Category Archives: Featured

The Future (?) of Journalism in the Age of Youtube

By Kirk Mastin | Published May 12, 2009

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

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.

krumspaper

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.

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NAB 2009: TV Production in the Age of YouTube

By Kirk Mastin | Published May 6, 2009

This year I had the fortunate opportunity to speak at the 2009 NAB Convention in Las Vegas.

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

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‘A Drive by Shooting’ or ‘Monkeys at Your Heels’

By Kirk Mastin | Published August 26, 2008

For today it’s not lo-fi equipment I’ll be talking about.

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.

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