Apr 24
Friday Noon Videos – Best of the Web Week of April 24, 2009
Posted: under Amusing Nonsense, Art, Multimedia, Online Video, Uncategorized, Video, Viral Fame, Webconomics, journalism, visual storytelling.
Tags: Evil Clowns, Friday Noon Videos, Seth Rogen, slow-motion camera, stop-motion video, viral hits, viral videos
Last week at the International Symposium of Online Journalists in Austin, I presented a series of viral videos to make the point that the national discourse is no longer “owned” by what we think of as professional media. It may seem like a trivial point, when compared to the other nuclear meltdown-level emergencies of declining advertising, lack of a sustainable business model for the future, declining audience share, sky-high debt loads, etc. – but I believe that adapting ourselves to this new environment is the first step towards resolving these other problems.
I asked the audience how many of them "got" the central image here, and could put it into its viral meme context.
Over at the Online Journalism Review, Robert Niles makes a compelling and far more comprehensive argument about why the whole concept of ownership of the news & the national conversation has been toxic to the mainstream media’s efforts at retaining its audience share.
Another point that I tried to make was that it is OK to use humor in your reportage, now and again. The relentless barrage of bad news these days is making us all a little crazy (see this excellent Newsweek article on this topic). There’s a reason that John Stewart & Stephen Colbert are so popular – they report on the news, they give it the kind of context that is so often missing on these stories, and they do it in a way that makes us crack a smile. It’s the voice that I remember from my early b.s. sessions at seedy bars with grizzled news veterans. It’s a human voice. The voice that says, “Well, y’know, I hadda write the story about [local businessman X] getting the Nice Guy award for the paper. But the funny thing is that everyone knows that he’s a screaming tyrant whose wife tried to run away…”
It’s the kind of voice that can re-establish the trust that our audience has lost in us. The one that doesn’t feel the need to kneel and genuflect at the altar of he-said she-said “objectivity.” The one that can make us feel informed, energized, and in control a bit – because things that we can laugh at are no longer quite so scary.
[And yeah, I know, my much-promised blog post about the effects of fear in the media on all of us is still in the works. Forgive me.]
So for all of you trapped in office cubicles, or just in need of a bit of diversion at the end of the week, here are the top viral videos:
