New Times Call For New Methods

Okay, so I'm doing all my pre-graduation prepping, and keep asking myself how I am going to get a job in an industry that is everywhere shedding jobs. The best thing I can think of is to formulate a model of news format and delivery that would be most appealing and accessible to people like me.

I recently surveyed people on the Internet about news, social media, and new media. Of the 140 responses, 125, or 89% were aged 16-24, 6% were aged 25-34, 2% were aged 35-49, and 3% were aged 50+. Admittedly, the survey was directed, primarily, at the 16-24 year old age group because that is the age group that will be “tomorrow’s generation” of news consumers.

The first question I asked was how often respondents used social media such as Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Stumble, or other social media network. 98% of respondents said they used social media at least once a day, while 58% said they used social media at least five times per day I then asked the respondents’ main source of news. Seventy-seven per cent of respondents said that the Internet was their main source, compared to 19% for television, and 4% for newspapers. One person stated that magazines were their main source of news. No one answered selected radio.

The responses to these questions demonstrate that younger people are using social networking widely and the Internet is their main source of news. Although this survey represents a small sample, the results are indicative of a generally wider use of internet resources across the population.

I next asked for the respondent’s opinion on three questions:

1. Do you feel more connected to a story when it involves or is reported by someone of your age group?
2. Would you liked to be more involved in the news process, i.e. communicating with reporters and producers, suggesting story ideas, and getting feedback?
3. Would you like to see more international news (news outside of the United States) being reported?

Answers to the first question were split right down the middle, with seventy saying yes and seventy saying no. Although the quality of the reporting is definitely the most important thing to people, many young adults feel more connected to someone like Anderson Cooper and other younger reporters. Reporters that deliver quality reports, and appear to understand the issues of their audience, are likely to be more trusted, and, thus, more viewed. The second question was answered similarly -- split nearly down the middle. Seventy-six people said they wanted more interaction, Sixty-four said they did not.

The third question produced an overwhelming response. Eighty-four per cent of those polled said they wanted to see more international news reported by the American media. It seems to me that the American media, as a whole, focuses very little attention on what happens outside of the United States. This became apparent to me when I was working on the Mumbai terror story in November. At the time, when I talked to people back home, many people knew little, if anything, about it. I checked all American websites. There was little more than a headline and brief story buried among the other news items. The Mumbai attacks were one of the biggest terrorist actions in recent history. Despite the severe international implications, much of the story went unreported in the United States. I find this unacceptable and so, apparently, do many other people. Americans, I think, generally, are trying to become more educated about the world. Keen to the realization that America is not the only nation in the world that has an impact on our everyday interests, a major market exists for international news. Someone has to come up with a way to reach that market.

After offering my respondents several multiple-choice questions, I gave them an opportunity to elaborate. “What is the most important subject to you that you would like to see reported more extensively on any level (local, national, international),” I asked. 128 people responded. Forty-nine responses dealt with international news, and 17 with international conflict and war. Some of the responses:

• “International relations, putting conflicts into context and getting a real picture of how the world views America and our policies”
• “I would like to see more attention paid to international news from different perspectives, breaking from the normal American view.”
• “international affairs; human rights issues/violations; environmental advances; technological developments”
• “INTERNATIONAL NEWS PLEASE! I don't care about octo-mom.”
• “I'd like to see coverage that gave more context to stories. Covering the breaking news story isn't enough for me, I want to hear and read about the people directly affected by that news. A story becomes more real, to me, if I know how an event impacted peoples' lives.”
• “I would like to get a better insight as to how the rest of the world truly views the United States. Don't just show me protests and US flags burning, but really tell me how other people are reacting to the actions of the US”
• “Definitely the human aspect of international war.”
• “I'm no expert but I have a different sort of view on this question - if I want to read about specific international affairs issues I'll go to bbc.com, if I want a general overview of what's going on in the world I'll go to cnn.com, etc. I'm a fan of news sources that find their niche and do an outstanding job covering that subject matter.”

The way I see things, and my findings support this, there needs to be an Internet platform for in-depth, quality international reporting. There are few, if any, places on the web that combine all aspects of journalism in one place to make a product that can appeal across generations and hit all the demographics of news users.

I have also noticed that many in the generation that did not grow up with the Internet are following the lead of the tech-savvy generation and working hard to learn what is going on with all this “new media”. In the last few months, 12 of my aunts and uncles have signed up for Facebook, as have both of my 53-year old parents, my 80-year-old grandmother, and my 84-year-old great aunt. People are realizing how much the internet is being used for everything these days, and are starting to catch up with the times.

Therefore, how do we in the media take advantage of this phenomenon? After scanning news sources all over the Internet for years, and even more since I was with CBS last fall, I noted the best of what I found, and came up with a website plan. This online-only news website would feature original video content in the form of pieces and extended interviews, original photos, AP-style original web stories, a blog platform for producers, correspondents, and others involved, a microblog (like Twitter), and the opportunity for users to interact with producers and correspondents in real-time.

The focus of this site’s media would be on the most important international news of the time. Budget restraints could inhibit the site’s coverage at first, but I think properly launched and managed, an audience would quickly grow. To tell the best story, reporters and producers need to be on the ground in those locations. On the other hand, an interactive technology-enriched audience could be groomed as contributors when having someone “there” just is not possible.

Humanization is the key to this project, which is why I think that all aspects of journalism need to be incorporated. Original video puts people there, seeing what is happening in “real time”. Photos capture a point of time and emotion that sometimes tell the best stories. Including a typical AP-style story will appeal to readers. A blog platform (think World Watch) helps humanize producers and reporters by giving them the ability to voice emotion they might not typically include in a regular story. They can also use this to update people on what they are currently working on, or even solicit input on trends, events, or possible stories. The microblog allows instant communication with a Twitter community that is hungry for the humanized correspondent. Journalists are already seeing increases in their appeal through this form of new media. Here are some relative examples:

Rick Sanchez
Richard Quest
Terry Moran

Claire McCaskill, one of the senators from the state of Missouri, and a rising star in the Democratic Party, is on Twitter. In a recent “tweet” McCaskill reported, “CBS just wanted to know if tweeting was a fad or here to stay. I said here to stay. Easy, fun, and helps me stay connected to people at home.”

The plane crash in Amsterdam was first reported on Twitter.

And here is a story about the growing need for newsrooms to keep pace.

At my current station, an NBC affiliate, and the number one station in the market, we are already putting much of this into place. Except for our news director, assignment editor, web editor, and senior producer, students run the station nearly completely. As a reporter, I pitch three or four stories each morning for my shift. Usually, I am assigned one of those. I then have until 5 P.M. to shoot my video, arrange and perform my interviews, write and edit my script, record voice-overs, edit the video and voice-overs into a piece, and prepare for live or on-set shots. Stills from my video are used for our website. I also write a web story different from my television package, and the TV hit (with piece) is uploaded to the web with “web extras”, such as extended interviews or extra information not included in my piece. We are encouraged to use Twitter throughout the day to keep viewers updated on what we’re working on for the evening news. It all seems to be working. KOMU was the first station in mid-Missouri to go 100% high definition. Each year brings several Emmy’s, Peabody’s, and Hearst awards. The station is currently getting a new set, complete, so I've heard, with touch-screen technology, new green screens, and other technologies that many top-20 markets do not yet have.

Now, what about the money? Obviously, the biggest question in these times is how something like this could be funded. First of all, there would be a lot of multi-tasking by the staff. A skeleton crew would, initially, do it all. With limited newsroom support, this could even be one person. Travel costs necessary to put someone “on-the-spot” would be limited. Producers and reporters might often be the same job, and sometimes producers may have to shoot and reporters edit. Sometimes a cameraman would be paired up with a reporter/producer. Everyone would have to learn to edit, write, shoot (both video and still), and learn how to use the web efficiently. This would be a small-time operation at first and would require a lot of work and dedication by those who were doing it, but what is the point of putting out a product produced by non-dedicated people?

Then comes the question of revenue generation. Marketing would initially focus on a readily available existing base of readers: the Internet. Facebook currently has 175 million active users and is growing quickly. Three billion minutes are spent on Facebook worldwide each day. Each user has an average of 120 friends. The fastest growing demographic is aged 30+. If there is a larger platform for marketing and advertising, it is difficult to imagine. And the best thing…it’s free! Twitter has millions of users and is growing quickly. Links and word of mouth could do much of the marketing for the product by itself, for free. The expanse of social media is the perfect platform for advertising and marketing. For a generation with an ever-shorter attention span, they want news a simple click away.

The growth of social media is just starting to blossom and people are beginning to realize its possibilities. The stories on this site could easily be linked to my anyone with a blog, Facebook, Twitter, or Digg, which are things that I believe soon many people across the globe will be using as a normal part of life. Also, with the growth of multi-purpose mobile phones, people can get their news at hand at any time. They don’t want to sit through commercials or carry around a gaudy paper when they can sift through what interests them with a small device in the palm of their hand, and share those things instantly with other people.

The idea behind all of this is that once a group of people find out about a good idea on the Internet, it spreads like wildfire. Likewise, with the growth of the Internet, new news can become old news in a matter of hours, and often times, people want information before the Evening News starts. No one has yet found a great new way of doing the news. Once someone does, they are likely to be the leader in tomorrow’s news generation. A multiplatform news source would appeal to all users (television, print, radio) because it would include all of those things. The idea, after all, is to get viewers to consume our product, no matter how they access it.

People are catching on quickly. CNN might be the current leader, but has yet to pull it all together. Other organizations have pieces in place, but remain behind. Company leaders should realize they need to put faith in a younger generation’s ideas. In a business that has forever put the most glory on those journalists that have the most experience, while I realize that the experience these journalists have is very important, must realize changing times call for changing methods. Journalism is an inherent part of society that cannot be marginalized or sacrificed. Finding the means to put out a superior and competitive product is necessary. Sitting idly by worrying who will have a job tomorrow is not acceptable. A bold and active approach is demanded. I have found out in my short life that the worst that can happen in any situation is someone will tell you no. For something in which I believe, I would take a million no’s for that one yes. If this plan can help me get a job, it can also offer further security to other journalists while bringing a new and exciting model of news delivery to the world.

Talking Climate Change

Climate change is as real as the world around you and it is greatly affecting the world around you.

It seems that the only way to get this point across to people is to be blunt about it. Democrats and Republicans in America's government have spent so many hours inside the halls of Congress debating back and forth about its existence and what to do with it, have cut money cited as "pork" at the time that focused on climate change, and have, even in my short lifetime, largely ignored the subject.

Isn't it funny, then, that now that people have started to accept that it is happening, everyone in the government is clamoring to do something about it, but still, little is actually getting done.

CO2 emissions are the biggest cause of this climate change. And this is how it happens:

CO2 is released into the atmosphere, where it stays and is not broken down. Sunlight travels in through the atmosphere to the earth's surface, where some of it is absorbed, and some reflected. The sunlight (and energy) that is reflected bounces back into the atmosphere, where most passes through back into space, but an increasing amount (due to the buildup of CO2) is being retained by our atmosphere, thus creating the Greenhouse Effect that we've all heard about.

But the part that you probably haven't heard about has nothing to do with the Earth's solid surface, but its liquid surface. The amount of sun reflected is called albedo, and is measured on a scale of reflectivity. The ocean, being dark blue, retains a lot of light and heat and has a low albedo, while ice, being white, reflects nearly all of the light and heat, and has a high albedo. Since global temperatures have begun to rise, glacial ice and sea ice have begun to melt, creating a rise in water levels. Every year, less and less ice is retained in places like Greenland, the tundra of Canada, and Antarctica. Since there is less ice, and that ice is becoming water in the case of sea ice, there is a lower global albedo as the ice is not around to reflect that light and heat. So where does that light and heat go? Into the oceans, which in turn become warmer. Warmer water means less ice during the annual freeze, thus furthering the cycle.

Since every year, more ice melts, the rate at which the oceans are warming just because of the ice melts is alarming. Add in the factors of pollution and the general lack of response by many nations to acknowledge this problem, much less act on it, and we have a climate change crisis on our hands. Also, much of the industrial processes that were employed by the US, UK, and other western nations that started the problem are now being used by developing nations like China and India because it is the cheaper alternative to new, cleaner technology.

Acting on this situation is something that needs to be done by the global community, and action needs to come fast because if it is not already reversible, it seems it may be soon.
(Photo at right source surveygalaxy.com, NASA)

Looking At The London G20

The G20 world summit is coming up on 2 April 2009, and it is arguably the most important G20 Summit in its ten-year history. 19 of the world's largest economies and the European Union will meet in order to discuss the world economy and the stakes have never been higher. At this meeting will be:

• Chairman of the International Monetary and Financial Committee
• Financial Ministers of 19 of the world's largest economies, including the G7
• Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund
• President of the World Bank
• Most of the G20 nations' heads of state
  

With many of the world's markets at their lowest points in over a decade, including the DJIA (6627 at last close), FTSE (3531), Nikkei (7173), and Hang-Seng (11922), it is obvious that in order to save the world's economy from slipping further into recession (or possibly depression). The plan at the London Summitt seems to be to review how things have progressed since the summit in Washington, D.C. in November 2008, and to judge whether what was laid down at that time has been effective.

Much of what has been promised seems to be "reform" related, as in "reforming the current financial system, the IMF, and World Bank". Pressure seems to be higher than ever on the heads of state and financial ministers in attendence to get things done. Many have argued that the Washington Summit did little other than address the sources of the financial collapse (mortgage lenders, banks, etc.) but the guidelines that were laid out have been completely ineffective. It has also been noted that several leaders, including Sarkozy and Brown, have disagreed on occassion on what should be done.

I'm sure that free-trade and globalization will once again be the "solution" to the economic collapse, but it seems as though pressure is mounting from global citizens to look elsewhere for a solution. Another thing I find interesting is how much of a role the emerging economies of Brazil, India, and China will have in the talks. Their presence was felt greatly at the talks in Washington, but are the old economic powers ready to fully admit that they might not be the hegemons anymore? The inclusion of the EU is also something that should be followed, as the IGO could be one of the biggest economic players in the coming years as it includes four of the other G20 nations (UK, France, Germany, Italy) as well as several other quickly-developing nations, including those of Eastern Europe and the old Soviet bloc.

Another focus of the G20, though it will probably be overshadowed by the economic talks, will be on climate change. There's no denying by anyone who knows anything about it that climate change is very real, and it's happening right now. CO2 emissions are the largest source of climate change, and they continue to rise simply because the nations who are working to reduce them have not focused on it enough, and developing nations are not fiscally-secure enough to use new technology and are thus relying upon the technologies that the US, UK, and much of the rest of the west used for years and years to get us into this situation. It is up to the G20, as the world's largest secure and developing economies, to set an example to the rest of the world as to how to handle climate change as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Thinking about the G20 Summit, it seems as though much of the problems we are now trying to solve have only become these major problems because we failed to care enough about tomorrow. Our banks didn't fail, houses foreclose, markets crash, and ice caps melt at ungodly rates by some awful miracle overnight. It is because all people, from the heads of state all the way on down to you and I, failed to assess the risks of what we were doing today and how it would change the way we live tomorrow. Now that everyone has realised that the world is going to shambles, people are finally beginning to realise this. Things aren't going to get done overnight, just as they weren't undone overnight. But people need to know about the G20 and put pressure on the leaders at the G20 Summit to get done what needs to get done in order to attempt to fix the exorbitant number of problems facing our world today.

Reporting Mumbai's Darkest Hours

The story I did in the aftermath of the Mumbai terrorist attacks of 26-29 November 2008.

While working for CBS News London last fall, I did a lot of breaking news work, and probably my biggest story was on the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India. Interestingly enough, my entrance into the Twitter community had come only days earlier, and in hindsight, could not have come at a better time.

I was sitting at the news desk doing a bit of research for the story I was producing the next morning, and happened to get sidetracked looking up information about this "thrilling new movie" called Slumdog Millionaire. So I typed "Mumbai" into search.twitter.com, and what came up had nothing to do with a film...more a nightmare. I was pretty shocked at first to see "hundreds feared dead in mass shooting in Mumbai", "bombs destroy Mumbai train station", and "mass murder in Mumbai" popping up on the Twitter hashtag. To add to my shock was the fact that NONE of our wire services at the bureau, which included AP Wires, Reuters, European Broadcasting Network, Eurovision, and AFP, had a single blip about anything happening in Mumbai. So I told Andy, my bureau chief, that something was going on, and he told me to "keep an eye on it."

Twenty minutes later, up popped Reuters and AP flashes which went something along the lines of "Several heavily-armed gunmen attack Mumbai, India, hundreds feared dead." The newsroom went into breaking-news mode twenty minutes after I had done so. Mumbai-area television was linked up via satellite. Stringers were called. But how big was this story? Over the next few days, we would figure it out.

It was the day before Thanksgiving, an American holiday that had no real meaning to the mostly non-American staff at the London bureau, and I got a sudden feeling that I may be missing out on Thanksgiving for the first time in my 20 years. As rumours, body counts, photos, and video started to stream in to Twitter at a ridiculous pace, I found myself trying to keep up with everything while trying to relay all the information I was getting to our web guy, Tucker, and to the rest of the staff. After all, they had little idea what was going on, as all of their info was coming in from Sky and the Beeb. I soon discovered NDTV and CNN-ISN, the two main English-language channels that were covering the story the best as it unfolded, which meant video for us. On Twitter, people who were on the ground in Mumbai were posting photos to Flickr and video to vimeo as well as first-hand accounts of what was going on because they were there watching on the ground. A few emails later and I had "stringers" on the ground feeding me information on everything they could see, as well as access to their photo caches. Breaking news for cbsnews.com.

I stayed at the bureau until after midnight GMT that night, after we opened Nightly News with Katie with the story. I had to field produce live shots in the morning at 5 a.m., so I was sent back home to Earl's Court after a 14-hour day. I got back up at 4:30 a.m. and, thanks to the company, got a cab back to Chiswick. They had re-assigned a field producer to do the live shots that morning...my new job was to monitor everything Mumbai, whether it be on the web (which was their main focus for me, as all of this new web stuff was pretty taboo to them) or on TV. Whatever was happening in Mumbai, I was the bureau's hub of information.

The terrorists were still in full-swing, of course, and the web was still blowing up with information. Now, more people had hopped onto the Twitter bandwagon, and because of this, there were some crazy rumours and false facts being thrown around, as there are in any crisis situation. Mob mentality took over sometimes, but thanks to the work of the online community, fact-checking and sourcing prevailed (despite difficulties) and I had a catalogue of information that probably few other people in the world had at that point. I stayed up on the story all day and into the evening. My flatmates had cooked a huge Thanksgiving dinner, but I was to have leftovers that night. There was no way I was leaving this ongoing crisis.

Tweetgrid.com became quite a source for me as more information came out about links to Pakistan and the obvious mounting tension that meant due to their historic clashing. So a 2x2 grid with #Mumbai, #Pakistan, #Terrorist, and #India was a major help to me.

I started researching the implications and motivations behind the attacks. Since there was still so much information that was out there and so little being confirmed by any authorities in India, it was difficult. The Nariman House, two major hotels, a train depot, and a boat? Nothing tied together, and it all seemed more and more like a group of people were hellbent on murdering as many people as possible. By now, CBS had sent teams from our bureau and one of the Asia bureaus to Mumbai, where they were to be set up with fixers. I had suggested some Indian journalists I had been communicating with because I knew had been covering the events since the moment they happened, but the company already had some people in the area.

I stayed holed-up in my newly-designated office in the bureau for the better part of five days covering the situation. Two television monitors and three computer monitors were my best friends in that office for those long yet exhilirating hours I covered the story. I'm not sure if my immersion into the story was good or bad; I got kind of emotional (probably due to the major lack of sleep and caffeine and nicotine-induced stimulization) as the story continued to go on and the body count grew higher and higher. I think it all sort of came to a climax when I found out about Moshe, the young Jewish boy whose entire family was killed inside the Nariman House and who was rescued by his nanny. That, coupled with the emotional Indian TV coverage and enflamed emotions on the Internet made it all pretty overwhelming.

Hours later, the Nariman House, Taj, and Oberoi Hotels were cleared of the terrorists, albeit at astounding costs. When the Taj was finally declared safe, after going to tell the weekend producer, Agnes, I went back into my office, shut off all the monitors for about 15 minutes, and just laid my head down. I would go into work the rest of the weekend to work on follow-ups for the weekend shows and to get ready for live shots on Monday morning, but I was on cruise-control after the adrenaline-induced few days that had come before.

I was proud of myself. I had successfully covered my biggest-to-date international story (the Finland Uni. shooting and 2008 Mississippi River floods were the others) and had earned some respect from my colleagues. I knew that I wanted to cover international news from then on. There were so many stories in that story. Hundreds, if not thousands. And I knew, because of the response I had seen on the Internet, that there was a major market for these stories. Another thing I noticed was a major lack of American coverage of the attacks. This was one of the biggest terrorist attacks in the decade and had unbeknownst international implications because of the severe tensions between India and Pakistan, two nuclear-ready nations, yet Americans largely turned a blind eye to the situation. Many of my co-workers in London noticed the same. I feel, as an American, that we do not understand the world outside of our nation, and I find that completely inexcusable.

I read a book, In The Hot Zone, by journalist Kevin Sites, in which he says:

"We have unparalleled access to information, yet on the most important matters of our responsibility as global citizens, we live in information poverty. America is a third-world nation in its per capita knowledge of the people, issues and events outside its borders."

After seeing such a lackluster response from America in regards to the situation I helped cover, I couldn't agree more. And what does it serve as for me now in regards to my future?

Motivation.

Motivation to inform Americans of what every other developed nation in the world sees as inherent to their every day life: what is going on around them. We are a world of nations, not a world of nation. We have a responsibility to ourselves and the rest of the world to know how we fit into and affect not only the world around us, but the world as a whole, and I feel like the sooner this happens, the better off everyone will be.

173 dead, 308 wounded. This was not a small ordeal.

Photo Work

Here is an array of photos I have taken over the years. My camera? A Kodak C743. I could use an upgrade...

Starting Off

I am starting this blog to tell the stories of those not fortunate enough to tell it themselves. It will also include personal stories and updates. Feel free to contact me:

Resume/CV, Twitter, Email