Wednesday, May 23, 2007

This Video Belongs To You And Me

To piggyback on Buzzbrockway’s post at Peach Pundit about YouTube warriors, consider the case of Congressional floor (speech) video…. who owns that material, and why has only C-SPAN had ownership and rights to that material… up until now?

Others are at least getting into the biz of selling back to us something that really should belong to us in the first place, least I feel that any and all video generated from the floor of OUR Congress should belong to us — and it should be free to access for any and all YouTube Nation tribal members to use as they see fit.

As the mighty media blogger, Jeff Jarvis says, and I fully agree:

Just as with the presidential debates, that democratic discussion should belong to the people and to truly give it to us, Congress should be doing everything CQ (Congressional Quarterly) is doing — for free.

Jarvis’ post in full is here. Times like this, we need to remind ourselves that we are now The Media.

And if we are, then why are more "traditional" journalists not acting as if they are now The New Media, rather than just waiting around for their bosses to tell 'em how to behave? (Jim Long is just about the lone exception to this sorry state of affairs, bless his new media heart!)

Matt Waite, a reporter for the St. Pete Times, tells it like it is. Preach on Brother Waite, preach on:

I can hear people I know gnashing their teeth already. Why should I do something that costs me time and maybe even money to benefit my employer when I don’t get paid for it? Here’s my response, and it’s two-fold: If you don’t, you run the risk of being first up for layoffs (so you’ll REALLY be uncompensated) and the more skills you have, the better off you are for whatever newspapers evolve into.

Or even if they go away completely. Let’s play fantasyland for a second: newspapers collapse, and all that content goes away. Someone is going to step into that void. Let’s pretend it’s Google and Yahoo and MSN. Do you think for a second they aren’t going to want new media skills? That they’ll be impressed with your paper clippings and your stubborn insistence that you can only write a story for a printed publication?

Come on. Wake up.

3 comments:

Amber Rhea said...

This reminds me of when I saw Ralph Nader speak at UGA in 2000 - before the social media "revolution," so he was talking about airwaves, not interwebs. But he made the point that the airwaves belong to us, not the networks, corporations, or government - and we need to remember that.

Vic said...

grayson, you better cut all this high caliber investigative journalism of the journalism industry out, lest it spoil your spacey image.

the plodding acquisitors, media monopolies and their stockholders are fixing to collapse Be prepared for your multicolored badge of courage when it unfolds.

in other words: good work!

tribalecho said...

Ah. The St. Pete Times. Back during Watergate I was at USF and reading that paper. During my most generous moods I like to assume that if the whole country had been reading this paper they would not have re-elected Richard Nixon.

I've read some conservative commentary comparing '08 to '68. My greatest fear is that we're looking at a re-play of '72. Kinda like 2004.