Courtesty David Martin

Normally, I like to write all my own material, but David Martin

does it far better this morning. Take a look:

Reading the new Clay Shirky book. A good read; highly recommended…

“In a world where publishing is effortless, the decision to publish something isn’t terribly momentous. Just as movable type raised the value of being able to read and write even as it destroyed the scribal tradition, globally free publishing is making public speech and action more valuable, even as its absolute abundance diminishes the specialness of professional publishing. For a generation that is growing up without the scarcity that made publishing such a serious-minded pursuit, the written word has no special value in and of itself. Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations, pointed out that although water is far more important than diamonds to human life, diamonds are far more expensive, because they are rare. The entire basis on which the scribes earned their keep vanished not when reading and writing vanished but when reading and writing became ubiquitous. If everyone can do something, it is no longer rare enough to pay for, even if it is vital.

The spread of literacy after the invention of movable type ensured not the success of the scribal profession but its end. Instead of mass professionalization, the spread of literacy was a process of mass amateurization. The term “scribe” didn’t get extended to everyone who could read and write. Instead, it simply disappeared, as it no longer denoted a professional class. The profession of calligrapher now survives as a purely decorative art; we make a distinction between the general ability to write and the professional ability to write in a calligraphic hand, just as we do between the general ability to drive and the professional ability to drive a race car. This is what is happening today, not just to newspapers or to media in general but to the global society.”

Here Comes Everybody. The Power of Organizing without Organizations. Chapter 3, Everyone is a Media Outlet. Amazon info here.

Rosenblum Institute Opens In Netherlands

Today the Rosenblum Institute begins a partnership with the Dutch Media Academy in Hilversum, Netherlands.

The Rosenblum Institute is a partnership between Rosenblum Associates and Concentra, one of the largest media companies in Belgium. Four years ago, we began professional VJ training for European journalists.

The Dutch Media Academy is one of the largest media training centers in Europe, with many media partners from RTL to major newspapers across much of Europe. But now that the VJ is rapidly becoming a dominant force, so too is the need for professional training.

Ernest Bujok, Managing Director, Concentra

The Institute’s main headquarters remains in Brussels, but now we are opening a second branch in Hilversum, The Netherland’s premier media and television city. (Hilversum is also the home of Endemol, our new friend and neighbor, and also the folks who bring you shows like Big Brother, Deal or No Deal, Kid Nation and Extreme Makeover - you see how pervasive Dutch TV is? I bet you had no idea).

We have high hopes for Capetown in the very near future and are in talks with Dubai as well. More to come….

DNA2008 Day 2

Our pal, Pat Younge from Travel Channel explains the Academy concept to the Europeans.

The South African team concentrates on the VJ movement they are bringing back.

Full house at the Marriott. Next year we have to find a bigger venue.

Deal making during break time.

Philip Hilven, founded and ran the first all VJ TV station in Belgium.

A thoughtful moment with Al Jazeera English service.

Swedish TV’s Leif Hedmann, the father of the Swedish TV movement.

DNA2008 Day 1

The first DNA2008 conference starts outside the Brussels Marriott. The hotel rolled out the red carpet for us, (but in this case, it was in black and white, but with our logo on it!) Nice touch.

When we started, we anticipated 150 delegates, if we were lucky.  This morning we had 300. Pretty good for the first time out.

The panels were all well attended and pretty interesting. This one was on newspapers and magazines moving to video  online. On board, the editors of The Daily Telegraph, UK; de Telegraph, Germany; the Chief Information Officer for McGraw Hill (Business Week, Aviation Week, etc..) …nice….

The most amazing thing about the VJ panel was that there was no dissention, (or hardly any).  Not so many years ago, as Pat Loughery (L), Director of BBC Nations and Regions (their national news network) reminded me, we could not even mention the term without people going nuts.  Today. not a single dissenting voice from 300 journalists and media execs.  The concept is a done deal, at least in Europe. What a contrast to the US!

All in all, the first day went great.

Far better than we had even hoped for.  Let’s see what tomorrow brings.

In The Jury Room

Get the white smoke ready….

Today, we spent the day sequestered in a conference room on the second floor of the Brussels Marriott, trying to reach a decision on the winner of the 2008 Concentra Award for Videojournalism.

This is not easy to do.  But we did it. Finally.

There were  many good submissions, and the jury represents a cross-section of European journalism, with many different and strong opinions.

On the jury:

Michael Rosenblum - Rosenblum Associates
USA Head of the jury

www.rosenblumtv.com

 

Leif Hedman - SVT
Sweden

www.svt.se

Leif Hedman has spent a large part of his life on the road with a camera in hand. He has worked as a documentary filmmaker, foreign correspondent, and professor in cinematography at the Swedish Dramatic Institute and he has served as head of production at SVT News. He is also one the members of the group which developed and introduced the digitized workflow for TV news production now in use at Swedish Public Television. Hedman has spent a lot of time spreading the ability amongst TV journalists to prepare, shoot and edit their stories by themselves. In this spirit he has appeared as a lecturer in several countries and he has held courses all over Sweden, in the Baltic countries and in Botswana.

 

Sue Phillips - Al Jazeera
UK

www.aljazeera.net

Sue Phillips is the London Bureau Chief for Al-Jazeera International. She is an experienced broadcast professional. Her career includes senior roles as London Bureau Chief for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Managing Director of News World International, and Senior Radio Producer and Senior Television Producer at CBC.

 

Willy Lenaers - Concentra
Belgium

www.concentra.be

Willy Lenaers is CEO of Concentra Media, one of the oldest and largest media groups in Belgium.  The Concentra regional TV stations, TV Oost and TVL are European pioneers in video journalism. Willy Lenaers will be the host of this year’s jury

 

Christian Trippe - Deutsche Welle
Germany

ww.dw-world.de

Christian F. Trippe was born in Düsseldorf in 1961. He first started work for the BBC Radio German Service in London, Deutschlandfunk Cologne and then WDR-TV in Düsseldorf before joining Germany’s inernational broadcaster Deutsche Welle TV in 1993.

Since then he has job roles including  Editor, News and Current Affairs Department (1993 - 1998),  Moscow Bureau Chief (1999 - 2002) and Head of Political Department in Berlin between 2002 - 2007,  where he was responsible for DW-TV’s VJ-activities. Presently, Christian is the Brussels Bureau Chief.

 

Vicent Partal - Vilaweb
Spain

www.vilaweb.com

Vicent Partal is deputy-Chairman of the European Journalism Center. Founders and Director of VilaWeb.com an electronic newspaper which is the main catalan language site and one of Spain’s most successful internet news services. Before worked as a journalist in several newspapers and as a reporter in TVE. He has also been working as a foreign affairs correspondent in Central and Eastern Europe focusing on the former USSR. He is academic-director of the Digital Journalism MA at Ramon Llull University in Barcelona and advisor of BarçaTV, the official channel of FC Barcelona. Partal has been awared with several prizes as the National Award in Journalism (2004) or the City of Barcelona Award in Journalism (1999).

 

Tone Kunst - NRK Nordland
Norway

Tone Kunst is editor-in-chief in NRK Nordland, which is one of NRK’s 12 regional stations. NRK Nordland has 20 VJ’s, most of their TV news are produced by VJs, and since 2003 they annually arrange the Norwegian VJ Congress . Kunst began her journalist career in 1980, working with both radio and TV until she in 1994 became an editor and later chief editor in NRK Finnmark, the northernmost regional station in Norway. From there she moved on to NRK Nordland in 2002. She has worked with VJs and strategies for integrating videojournalism in the news production for the last ten years.

 

Bas Broekhuizen - Volkskrant TV
Netherlands

Bas Broekhuizen (1975) studied History in Amsterdam. He joined de Volkskrant – one of the leading broadsheets in The Netherlands – in 2000. As a web editor and a project manager he helped build the online strategy of the paper. In 2005 he headed an experiment on multi skilled journalism. Three newspaper reporters were trained as video journalists so they could create video reports to accompany their print stories. The main conclusion of the project: writing an article for the newspaper and producing a video report on the same subject is not a good combination when you want both stories to be the best you can offer. To get quality, you need a dedicated team of talented video journalists. Since 2006 Bas has been the editor and producer of Volkskrant TV, a department of the newspaper that creates video clips for the web, IPTV and broadcast television. His team is a mix of retrained newspaper reporters and television professionals. They operate on their own, in small teams or together with their colleagues from the print edition.

 

Simon Bucks - Sky News
UK

news.sky.com

Simon Bucks began his journalistic career as a news agency reporter in Bristol, UK in 1972. He moved into television news in 1975, as a producer with HTV West, also in Bristol. In 1981 he moved to the ITV national news organisation, ITN, where he rose to be Senior Programme Editor, producing at various times all ITN’s main programmes on ITV, as well as numerous special programmes.

In 1994, Simon moved to be Head of News and later Controller of Programmes for London News Network, the company responsible for producing all ITV news programmes for London. In 1998 London Tonight won the RTS award for the best regional news programme. In 1999, he spent a year an independent consultant and producer; and executive produced ITV’s “Millennium Night” show on December 31st . In 2000 he joined Sky News, initially as Executive Producer, Business News. In 2001 he switched to Executive Producer, Special Events. He has been Associate Editor since 2004 and in 2007 moved to Sky News Online where is specifically responsible for growing user participation.

Simon has a special interest in innovation. Most recently he helped launch Sky News’ presence in Second Life. He was responsible for Sky’s reconstructions of the Hutton Inquiry into the death of the scientist David Kelly and the Michael Jackson trial; and he was responsible for winning permission to stream live stenography from courtrooms direct to TV screens. This work won the RTS Innovation award in 2004 and was nominated in 2006. Simon has been closely involved with the British Broadcasters’ campaign to get cameras into courts.

He is President (from Nov 07) of the Society of Editors, and the Vice Chairman of the DA- notice Committee. He is married with two children and lives in London.

 

Steve Taschini — BBC
UK

news.bbc.co.uk

Steve Taschini is an Italian who grew up in the North West of England. Leaving school at 16 he worked for various small companies as everything from a Butcher to a Shop fitter before joining the British Army. He served in the old West Germany and Denmark. He then joined BBC Radio Merseyside and has worked for the Corporation for nearly 24 years. During that period he has worked at 8 Local Radio stations, was the Managing Editor of three and for a time worked at BBC Look East, the regional news programme based in Norwich as a reporter and presenter.

Between 1998 and 2000 he worked as a freelance broadcaster, this included time as a Newsreader on SKY TV News. He re-joined the BBC to take charge of BBC Radio Kent and was a member of the management team which set up a new broadcasting region for the South East of England.

He was BBC English Regions Business manager for two years, formulating and developing England wide strategies for all 40 local radio stations and 13 Regional centres and is now Executive Editor of BBC Oxford. The centre is the BBC’s most advanced in terms of multi-media working and was the first in the world to use Video Journalists to produce daily television news. The station has a successful radio station and internet site serving Oxfordshire with the television operation serving the central English counties of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, parts of Gloucestershire and the town of Swindon.

Steve is an MA in European Audiovisual Law and Economics, he has one son, Alexander who is 12, his partner Claire also works for the BBC in Network news. Steve has interests including Music, Classic cars and travelling.