MagneticMediaFed

First of all, I feel I’m not going to be able to write nearly as much in this post as I should given the amount of notes that I’ve been jotting down over the past three days. I suppose that’s the problem with not posting everyday. Ideas build up and then the getting them out begins to seem overly daunting for something that’s suppose to be fun.

But anyway.

Tonight, MTV will be airing a documentary called Iraq Uploaded at 8:00pm EDT. The subject of the doc is about the videos that have been uploaded to sites like YouTube by soldiers who were or are currently in Iraq. More so, its a doc about unfiltered news video (I haven’t seen it yet, but this article does a good job of setting things up).

Thanks to the ease of both uploading and watching web-video, it has suddenly become possible for people all over the world (specifically in war zones) to shoot and distribute first-hand accounts of these wars– sometimes (oftentimes) in a way that is exponentially more raw than anything the nightly news would dare broadcast. Keep reading by clicking below…

The Washington Post ran a similar story earlier this week as well, though it focuses more on those videos from Israel-Hezbollah. Both articles do a great job of letting us know exactly what is available and why what is available is significant (we’re dealing with a new channel of news that can be broadcast completely unfiltered and completely uncencored). Though there’s a fundamental problem with all of this: finding that information.

The short answer is to type “Israel” or “Iraq” into YouTube’s search bar, and just start digging, but most people (people who don’t have the time to spend hours in front of a computer monitor looking for that one scene that says it all) are not willing to do that. This is where we run into a problem with the so-called “Web 2.0″ philosphy. Its suppose to work like this: users submit data, tag it with key words, rate it, and then let it file itself into a system that can be easily accessed by people looking for those tags and ratings. And the cream is suppose to rise to the top (if I’m getting all this wrong web-people, then please let me know). The problem is that no two people are going to have the same technique to tagging and retrieving data.

So what the hell does this have to do with television?

I’m glad I asked myself that. See, everyone is always talking about the death of network news (or, at least I’m talking about the death of network news to people who will listen), and what system will take its place. The common assumption is that it will be cable news (24-hour). This is wrong. Cable news does not satisfy the appetite of the network news fan. Cable news is theater. The networks are suppose to traffic in actual information.

The way I see it, these documentaries and raw footage and commentaries that are being uploaded to Google and YouTube are going to replace that kind of news, and could be doing so right now if it had a better delivery system. That delivery is the future of media. Really, the delivery is always ‘the future’ of media. Someone, somehwere, somehow is still going to have to be reporting (whether that means interviewing people, or strapping a camera to your M-16 while on patrol with the military). But, no matter how eleborate the technological distribution system one is able to create, it will still require too much work for the average viewer to get the information they want to see. What they need is editors.

Yes, media editors are precisely what will replace network news, and if they’re smart it’ll be the networks that jump on this idea first. Let’s think about it, the big thing that determines ratings during the nightly news is whichever anchor is the most popular. That anchor doesn’t affect what is reported, or how it is reported (unless, I guess, you’re Dan Rather and suspect the president was a shitty National Guardsman), all that person does is act likeable and read the prompter. People then think they ‘know’ that anchor, trust that anchor, and watch that anchor. Loyalties are formed, and advertising is sold.

If we take that logic and move it to this huge mass of slightly organized, highly informational (as well as completely stupid and funny) video coming form all over the world, what we develop is something of an editor with a face. If Brian Williams posted 10 videos every evening of what he determined were “the most important pieces of information for the moment” people would watch them. Its a blogger-mentality. There are a million (billion?) weblogs on the internet, and the ones people read are those that they either relate to, or simply enjoy the style of. There’s enough variety that you never find yourself stuck reading a site you don’t like. If an organization could dedicate some resources to trolling the web for interesting video and compiling those lists, people would view them for the same reasons. We’d be creating micro-targeted networks for the masses. News, sports, entertainment. Every topic could and should have thousands of feeds assembled by people of like minds.

It’s RSS with a soul.

NOTE: YouTube does have this channel feature, and registered users can have a series of videos in their profile. This is close, but I think the problem is again in the fact that the only way to figure out if a certain user is collecting interesting clips is to watch them all. I guess what I’m proposing is some sort of accreditation. Almost like we need that big national figure that everone knows and then work our way down the foodchain. Like I said, I feel this topic deserves more words, but my mind is starting to be blown.

Tags: Iraq, Iraq Uploaded, MTV, Trends, war, web-video, YouTube

This entry was posted on Friday, July 28th, 2006 at 2:09 am and is filed under Commentary, TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.