The great cultural anomaly of the age is Jackie Mason’s popularity on YouTube. YouTube’s Steve Grove asks him questions and we see the problems with the asynch interview (questions asked separately answers given). Mason goes on about the sick, sadistic, lunatic people on YouTube and we don’t see Grove react at all. Mason also says he wouldn’t walk on the same street with Barack Obama.
Queen Rania of Jordan — a more appealing spokeswoman one cannot imagine — goes onto YouTube to say that she wants people to understand the real Arab world and so she invites people to tell her the stereotypes they see and she will respond to them.
Here’s a response asking about homosexuality in the Arab world:
This man challenges the Queen with a news report from the Telegraph about a Saudi man who killed his daughter when he found her having a conversation in Facebook. He says that the stereotype that much of what comes out of Arab culture “is not only backward but brutal.” But he says it nicely.
Brian Stelter has an excellent piece in today’s New York Times about young people and their different relationship with media in this campaign. As Pew has pointed out, young people especially (and people of all ages) act as conduits as much as consumers. And they expect to watch video themselves. This is also a clear example of how the peer replaces the editor. My favorite line:
Ms. Buckingham recalled conducting a focus group where one of her subjects, a college student, said, “If the news is that important, it will find me.â€
You have to drop that bottle in the ocean, or no one will find it.
And this:
Rather than treating video-sharing Web sites as traditional news sources, young people use them as tools and act as editors themselves.
“We’re talking about a generation that doesn’t just like seeing the video in addition to the story — they expect it,†said Danny Shea, 23, the associate media editor for The Huffington Post (huffingtonpost.com). “And they’ll find it elsewhere if you don’t give it to them, and then that’s the link that’s going to be passed around over e-mail and instant message.â€
Now compare and contrast this with Lee Gomes in the Wall Street Journal, who can write clueful and clueless columns on the internet. His latest should be dropped in the latter bucket. He’s just not sure what to make of this internet thing and its impact on politics. Could be bad, could be good. Hmmmm. Web videos, especially on YouTube, are a good place to start. They have been called the death of the TV sound bite, for the way voters can experience lengthy realities without the filters of a news show constrained by time limits and commercials. The 37 minutes of Sen. Obama’s race speech quickly became one of the most widely downloaded.
Less clear is whether YouTube will be just as bad, or worse, at blurring the line between a fair point and a cheap shot than newspapers or TV ever were.
That’s he problem with columns: You have to write them even when you don’t have anything to say. I’ll wait for his next one.
:Later: TechPresident reports the ratings for the Obama race speech: More than 4million views for the speech or excerpts on YouTube.
Here’s my answer to the Davos question. In a word: transparency.
The question was: What one thing do you think that companies, countries, or individual must do to make the world a better place in 2008. A few hundred left responses before Davos. More than a hundred responded at Davos. Altogether, these videos have been watched more than 350,000 times.
Yes, the question and many of the answers are save, even rather insipid. But this was a symbolic act that had an impact at Davos. This is what I wanted to do last year when the Davos Conversation was started (disclosure: I worked on that). I wanted to bring the faces and voices and views of the world into Davos and have the powerful there respond. And so it’s a start.
Google cofounder Sergey Brin is asked what Google can do to help voting. His answer: YouTube.
Rick Warren, pastor at a megachurch and author of megabooks, uses his moment to promote “the faith sector” to equal status to the public and private sectors of society. “The Christian church is bigger than China. It’s bigger than India. It’s bigger than China and India together,” he brags.
Bono tells people not to let politicians slip on the Millennium Goals:
Yo Yo Ma tells us to work hard and be loving:
Hamid Karzai just tells us to be nice:
Here’s my video of Henry Kissinger:
Here’s the summary of the outsiders’ comments shown to the opening of Davos:
So I was in the YouTube Davos Conversation area when they brought Henry Kissinger over to record a video. Turns out it was the second time he’d recorded it; the first time, the camera didn’t work and he grumbled about technology. Turns out it didn’t ‘work the second time. But I was there recording the scene with my Reuters mojo camera (a Nokia N82 phone with a very high quality camera). So small technology saves the day. Here’s Henry the K, YouTuber:
The world’s leaders are asking you to tell them what to do. This YouTube video from the World Economic Forum at Davos asks, “What one thing do you think that countries, companies or individuals must do to make the world a better place in 2008?” Starting now, they’re also asking you to vote on the responses you like best (as of now, there are 60 to see). They will be shown at the annual meeting of machers in the Swiss Alps, starting January 23, and the machers are suppose to respond back at a YouTube booth at the conference.
I was lucky enough to go to Davos last year and I’m lucky enough to go again this year. How can you pass down the chance to hobnob with everyone from Bill Gates to Gordon Brown to Chad Hurley to Mark Zuckerberg with more political, business, and media machers mixed in? I was also privileged to work on the Davos Conversation project last year and this video effort is an extension of that. The conversation expands.
When the folks at WEF first talked with me about extending the conversation that occurs at their annual meeting outside the cloistered confines of the charming dorf of Davos, they admitted some nervousness. These echelons aren’t accustomed to conversation. But the WEF folks were smart enough to want to teach the powerful there that the internet age is all about conversation. So it started with steps. The Davos Conversation page (disclosure: built by Daylife) included blog posts from bloggers there as well as Technorati links to others from elsewhere who joined the conversation, plus some videos we took. (Here are Arianna Huffington and me at the end; here’s my video of YouTube’s Chad Hurley announcing his revenue sharing program.) I wandered around with my little camera shooting video and not even knowing that that itself was breaking a few rules. But the castles didn’t tumble and so the conversation continues and grows.
That’s why Davos is involving YouTube and the world in trying to extend this via video. There’ll be a booth on the main floor of the conference center where the powerful can record a message to the world — “Hey, YouTubers” — or a response to your messages. Blogging continues with some new guests (Michael Arrington of TechCrunch is joining this year and I know they were trying to get a few more unexpected participants). And Reuters is extending its mojo (mobile journalism) project by equipping some of the participants with their kits (I weaseled my way into this one!) to chronicle the meeting in text, photos, audio, and video.
To join this conversation, just use the Davos08 tag wherever you put up blog posts or videos or respond to the Davos invitation here.
Here’s one reply to the Davos question, arguing for technology to spread education:
This reply takes only eight second and makes sense:
This gumchewer says the single thing that would improve the world would be universal internet access: free wi-fi for all:
Here’s a guy who wants to use YouTube to actually spread knowledge:
This Canadian wants product labels revealing the impact of the products we buy on the world:
Queen Elizabeth got considerable press for opening up a YouTube channel for her Christmas message. Now Sky News is asking the people for their messages back to the Queen. Email the clip to newsonline@bskyb.com or upload it to YouTube and tag it SkyChristmasSpeech.
I love Jimmy Justice, the guy who wanders the streets of New York videotaping traffic cops who are violating the traffic laws they are supposed to enforce and confronting them with their sins. This is the power of the people, armed with their own cameras and the internet, acting as watchdogs on government. Isn’t that journalism?
On the Today Show this morning, David Gregory got on a high horse interviewing Jimmy, asking whether he wasn’t just a bit obnoxious. (I dare you to try to find the story on the show’s site; I can’t.) *
Well, what’s any less obnoxious about a reporter asking the same question? That’s exactly why subjects so often think reporters are rude: they’re being asked questions they don’t want to answer. But here’s Gregory calling a citizen with a camera obnoxious for doing what reporters do. Maybe that’s because Jimmy has an accent and an attitude. Gregory clearly thinks that asking the question in a tie with a sterile TV voice is less obnoxious: more professional. Style is substance on TV. And I can hear someone now saying that Jimmy has an ax to grind, a bias, an agenda. Well, yes, but so does a reporter when he decides to follow that cop and confront her about her actions; that agenda is precisely the motivation for the question. It’s all journalism.
If they really care about watchdogging government and its abuses of power, the proper response from the Today show and any journalistic organization should be to encourage more people to do what Jimmy is doing. What’s wrong with more watchdogs on the street? Indeed, Today should hand out some video cameras or at least share a few lessons with Jimmy about how to shoot video without giving us motion sickness. And it would be generous of them to talk about Jimmy’s rights to shoot public officials’ actions in public, since those officials try to threaten and intimidate Jimmy.
Hey, Mr. Gregory: You and Jimmy are on the same side. You’re doing journalism. It may not sound as slick, but the end result is the same.
* LATER: Thanks to Dan in the comments for finding the Today segment. David Gregory’s fuller quote: “It’s a little obnoxious. Do you not worry about coming off as an obnoxious, aggressive guy here?”
Do reporters? Should they?
Jimmy says he was frustrated getting anyone to pay attention to his complaints about the traffic officers: “I had to bring it to YouTube. I had to show it to the people.”
My Guardian column this week is about the YouTube debates, bringing together some of what I’ve talked about here. (Nonregistration version here.) Snippet:
The two media did not mix well. CNN displayed the YouTube videos in small squares on a big screen shot by a big camera - reduced, finally, to postage stamps on our screens. It seemed the network was ashamed to show the videos full-screen because they would not look like real TV. But, of course, that’s just the point. They weren’t real TV. They were bits of conversation.
TV doesn’t know how to have a conversation. TV knows how to perform. The event’s moderator, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, behaved almost apologetically about the intrusion of these real people, who speak without benefit of make-up. He interrupted the candidates constantly, allowing them shallow soundbites a fraction the length and depth of even a YouTube video.
So I wish we’d have the YouTube debate on YouTube and leave TV behind. A few of the candidates are beginning to answer voters’ questions and challenges directly, small-camera-to-small-camera. Thus they are opening up a dialogue between candidate and constituent that was not possible before the internet: a conversation in our new public square. That is how elections should be held, amid the citizens.
The Republicans are, I believe, making a gigantic mistake in running away, scared, from the internet. They’re running away from voters — and their money.
The latest indication of their fear of the internet is their attempt to fink out on the YouTube/CNN Republican debate. The party line — as we see from Rush and others — is that YouTube is somehow biased. That’s absurd. That would be like the Democrats saying that mail is biased because the Republicans made the first, best use of it. If internet video is biased it is a damned bad sign for the right and mighty strange considering the leading work done in the medium by the conservatives in the UK, France, and Germany. Hugh Hewitt frets that listening to YouTube will open up Republicans to cheap shots. That’s merely convenient paranoia. They’re looking for excuses to stay away from this dance.
The Republicans are scared of the internet. They are scared of us.
Giuliani has, as this blog as pointed out frequently, run away from the internet and interacting with voters there at every opportunity: It shows in his pathetic internet fundraising. Patrick Ruffini, former Giuliani internet guy (we can see why that’s former) frets that the Republicans will be outraised by $100 million because of this attitude. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney is sniffing snottily at the quality of the questions on YouTube… from citizens. John McCain has been stiff and scared in his videos. Sam Brownback has hardly made any videos and the ones he has made are as stiff as a Kansas silo. The entire party has left the internet to Ron Paul. And he has taken it and run.
In the end, this is not only short-sighted tactically but also essentially insulting to the American people. We are on the internt. Come talk with us. What, you’re too scared to? Big, tough terrorists don’t scare you but we do? Come on, boys, we don’t bite. But we do vote.
CNN, bless their hearts, has made the video of the YouTube debate available for downloading, which makes it easy to remix it. Have at it, video generation.
