Dead Man Talking

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Thomas Edison was an entrepreneur.

When he invented the phonograph in 1877 he also incorporated the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company. The idea was to sell phonographs - something which had never existed before. To create demand and push sales along, Edison listed fifty possible uses for the phonograph: dictation in business, books for the blind, a kind of primitive telephone answering machine and, of course, the ever popular ‘machine to record the last words of the dying’.

Notably not on the list was the idea of recording and playing music.

From The Guardian: Newspapers to Video

Michael Rosenblum is a former New York Times executive whose consultancy practice now provides training in video journalism all over the world for clients including the BBC. “Newspapers are very well placed to take advantage of web video - far more than local TV seems to be,” he says. “Because web 1.0 was text-oriented, it impacted far earlier on newspapers than it did on TV. TV seemed to feel that it was immune and so to a large extent was able to ignore the web. In TV news, they still believe that the ’show’ leads the website, and that the web is for ‘leftover video’.”

Which is why newspaper groups are investing heavily in video elements to their online operations. Both the Times and the Telegraph have “TV” sections on their websites, while the Sun and the Mirror sites are awash with video content - although much of it is aggregated from elsewhere. At the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger said earlier this month that £1m in investment would be earmarked for developing video projects.