At work by the pool
Ken Krushel knows what television network news is all about.
He was senior vice president of Strategic Planning and Business Development at NBC where he oversaw new media development, including digital broadcast, digital cable television and Internet activity, and designing the company’s “digital strategy” as it related to the migration from analog to digital broadcast.
Almost two years ago, I met him at the Eurasian Media Conference in Almaty, Kazakhstan. We were both speakers.
There we laid out plans for a website that would present a different kind of news - created by independent videojournalists around world. An open platform that could get beyond the time, cost and intellectual limitations of conventional television news.
We built a site called Citizen News.
Then we went out to try and raise money for it.
It was not easy.
We were late. After Youtube and just as newspapers were starting to migrate into video.
We talked to everyone in Silicon Valley. (If you’d only been here six months ago, we would have funded it).
No one did.
But Ken never gave up on the idea of a new kind of video online journalism.
He begged, borrowed, cajoled for content. He worked selflessly for free.
He continues to do so to this day.
It’s more than a labor of love. It’s driven by a deep belief on his part that television journalism can be much much better than it is; that there is enormous potential here that we are just beginning to tap into. That the web and video can provide a new and different platform for a much wider spectrum of voices.
It’s more than a business decision. It comes from someplace deep inside and an intense dedication to making the world a better, more interesting and better informed place.
Citizen News may never make a profit.
But its an awfully good idea, and its in the hands of a very driven and dedicated man.
I urge you to peruse the site, and if there are videos you can upload, to do so.
