Gonzo journalism? Sounds more like the brighter future to me

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I enjoyed this recent video interview by Tanya O’Carroll, a fellow volunteer at visionOntv, with mobile media maker and professional blogger Christian Payne. The man  talks great sense – I agree completely with his thinking about a future for journalism that includes the many citizen journalists in addition to the full-timers. Just the sort of […]

The bloody realities of self publishing

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Self-publishing is a grind. Don’t kid yourself that you can just kiss off that bestseller, throw it up on line as an eBook or paperback then lay back and count the royalty cheques as they roll in, particularly if you forgot to put in the teen vampires chapter. Here in the grunt room at Fraudcast News, […]

Uploading smartphone videos to multiple sites

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I have been volunteering with visionOntv for the last few weeks, helping out with their project to encourage the widest possible distribution of video for social change. That has involved me doing and learning ultra-light video shooting and publishing techniques that I hope to be able to share with other citizen journalists working to transform […]

Undercurrents – advice from the veterans of radical video activism

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7AbVs6_fwA&w=420&h=315] Paul O’Connor of Undercurrents gave an inspiring, enlightening and entertaining talk about the potential of radical video film-making at the Bristol Radical Film Festival 2012. This animated film is a neat depiction of the why in all this. It’s all about trying to break up the effects of corrupted government and their collusion […]

Activist Video training in Bristol’s Stokes Croft

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0bTIh5hqmo&w=420&h=315] I shot this brief, smartphone film this morning using a visionOntv video-making template, warming up for a day at the Bristol Radical Film Festival in Stokes Croft. This week-long event has a hoard of film treasures, meaning the 15 or so participants in today’s training workshop didn’t need any explanations about why our […]

Smartphone video reports – the dirty reality

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http://youtu.be/omHU59vR5M4 Having learned my reporting skills as a print journalist, before the internet got big, I have been trying for years to bolt on some video skills to take account of the new realities of news. This can be an expensive and time-consuming process – which means my output of video reports has been far […]

Cover drive

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I’m just about to finalise the cover design for the paperback edition of Fraudcast News, so this is the last chance for any budding cover designers to have their say on what it looks like. Having tried various routes to regular graphic artists, I decided to have a go myself. All comments – constructive or […]

Democracy, journalism and film nights

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It’s never been easier to complain about our politicians and our journalists – neither species has covered itself in glory over the last little while. The big challenge is what to do about all the problems they leave unresolved. Rather than railing against the failures, it’s far more uplifting to investigate alternatives. This post, which […]

No jobs, no money – ordinary Afghans pay the costs of war

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(Photo: Traditional market in Herat Afghanistan. 25-5-09 Copyright © Guy Smallman. All rights reserved.) I spent a fascinating evening in London on Thursday listening to two men who have stepped away from mainstream political thinking and policy on Britain’s military adventures in Afghanistan, both of them having experienced the place for themselves. The first was […]