Video Literacy
500 years ago, or so, Johannes Gutenberg put paper to inked moveable type and set off a revolution in communications. Before Gutenberg, we were an oral culture. The law was the ‘King’s Word’, religion was The Word of God,...
Read moreWe Launch A New Kind Of TV Network
Last Saturday, we launched a new kind of TV network, unlike anything that has ever been attempted before, and we did it in East New York, Brooklyn. The journalist AJ Leibling wrote in 1961 that ‘freedom of the press...
Read moreCanon Releases New “Prosumer” Video Cameras – But Why?
We are busy selling off our video cameras on eBay. Luckily, the are going like hotcakes. We used to own about 30 prosumer cameras. No more. What do we need them for? We shoot everything on our iPhones. When...
Read moreToday Show Ratings Up After Lauer Leaves
Reuters reported on Friday that the ratings for The Today Show, NBC’s flagship morning program were actually way up following the departure of former anchor and co-host Matt Lauer. The show, which averaged 4.1 million viewers in the Lauer...
Read moreHow The Media Stole An Election
The election was incredibly close. The Democratic candidate had taken the popular vote, but as you know, elections are decided by the popular vote, and the electoral count was still in dispute. Florida was hanging by a chad. Whoever...
Read moreWhat Can You Do With Your Old Smartphone?
For years, I had a Hasselblad C/M 100. This was the old Hasselblad, the workhorse of the photography world, the pinnacle of photography. I saved for years to be able to buy it, and when I did, I thought...
Read moreHow To Shoot Perfect Video Every Time
About 30 years ago, I came up with what was then a crazy idea. Instead of having cameramen, soundmen, (they were all pretty much men in those days), producers and directors to create television journalism, wouldn’t it be better...
Read moreThe Information Desert
For pretty much the entire history of media, going back to antiquity, there have been gatekeepers. These are the people whose job it is to decide what the rest of us get to see. Newspapers and TV networks, for...
Read moreWe Launch Man Up TV
If anything is ready for disruption, it is television news. Take a look at any TV news show, and what do you see? Something that looks like it is from the Museum of Broadcasting. Some old guy (mostly guys)...
Read moreYouTube Launches “Reels”
There is a kind of strange marriage between technology and art, and more often than not, it is the technology that dominates. Take popular songs. As you may have noticed, most pop songs run about 3 minutes long. Ever...
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