For a first person account of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto check out Getty Images photographer, John Moore's, audio and pictures at the New York Times website.

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/world/20071227_BHUTTO_FEATURE/index.html

...and Peter McKay and Canadian foreign affairs think Iran is the problem in Afghanistan? Historically, this has never been the case and it was always Pakistan. It has always been the proverbial elephant in the room when it come to the conflict in Afghaistan and the shadow world of terrorism in south Asia and the middle east. The assassination of Bhutto its only going to make it bigger.

One of Hollywood's most successful writer tells it like it is for artists trying to make a living from thier creative work. This applies to writers, visual artists, film makers and photographers as well. The sad part is that when artists complain about being exploited or want a decent pay for their work THEY are the ones who are considered the troublemakers and assholes.

GO HARLAN!

This is a update of an earlier post ...gl

It's not news that online journalism is evolving well beyond words and pictures. What's new is how technology is giving photographers and the visually literate communicators and story tellers an edge in creating and delivering multimedia content. This enhanced journalism gives the Internet a major role as a new news medium. It coincides with new hardware technology developing new tools that journalists will be using to deliver their stories and information to their new medium.

BLACK TICKLE STORY PREVIEWS THE FUTURE OF NEWS

A story about Black Tickle, Labrador on the Globe & Mail's website on November 10th, while not unlike many stories about the death of rural Newfoundland and Labrador we have been reading in the Canadian media of the past 30 years, gives us a peek at the future of news and how the internet is becoming a new news medium in its own right.  Little did the people of Black Tickle know their role in our technological and media future.

What makes this story interesting is not the textual reporting by Oliver Moore but the multi media presentation by Globe & Mail staff photographer Peter Power. Power is a Newfoundlander, from Gander, who worked at the Toronto Star for many years before recently joining the Globe & Mail. Power "gets" both the aesthetic of Newfoundland and the potential of the new media.  His "video" is a well executed blending of still photos, audio, video and text animation that goes far beyond the traditionally separate streams of these media and the standard news video we see on TV. This kind of presentation is the logical extension of the fusion of various media and in the legacy of the cutting edge documentary films by Ken Burns (PBS.org) who in recent years has been using traditional motion picture film, animation techniques and analog technology to produce unique looking films. It is web technology that has allowed the evolution of the technique into the digital realm.

MELDING OF MEDIUMS

The web is a place for multimedia. Text, unlike in the print media, is the weaker sibling. Visual rules the roost in the multimedia world of the Internet. Visual literacy is as important as textual literacy in order to comprehend visual communications. As newspapers, traditionally run by "word people", start to figure this out, after many years of flailing about in the digital maelstrom, they are getting a grip on how to use the web as a medium onto itself instead of just a static repository for the material from their dead tree daily editions. Newspapers have been getting their photographers to shoot video and do "slide shows" for their websites for a couple of years but they have never "clicked" and never quite reached their full potential. Power, and his Black Tickle presentation, have taken the next step and shown the full potential of the Internet as a grown up news medium with its own unique abilities that newspapers and TV can't or won't touch.

NEW TECHNOLOGY FOR A NEW MEDIA

The days of Max Headroom are upon us. An animated cyberpunk broadcast journalist from the 1980’s foreshadowed the “camera to desktop” media world we live with today. Witness the wildly popular Yahoo News project of last year where they hired their first and only war correspondent. Indeed, their first ever staff reporter. In The Hot Zone with Kevin Sites saw Sites equipped with a digital video camera, laptop computer and a portable satellite phone, stuffed in a backpack, travel the worlds "hot spots" reporting with text, still photos, video and audio posted from remote location to the Yahoo News website. The reporting has certainly had its critics in the journalism world, as discussed by veteran journalist, Claude Adams in The Tyee, but the delivery method broke new trails with its ease, simplicity and low cost. It did with one person, a backpack and some gear from any electronics store what previously took major broadcasting corporations hundreds of thousands of dollars and dozens of people to produce. It took global news delivery to a new place.

What’s next? Higher quality in smaller packages. Reuters PLC, one of the oldest and most forward thinking news agency out there is already in the next generation. They recently announced a deal with Nokia, the cell phone maker, on the Mobile Journalism Project. They equipped a select group of Reuters’ correspondents with the latest generation of cell phones but "cell phone" is certainly an understatement. The Nokia N95 (Nokia.com) is a global communications device capable of high resolution still photos, audio and video. It also allows word processing and delivery via various communications protocols. GSM, CDMA cell phones, computer modem, Wifi and the usual Internet connections. Reuters clients are now getting text, photos and video from single correspondents at the major news events happening around the world. This how we get images and stories of sinking ships in the Antarctic, desert warfare in Afghanistan and fashion shows in Milan within minutes or hours of them being captured. Compare this to the 1970’s when it took a full week to get film footage of the Viet Nam war from Saigon to the news room in New York.

As newspapers see their readership decline  and as an increasingly

connected population turns to the online world for their news and information we will see more sophisticated methods of news gathering and presentation on the web that will be a combination of the traditional mediums of text,  photos, video, audio and animated graphics. This convergence has been a few years coming but the major news organizations could not figure out how to make money at it so there was not a big push to move forward. It was the smaller, more adaptable, news organizations and independent journalists that first took advantage of the quickly evolving technology and became the early adopters. The tools that journalists use get more portable with each new product and global communications via cellular and satellite are reaching even the most remote points on the planet mean near instantaneous delivery of news from anywhere on the globe to our computers or cell phones.

Of course, North Americans will first need to get consistant cell phone quality, service and rates on par with Europe, Asia and even Africa before they can be a part of this world on a large scale and at a reasonable price.

As more frequent visitors will notice we've been doing some house cleaning. All the old posts have been deleted, although I'm sure the Google has them somewhere in their alternate universe, and the focus is changing once again. Exit Zero, Dispatches from the Newfoundland Diaspora, has moved into a pre-production phase and hopefully you will see it in the human world before too long.

The blog was never meant to be ongoing single subject rant as is the want of most blog operators but rather a place display and comment on whatever projects I was working on at the time or the latest work. Some you know me as a commercial photographer, others as a journalist and producer and still more for my IT work. So, this is where this blog is headed.

"Where's the politics", you ask. Well, frankly, its gotten predictable and boring in Newfoundland and Labrador so ...WHO CARES!  Let's leave it to others to battle it out in the matrix. Does anyone one else find it sadly ironic that we now have the greatest global communications system in human history and the first thing people say to each other is "SHUT UP" ? So much for building community and understanding through communications. I have been using computers and the Internet since DOS 3.2, Apple II and CompuServe BBS and two descriptions I've heard remain true. "...it's CB radio for people who can type." and, "No one knows you're a dog on the Internet." ...and a third is a comparison to the Special Olympics, that's best not repeated in public  ..which, surprisingly, has some cross-over in the news media and subject for a future post.

I'll be re-posting some of the old articles, that are relevant, over the holidays and all the photo galleries will be moving to my main website at www.greglocke.com. Check the portfolio link.

The other changes coming in the new year will be a redesigned and cleaned up primary website with new portfolios and services for clients and look for a new downtown exhibition and working studio suitable for portrait, product and technical/scientific photography.

Have a great Christmas ...or whatever holiday you are celebrating :^)

If you don't travel the local blogs and have not heard...

The release of an ongoing email exchange between Newfoundland and Labrador premier Danny Williams PR person, Elizabeth Matthews, and journalist Craig Westcott are all the buzz in St. John's media circles this week. (I'm not sure anyone else noticed, though) Westcott has been blackballed by the premiers offices for interviews for the past couple of years and now is being shut out of government advertising for his fledgling Business Post newspaper due to his "negative attitude" toward the premier and his government policies.
When all the spin and personalities are removed it seems to come down to the cruel realities of being an experienced self -employed journalist (or a business owner in general) in a small town who must not only report news and events but is also called on to do SIGNED commentary and editorials ...something the local daily does not. Any business owner who is outspoken is taking a risk but what do you do when your business IS speaking out?
Blackballing journalists and publications is not new in Newfoundland. Former premier Peckford withheld advertising to the now defunct Sunday Express for their reporting. The press and media in Newfoundland has always been divided into those who kiss the seat of power and those who don't. The reality of the small ad market is that government advertising is a major percent of ad revenue for any media. Reporters and media owners judge themselves accordingly.

For the whole sordid tale check out Email Trail and Danny's Thin Skin at Geoff Meekers media blog at the Telegram website.

Is it possible to separate reporting and commentary work in a small incestuous market for a journalist? Can a reporter write editorials? They should be able to but probably not in a small village...but you got to make a living.

 
Caron Hawco for The Business Post.                                     Photography by Greg Locke ©2007

Thanks to Craig Westcott at The Business Post in St. John's, I had the opportunity to photograph some of the people featured in his Top 50 in the Newfoundland oil and gas industry issue. A few people have asked to see them as the Post gets scooped up pretty quick around town so here they are  ...left hand column or click the photos folder if you are late coming to this post.

...why am I not surprised :^)...gl

The Daily Herald Tribune (Grand Prairie, Alberta):

An error occurred in the story “Weather Blamed in Death,” which appeared in Wednesday’s edition.
In the story, it’s stated that the “Oasis shelter is the one in the city that accepts people.”
The sentence should have read “The Oasis shelter is the only one in the city that accepts intoxicated people.” We apologize for the error.

...but this may be the best media correction of the year.

One of the surest ways to produce a great correction is to write a scandalous article filled with salacious, untrue allegations. This year’s winner is a correction to an April article in the Independent Saturday (UK) magazine:

Following the portrait of Tony and Cherie Blair published on 21 April in the Independent Saturday magazine, Ms Blair’s representatives have told us that she was friendly with but never had a relationship with Carole Caplin of the type suggested in the article. They want to make it clear, which we are happy to do, that Ms Blair "has never shared a shower with Ms Caplin, was not introduced to spirit guides or primal wrestling by Ms Caplin (or anyone else), and did not have her diary masterminded by Ms Caplin."

...more at Regret The Error