[MGP-Forum Announce] Using video in community journalism?

[Robin 'Roblimo' Miller]

>
> Are other folks experimenting with video for 
> ultralocal/community/citizen journalism? I'd like to talk about what 
> we've learned and what we'd like to know. What is the ideal role for 
> video in this medium? 

I'm using video more and more both in my professional role (for 
Linux.com and NewsForge) and to do little local feature stuff in/around 
Bradenton, FL. Here are a couple of URLs that show some of my "on my own 
time" experiments:

1. 19 (Video) Glimpses of Bradenton, Florida, on a Sunday Morning - 
http://www.roblimo.com/node/141

2. Kaos Gallery - Village of the Arts - Bradenton, Florida - 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPZT2DZ1nUQ

3. Sarah Meaker’s Three-Part Plan for Manatee County (video) - 
http://www.roblimo.com/node/159

I originally started doing video seriously again, after many years of 
*not* doing film or video, for my 2004 book, Point & Click Linux, which 
included a well-reviewed set of instructional videos on a DVD. In 2005 I 
wrote Point & Click OpenOffice.org, with more and better videos. Then I 
started doing both instructional and interview (live motion as opposed 
to screen capture) vids for Linux.com, and when the site's new design 
debuts early next year we'll have at least one set of videos every week.

Meanwhile, on the home front....

My wife and I live in the Village of the Arts in Bradenton, Florida, 
which has 35 home-based art studios and other arts-related businesses in 
a 4 square mile "overlay" zoning district. (My wife just opened *her* 
gallery two weeks ago!) Anyway, we were visiting a neighbor, Valeri, and 
I had a new camcorder with me, so just for fun I shot and edited this 
and uploaded it to a couple of the free online vidhosts: 
http://www.roblimo.com/node/132

That sucker has gotten some thousands of (cumulative) pageviews across 
the various hosts, and Valeri says it's brought her at least $3000 in 
business.

My next online home video was this turkey: http://www.roblimo.com/node/133

Some of my online videos have had 20,000+ views, and several have been 
linked from Digg & Slashdot.

I'm now doing little videos about all 35 Village studios and galleries, 
one by one. The latest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IatYTMk55ck

It's sort of sad that broadcast-quality video (shot with a Sony HC1), 
complete with surround-sound stereo, looks and sounds so lousy on 
YouTube; it's sort of where I post "drafts," with size-constrained 
Google vids as my favorite link-to freebie hosting service. Also 
experimenting with a "beta" version of Lulu.tv - Lulu is run by some old 
friends of mine...

At least with Flash, which all the new-gen free vidhosts use, you get 
fast buffering so your stuff starts playing right away.

Anyway, here's the meat:

I can now produce 3-5 minute "mini-infomercials" for small business for 
next to nothing, like well under $500, which is less than the monthly 
charge for a 1/4 page ad in the local Yellow Book, and less than 1/10 
the cost of a minimal one-week campaign on local cable TV.

So I have an accidental business here, just registered as Internet Video 
Promotion, Inc.

My total equipment and software investment is under $2000, and I've made 
it back *on weekends* already without trying. Note that the videos I 
linked to above were "no charge" deals, but the real estate stuff (oh, 
Realtors love this!) is paying the freight.

Those of you who follow such things know that the reason my employer, 
OSTG (divison of VA Software, LNUX on NASDAQ), leaves me alone to work 
at home 3000 miles from corporate HQ and more or less do whatever I want 
is that my part of the company consistently get more pageviews per 
dollar spent and generates more revenue per editorial dollar than darn 
near any content site on the WWW. And yes, the sites I run are 
consistently profitable.

Now I'm applying my same better-faster-cheaper methodology to "citizen 
journalism" video production. And bein' as I don't got no college or 
foundation grants to pay for my work, I'm answering the, "But how will 
we support our citizen journalism efforts?" question (asked by the 
Little Red Hen, among others) by building the revenue (advertising) side 
before putting much effort into the news side.

I have now tested literally every piece of sub-$300 video editing 
software out there, and have tried 8 different camcorders. I've 
researched shooting styles, editing styles, and sources for royalty-free 
music.So fine. I am now probably the world's leading expert on 
ultra-low-cost "Internet Video" production. I'm also testing every free 
video hosting service there is...

...and even though that study is not complete, it's already obvious to 
me that I need something better than the freebies. I'll still use Flash, 
because it's the most bandwidth-efficient way there is to deliver video 
over the Internet and offers a streaming effect -- vids start playing 
before the d/l is complete -- without the expense/hassle of actual 
streaming servers or concurrent connection limits, but I need to deliver 
richer, higher-clarity Flash video than the freebies in order to compete 
with TV/cable on the ad side, not to mention that I want my feature (and 
eventually news) vids to look and sound nice, too.

So my friend Brice and I are working on a premium video hosting service 
that's cheap to operate -- as in cheap enough that we (and 
affiliates/franchisees if we go that route) can charge ad clients as 
little as $10/month to deliver a spot up to 5 minutes long to as many as 
10,000 viewers -- and have money in the kitty to deliver at least as 
many minutes of news/feature videos as ad videos. And, of course, we can 
always ask ad clients to kick in a little extra to sponsor local 
news/feature videos, right?

Right now we're non-frantically building not only the hosting service, 
but also an online business infrastructure including billing and 
searchable (as in search engine-friendly) text "wrapper" pages for our 
ad clients. By doing it as a mass thing instead of a whole lot of 
independents each trying on their own, we can not only keep server bills 
way low but can also eat up search engine categories because we'll get 
lots more incoming links to our "mass" site than any local site could 
possibly get on its own, and in an age of searches and RSS, with "front 
page loyalty" gradually going away, this is a big deal.

Yeah, I'm going to try for some money from the Knight Foundation, except 
the forms on their News Challenge Site -- 
http://www2.knightfdn.org/newschallenge/image_noFlash.html -- don'tseem 
to work with Linux, and I haven't had time to fill all that stuff out 
again with my one Windows puter. And meanwhile, I might just find money 
elsewhere or even just do this thing without money as a bootstrapped 
operation.

If you want to join in this whatever-it-is on whatever level, let me 
know off-list. My current thrust is not only to improve my own video 
skills, but to get everything systematized so that I can pass it all on 
to others.

Robin 'Roblimo' Miller
Editor in Chief, OSTG
http://roblimo.com