Multimedia Maniac

This Samsung smartphone does it all, and people who love multimedia will undoubtedly be very impressed by that. The camera and network capabilities are impressive, and the phone can store a lot of information.

It even has a built-in mouse, so it’s more like a tiny computer than a phone. After you use it to get all of that great information and take all those pictures, what are you going to do with them? One enjoyable thing would be to get yourself a Cricut and get into scrapbooking.

There is so much that you can do with this hobby, and the pictures you will take are probably great. There’s no point in letting them languish on your phone or your computer when you could be printing them out and putting them in a great scrapbook with decorative shapes and borders for your friends and family to see and enjoy.

No, I can’t listen to the American correspondents. Even Reuters reporting is all about the bankers stealing everything they touch. You can’t turn on anything without becoming horribly depressed.
It’s on my television, my laptop, and all over the radio.

I am constantly left with an ominous all over feeling …

It’s official. I have a new job: Deputy Editor in Chief of NOS News. An amazing challenge, a great honour and it’s gonna be a lot of fun.

I will start June 2nd. Which means I will return to my native Holland after having been away for over thirteen years. But hey, New York City, Washington DC, London and now Hilversum seems like a logical move.

The boss blogged about it: Read it here. Apparently he wants me to keep blogging. So don’t go away. Neither do I.

We’ve been doing it for ten years now. We blog at NOS Dutch public broadcasting. But next month it’ll be bl**ging serious. No sh*t.

Blogged about it on (Dutch) new media blog De Nieuwe Reporter.

Signing off for now, packing up, and heading for the U.S. Will be sitting on the couch for most of the time, watching football and plotting a silent revolution.

Stay tuned for what a co-conspirator calls ’a quick fix’.

Twenty students from my alma mater, the very superior Tilburg School of Journalism, sent me some feedback on a recent multimedia production in Wales.

They were very polite.

Very honest, that too. Ouch.

(Check for yourself, albeit in Dutch, in the comments below the entry on multimedia math.)

I find it vitally important nowadays to hear from journalism students. We teach them how to become responsible journalists (values when telling the story), they teach us how to become responsive journalists (valuable ways of telling the story).

On that front, check out what Mindy McAdams is doing at the University of Florida. (Click on the pic.)

Mindy McAdams (photo Diversity Institute at Vanderbilt University)

On her college website she shares her syllabus on multimedia journalism for students. We also see some material from students, taking their first steps as multimedia story tellers. Exciting stuff, that proves one thing: Students and teachers learn from each other more than ever before.

A while ago, I queried my fellow members of the Online News Association. Simple question:

What non-American sites do you regularly visit?

Within hours my mail box was bulking with responses. At least, that’s what I hoped. But alas, in vain. After some subtle prodding I did get some better idea what (mostly American) online-colleagues consider international inspiration.

Let me list them all:

- BBC Daily

- Reuters Alert Net

- Canadian Broadcasting Company

- El Periodico

And that was about it, although some funny guy mentioned that we shouldn’t forget the international flavor of Alaska and New Mexico.

Damn colleagues, we just can’t be bothered, can we?

As I was about to give up, someone alerted me to the following site:

Global Voices Online, managed by Curt Poff, who plugged his site as follows: “It’s not hard news. But still, you get a good idea about what folks are blogging about in far-flung locations around the world.”

And so I find myself for some time already, mostly after midnight, surfing the world wide web of blogging. Little pearl in that international ocean of opinions is by far the bloggers from Burma. It is a beautiful world.

You may call me ‘weirdo’, I don’t care. I still love paper, as professed in an earlier entry. So here the love story continues.

6. I love all those people who actually read the paper on the bus, whether it’s Metro, London Lite or some other daily rag.

7. But I also love to smile politely and say ‘no thanks’ to the insisting paper boys handing out those freebies.

8. I therefore love handing over 50 pence for The Evening Standard to the old lady at Marylebone Station.

9. I love doing recycling, and more often than not I end up reading another page before it’s all tossed in that huge, green container.

10. I love Letters to the Editor, especially those in The Daily Telegraph. These folks must still use an old fashioned type writer. Love it!

So this is what tomorrow’s BBC website will look like. The online colleagues who we love to hate. Despise to be more exact, because they’re so bloody brilliant. A sneak preview. You didn’t hear it from me.

Click on the picture (of granny’s BBC era) to go straight to the new website

And to explain the face-lift, Richard Titus (Acting Head of User Experience) writes about drawing inspiration from sources as Facebook, iGoogle and NetVibes in his entry on, where else, the BBC Internet Blog.

Acting Head

Or did it? My local Indian restaurant reminded me of the tragedy. There will be a charity dinner this weekend. Because it was a big disaster. Apparently.

I had totally forgotten about it. Which is bizar for a cyclone, named Sidr, that killed 3,300 people, left millions homeless and wiped out fifteen villages, infrastructure and crops.

Bangladesh has appealed for 2.2 billion dollars in aid. So where are we, the media, to keep this story on the front page and at the top of the news bulletins?

We are nowhere to be found.

I ‘news googled’ the tragedy and mainly stumbled upon stories from the wire services. Then I went to YouTube and searched for dramatic pictures. Al-Jazeera jumped out.

New media journalism is so simple nowadays, isn’t it? If it’s on YouTube, if millions are watching it, if people on social networks keep passing it on, it’s gotta be good, so it will be news eventually.

It’s like the CNN Factor from ages ago. If CNN is there, then it must be important. That’s how Africa stayed on the agenda and world leaders couldn’t hide behind the argument ‘we didn’t know’.

I’m afraid cyclone Sidr did not only do a devastating job, but the little bastard was also successful in hiding the story from the rest of the world.

Or maybe we just didn’t look hard enough. After all, there were no tourists with their mobile phone hanging out on the beach, doing our job.

It’s really a sanitized version of the truth…

…and realize, that working multimedia means that it’s three times as bad.