Still in the post-VON afterglow..it’s back to the day-job. I have what most folks would consider a pretty exciting job. Here I am in the Presidential motorcade as the “in town travel pool” camera – a rather grim effort by networks to have a camera trained “just in case”. If he’s moving, our cameras are rolling.
I’ve travelled all over the world covering Presidents and other high-ranking government officials as they shape world affairs. What these people say to the world counts, and at the end of the day, they still go through my and my colleagues cameras to get the message out. It’s pretty heady, sometimes even dangerous stuff. Here’s a little video appetizer look into part of my day-job world.
A look into the sausage factory of old media TV news coverage from the cameraman’s perspective. This webisode we look at a day in the life of the White House press corps.
The trouble is, for all the risk and sacrifice, big media companies are are no longer in a position to adequately compensate the worker-bees (read: PHOTOGS, AUDIO FOLKS, EDITORS, ETC.) As I tell anyone of my colleagues and contemporaries who’ll listen… THE GAME IS OVER.
At VON07, iVillage SVP Ezra Kucharz pitched a slide deck that featured the theme of the “armchair media mogul”…and if I am to believe there is an industry wide $20 CPM potential cap on video content, not to mention an elaborate spreadsheet formula charting audience v. cost-of-production, then yes “armchair” is an apt description. But I prefer the term “micro media mogul”. I think companies like Blip see the potential beyond some artificial ad sales cap, and can leverege niche-market audience beyond traditional CPM models. In my VON07 recap video, Blip CEO Dina Kaplan fleshes that idea out. Can we start a meme here?? Can someone vastly more influential than myself get this “Micro Media Mogul” meme out there??? Scoble, Chapman, Pulver, Brogan, Jarvis, Abraham…anyone??
Also out at VON a freelance network news cameraman who was taping a Jeff Jarvis’ presentation became FURIOUS at the theme of Jeff’s spiel. Jeff was essentially selling the “you don’t need big fancy cameras…etc. etc. Which is cool… I dig ya bro! But, here’s this poor guy who feeds his family by being a professional cameraman, hearing the revolution for the first time. The revolution isn’t going to stop because it makes us upset. I say this to those working in the salt mines of traditional media: Who better to fuel the revolution than the people who have devoted their adult lives to slingin’ cameras? If companies can’t/won’t reward initiative, creativity and skill, I truly believe the market will. Jump in… the water’s nice!
