news and content is thriving more than ever.

Thank you.

I spoke specifically to the Broadcast Education Association at a panel called The Pedagogy of Television Production in the Age of YouTube.

What did I talk about?

1. What traditional broadcast journalists must learn from the film making vocabulary of YouTube.
2. How the traditional media is flipped on its head by the rise of the amateur.
3. How broadcast journalists can save themselves by being their own brand and marketing their work independently.

(This video contains an abbreviated version of my speech.)

*In the spirit of lo-fi content creation, this video was shot using a Sony T500 digital point and shoot camera.

-Kirk

Today I’m going to tell you about Lo-fi talent. And luck. And the masses. And cheap accessible technology.

Yesterday’s experiment was based on this lo-fi kick I’m on.

(Illustration of how I held my camera to shoot through my car window)

I asked myself what would happen if I stuck a 90mm lens on my 5D and shot randomly through my car window while driving to my girlfriend’s house in West Seattle.

It’s like that mental experiment: if an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters had infinite time to type, they would eventually produce Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Today in photography we face exactly the same problem.

With millions of new photographers in the last several years publishing photos to sites such as Flickr, we are seeing the infinite monkey theorem at work in the photography space.

With a cheap digital camera, a few Photoshop actions, and the ability to publish quickly and cheaply to the web, we are seeing an over-saturation of the photography market with work that is ‘good enough for print’ along with occasional accidentally amazing images, that over time will create an infinite library of excellent imagery covering every imaginable topic.

We are only 5-7 years into the digital photography age and the amateur has already produced enough free content to completely fill sites such as iStockPhoto, Shutterstock, and Jupiter Images.

In case you missed what is directly above:

• 4,374,279 royalty free photos.
• 43,312 new stock photos added this week (OMFG!!!)
• 115,818 photographers (!)

So what does this all mean? Where is Kirk going with this post?

Well, as a stock photographer at Aurora Photos I can tell you that there may be a sliver of a chance that a pro *can* stay in business over the long term.

What these gigantic image aggregators lack for the time being are two things:

1. An efficient image filtering system to find the images an editor needs at a quality level that is acceptable.

2. Model released images. Most amateurs have no clue how model releases work. That isn’t to say they won’t figure it out soon enough. Without model releases images are not quite as valuable in the market place.

So here is my message to those who wish to be pro photographers. The only thing separating us from a pack of wild dogs, er, monkeys with cameras are three things:

1. The ability to choose interesting/unique subjects and shoot them with a carefully developed consistent style. Consistency people. Consistency is key here.

2. Whatever you did before the surge in photography 5 years ago is no longer good enough. Stop bitching, please! If you fail now it is your own fault. The stakes are much higher now: you have to jump higher, be better than the rest and never rest on your laurels.

3. Be a professional with your business. Learn how to make money so you can stay in the game longer and outperform your competition. This means model releases, this means learning how to negotiate, this means learning how to figure out your cost of doing business, this means having a solid knowledge of how to write a contract, this mean dressing, talking and acting like a professional, not like a prima donna, scarf wearing, cigarette smoking, globe trotting, wine sipping, reportage photographer; who, without a trust fund, is ultimately doomed in this day and age…

…you can be all fancy like HCB once you have your business in order. Because things are changing fast.

Remember, the pack of monkeys at your heels. Good luck and god speed.

-Kirk