Big names, big ideas at Big Think

January 30, 2008 By 2 Comments

A few weeks ago Peter Hopkins went on The Colbert Report to talk about the recent launch of a site he co-founded. Big Think, he said, is a site about ideas.

“But wait, isn’t that what the Web is?” you ask aloud. “Isn’t this whole thing just a digital farm of ‘ideas?’” Fair enough. But to Big Think’s credit, there is quite a difference between the ideas they are peddling—or inviting others to peddle—and, say, this.

Nor is it simply “YouTube for intellectuals,” as some like to call it. Says co-founder Victoria Brow: “We are trying to catalyze a global dialogue. YouTube is a wonderful site but that is not its mission.”

Big Think taps a gamut of experts to wax spontaneous on a range of topics—from atheism to Iraq to the greatest rock bands of all time—and invites users to comment via text, audio or video.

Users are also encouraged to start the conversation with experts, not just react to it. Throw up an idea about vegans, for example, and Moby could come forth with some thoughts. The two-party system? Denny Kucinich may have a few things to say.

And come to think of it, maybe some OJR readers are Big Thinking already.

We swapped e-mails with Brown to find out more about the mission, its future and just how the hell they lured all those experts.

–

OJR: So how exactly does Big Think work?

VB: Big Think is a forum for ideas on the Internet. We catalyze the conversation with the thoughts and words of thought leaders and influencers from many many pursuits (with many more to come) and then we open the conversation to users. Ideas are rated and popular ideas surface to the top.
There are experts on the site (designated by the purple background) and there are users (green background) but both appear on the home page. The top window is an editorial window that Big Think staff puts together each day—it highlights content on the site, usually around a specific question or theme. We have four features in the window at any one time. Each category also has a feature window. People can create ideas with audio, video, text or slideshow. They can comment on others’ ideas. Users can also compare how different people have responded to the same question.

OJR: And how do you plan to keep them coming back? What are you doing for marketing and publicity?

VB: We are greatly enhancing our social networking capabilities. In the next few months, users will be able to find like minded thinkers on the site, see recent activity on the site, see what others have looked at or commented upon, create playlists of their favorite clips, receive updates about content that may be of interest to them, e-mail other users on the site, etc.

We also have an interview platform that we will use to interview guests in remote locations. It is a specific platform created for Big Think that functions with webcams. Transcripts are being added currently to all interviews, so students and others interested in the content can use them as a research resource. We will also be greatly adding to our experts, getting experts in more specific categories so that they may not appear on the home page, but will be searchable in our expert network and will provide users with specific information on specific topics. The broader interviews will continue as well.

OJR: I’ve seen the mission statement, but could you please talk a little about where the idea came from in the first place? Did you see a particular void to fill?

VB: There is a void to fill. There is not an awful lot of thoughtful content on the Internet, and there is nothing that puts the value of user participation in terms of addressing global issues at the fore as our site does. There are a lot of conversations that go on behind closed doors with elite participants, and we wanted to catalyze a global conversation with some of these individuals, then open it up to everybody so they could participate at the same level. Change comes when people feel they have a place at the table.

OJR: Can you talk a bit about your recruitment tactics? What are you doing to get your name out there and attract “experts” to comment on these topics?

VB: We explain the purpose of Big Think, and most people that we are able to reach, really like the idea of expanding the conversation. Also, once several notable individuals had participated, it has become easier to have others accept to participate. We are now receiving requests for people to become experts.

OJR: And once you do attract them, how does the production process work? Where do you shoot them?

VB: We shoot them mostly in our studio in New York, however this will change as we have more and more remote participants, using their own webcams. We shoot on a white background, edit out the interviewer and cut the interview into specific clips on specific subjects. The entire interview will become available in the future. Our effort is to make the viewing experience as useable for Big Think users as possible—i.e. they can watch clips on precisely the topics they want, rather than having to watch the whole interview.

OJR: How about the user-submitted content? I’m reading a particularly heated thread on atheism right now. How is that different from a discussion board on a faith site? In other words, what’s to draw an atheist away from those sites to instead share his thoughts on Big Think?

VB: The user submitted content is growing well. Why come to Big Think? Well, it offers a platform with many types of thinkers, not just ones already committed to a specific view point—so it’s an opportunity to reach many people from many different backgrounds and parts of the word.

OJR: So I imagine you get some pretty outrageous video posts. Has that been an issue? Do you have much of a hand in screening that content?

VB: So far, not an issue. But we are prepared. Inappropriate videos are flagged by users and reported, and we also look through the site. We do want engaging converstations and won’t take things down that are serious arguments so long as they are not illegal or offensive.

OJR: Finally, what’s the allure for advertisers? How do you plan to segment the ad space?

VB: We have a three-tiered strategy:

1. Regular sponsorship and advertising–banners, pre roll, post roll
2. Category sponsorship opportuniites
3. Conversation sponsorship opportunities–a conversation can be sponsored and a corporate entity or foundation or other can submit a request on a specific topic and people to speak to it, and if it falls within our purvue, we will accept and gather other experts on the topic to round out the converation and invite users to weigh in. Very good for corporations who have specific areas of focus that they want attention brought to—and a good market research tool.

OJR: Finally, which topics are emerging as the most popular so far? And which aren’t getting much love?

VB: Business and economy, technology, faith and beliefs, truth and justice getting a lot of attention

Some categories we have are not full of content yet, but they will be in the coming weeks.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: ,

Entertainment or news? The CNN/YouTube GOP 'Debate'

December 3, 2007 By Leave a Comment

I was a YouTube “vlogger” at the St. Petersburg Republican CNN/YouTube debate, where questions for the candidates were chosen from over 5000 video clips submitted by YouTube users. I was not allowed to use my video camera during the show itself, but I was in the fourth row, right down front, in an aisle seat directly behind action-actor Chuck Norris and in front of candidate Fred Thompson’s wife, Jeri, so I had a pretty good view of the event. Later, I wandered freely around the “Spin Room” where TV personalities and print reporters surrounded candidates and their spokespeople and shouted questions at them. It was in the noise and heat of the Spin Room that I realized none of the candidates on stage had “won.” The real winner was Chuck Norris, with fellow vlogger Chris ‘Pudge’ Nandor (who wrote the debate’s theme song) and Hillary Clinton tied for second place.

In the Spin Room, Chuck Norris attracted the largest crowd of reporters and TV people. During the debate itself, CNN’s cameras focused on him repeatedly, to the point where he was on home viewers’ TV screens nearly as many minutes as any candidate. Chris Nandor, too, got lots of TV face time during the debate, partly because he was one row behind and one seat left of Chuck Norris so it was easy for CNN’s roving cams to pick up both of them in the same shot.

I was in most of those shots, too, because of where I was sitting, and after the 10th or 12th time a CNN guy hunkered down next to us and stuck a video cam in our faces from less than three feet away, I realized what Chris, Chuck, and I had that none of the candidates had: Beards!

My reportorial instincts kicked in at that point, and I asked Chuck why he thought none of the candidates had beards. “I don’t know,” he said. Chris didn’t know, either. Jeri, wife of Fred Thompson, leaned over my shoulder and confided that she liked beards and Fred had once tried to grow one, but it came in “too wispy” to look good. (“Where is Abraham Lincoln when you need him?” I thought to myself.)

On stage, while our section of the audience was whispering like like bored high school students, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney were attacking each other for being too soft on illegal immigrants. If I recall the exchange correctly, it went something like this:

Mitt: “Nyah, nyah, you ran a sanctuary city, nyah nyah nyah.”

Rudy: “Did not, and you’re nothing but a big old boobie-head.”

Tom Tancredo: “I’m meaner to illegal immigrants than both of you put together, yuck, yuck, yuck.”

Rudy: “Mitt hires illegals to work on his house. He has a sanctuary mansion, heh, heh, heh.”

John McCain: “Hey, kids, isn’t this a nuanced issue that deserves serious consideration, not silly yammer?”

Maybe these weren’t the exact words, but I believe I caught the substance of the conversation correctly: it was flat-out, grade-school name-calling — until mean old Mr. McCain, the playground monitor, broke up the argument.

This nonsense is supposed to help us choose a president? Oy!

Meanwhile, glowering over all the Republican candidates was the spirit of Hillary Clinton, who got mentioned (unfavorably) by almost every candidate on stage at least once. The only real point of agreement among the debaters seemed to be, “I may suck, and you may suck, but none of us suck as bad as Hillary Clinton.”

Oh, that evil Hillary! She’s so powerful that she managed to infiltrate a Republican debate without even being there! Not even Osama bin Laden is as nasty as Hillary; in fact, I don’t remember him being mentioned at all.

The debate’s TV reality was not really real

The first thing that struck me when I, along with the other YouTubers, entered the “lounge” area set aside for us on a mezzanine overlookng the Spin Room, two hours before the debate began, was the number of theater-style lights focused on the TV people doing their pre-debate standup schticks, each one under his or her own pool of high-intensity light, each one nattier-dressed than the next, and every one of them caked with as much makeup as a corpse in an open casket.

While watching the TVers do their warmups, I suddenly flashed on last year’s Reuters picture-altering scandal, in which a freelance photographer was fired for using digital image-morphing software to make a bombing raid on Beirut look twice as destructive as it really was.

“Isn’t altering reality through the use of makeup and artful lighting the same as using software to alter images after the fact?” I asked myself. When the candidates came on stage for the debate, I had the same thought again. Chuck Norris wasn’t wearing makeup. Chris Nandor wasn’t wearing makeup. I wasn’t wearing makeup. And I thought we all looked just fine. When I interviewed the “Gay General,” Keith Kerr, he wasn’t wearing any, either. But the candidates were layered with the stuff, and CNN personality Anderson Cooper looked like he was wearing so much face-paint that his eyes would fall out if he wiped it all off.

The stage was lit like crazy, too, with millions of lumens pouring down on the made-up candidates. If any of them had warts or pimples or bags under their eyes or facial discolorations or any of the other little appearance defects most normal humans have, they were totally hidden. It was as if we were watching cardboard cutouts of the candidates — or perhaps stage actors playing the candidates, instead of seeing the candidates themselves.

That was the moment I realized this event — the so-called debate — was entertainment, not news, and figured out a new way to tell whether someone we see on TV is (or is not) an actual, working reporter: Anyone who wears more makeup on-camera than to go to the supermarket is an entertainer, not a reporter.

This thought had been creeping around in the back of my mind for many years, but this was the first time it surfaced full-blown — and it surfaced in a flash of light almost as brilliant as the many spots focused on the debate stage.

Maybe some of the made-up entertainers who play reporters on TV are reporters in real life but, for some reason, have decided to hide this fact from us. If so, they need to stop acting like entertainers and start acting and looking like real reporters. I suspect that the appearance alterations we have come to accept as normal on TV are a major reason Americans distrust TV news, much of which — especially political news — now consists of made-up “personalities” interviewing people who are just as made-up as they are. Grrr!

The man behind the curtain and other out-takes

While reporters and TV people mobbed Chuck Norris, hardly any video cameras were pointed at David Bohrman, the CNN senior vice president who produced the show. I didn’t ask him some of the hard questions a traditional reporter might, because most of the ones I had in mind were already asked and answered in a Wired interview that ran the day before the debate. Instead, I just chatted casually with him, as did my friend and coworker Chris ‘Pudge’ Nandor, the guy who wrote the song Bohrman used to open the show.

Now it’s time for a little disclosure: Besides being a heavy YouTube uploader and a talented singer/songwriter, Chris works on the famously geeky discussion website, Slashdot, which has been doing email interviews using reader-generated (and reader-selected) questions since 1999. I work on Slashdot, too, as well as other sites owned by its parent company, SourceForge, Inc., so we’re both aware of the perils and joys of soliciting and using reader input.

We’re also well aware of the unreality that often surrounds what I call “manufactured news” events such as press conferences and punditfests — and the GOP/YouTube GOP debate — that typically offer at least as much entertainment as substance.

Another example of unreality here: Chris didn’t write and humbly submit that song. They asked him to write it. No pay was involved, but it has already led to more media coverage for Pudge than many full-time songwriters get in their entire lives. I wish I’d been allowed to turn on my video camera during the broadcast, just to catch Chris’s blushing face live, contrasted with the huge ‘Chris’ on the giant screen next to the stage, and the candidate’s smiles (in some cases a bit forced-looking) when he mentioned each of their names in turn. But all that is available elsewhere, so my inability to capture that moment (due to a strict rule prohibiting non-CNN still or video camera use during the broadcast) is no loss to the world.

You see, Chris didn’t know in advance that they were really going to use his song. He was as surprised as anyone else to see and hear it used as the kickoff for the whole thing. At the same time, I think he was a little disappointed that none of the questions he submitted were asked. Chris is serious about his politics; he’s a Republican Party chairperson in Snohomish County, Washington, and spent quite a bit of time coming up with serious questions for the candidates. No question: He deserves every bit of the attention he’s getting as a result of the CNN/YouTube debate, possibly more than Chuck Norris or Hillary Clinton deserve theirs. But in a way, I think he’d rather get that attention for serious political reasons rather than as an entertainer.

One thing (besides Chris’s blush) I wish I had been able to videotape during the debate was the rows of empty seats in the back of the room. The Mahaffey Theater, where the debate was held, has a stated capacity of 2030. I’d say at a guess, without counting, that between 15% and 20% of those seats were empty. Does this mean the Florida Republican Party, which was the group that handed out tickets, couldn’t find enough Republicans to fill the place, here in the middle of a heavily Republican area? Or was there some other worthiness test given besides Republican registration? There were hundreds of Ron Paul supporters outside; I’m sure many of them would have been happy to come inside and cheer for their candidate.

What’s a “vlogger’s” role at a heavily-covered event?

Since there were mainstream media types all over the place, I obviously wasn’t covering something the “MSM” had overlooked. Instead, with my hand-held Sony A1U video camera, mostly using nothing but a shotgun (on-camera) microphone. I was part of a gigantic media scrum, going elbow-to-elbow with reporter and TV people from all over the world.

Since it seemed pointless to shoot the same people and ask the same questions as everyone else, I decided to make a series of super-short videos that gave an “insider’s eye view” that wouldn’t come through on CNN or other cable or TV outlets. Did I succeed? Got me. Here are some of the videos I shot at the CNN/You GOP debate. Please take a look at them and let me know.

TV Personalities, Reporters, and ‘Vloggers’ – A Study in Contrasts
Video thumbnail. Click to play
Click To Play

A YouTube “vlogger” who doesn’t want to be a news pro…
Video thumbnail. Click to play
Click To Play

…but still made the best Chuck Norris video of all

CNN producer talks with Chris Nandor
Video thumbnail. Click to play
Click To Play

‘Gay General’ Keith Kerr endorses Giuliani
Video thumbnail. Click to play
Click To Play

Filed Under: Feature Tagged With: , ,

Painting with the palette of the Web: a pointillistic approach to storytelling

November 1, 2007 By 1 Comment

Backpack journalist and multimedia storyteller Kevin Sites stopped by USC Annenberg this week to talk about his new book and documentary, In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars and how solo journalists can innovate within new media.

One-man band

The increasingly popular one-man news bureau – a solo journalist who gathers news using multimedia tools – should leverage each medium to further engage the reader, said Sites.

In September 2005, Sites became Yahoo News’s first original content correspondent, pioneering the “one-man band.” Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone showcased an ambitious undertaking: a one-year trip to all the major conflicts zones around the world reported by Sites, with video, text, and still photography.

Carrying over 60 pounds of equipment, Sites leveraged each medium’s unique strengths to tell his stories. Video was for the “inherent drama,” the “motion” of the world – capturing verbs like dancing, singing, talking, exploding. Text was for “nuance,” the “details that bring a story to life.” Still photography was reserved for portraits to create a powerful “connection to someone’s face,” explained Sites.

Reporting simultaneously in three dimensions is “not a replacement for mainstream media… but an amplification of it,” said Sites. By putting a human face on the global conflicts and “stringing those stories together so that when you see them online, perhaps collectively, cumulatively, they provide a greater idea of what’s happening in that conflict zone.”

Sites views news in new media as not the “last word… but the first word” to pull the reader into the story. “The computer that delivers news is also a tool for you to respond to the information.” Under the intimate portraits and videos of ordinary people caught in war, Sites provided links to the chronology of the conflict (BBC country profiles) and to possible solutions (NGOs and political organizations).

The site drew two million viewers a week. Sites’ workload was heavy: Spending about ten days in each war zone, he transmitted a 600-1,200-word story, five to 15 photographs, and two to three videos every day.

“In some ways I felt that doing this project was a bit of penitence for my journalistic sins of past,” said Sites.

He was referring to November 2004. While covering the battle of Falluja as a pool correspondent, Sites shot a highly controversial video of a U.S. Marine shooting and killing a wounded, unarmed Iraqi insurgent stretched out on the ground of a mosque. Most international networks ran the full tape. All the American networks blacked out the shooting.

“It was absolutely the wrong decision,” recounted Sites, who supported censoring at the time. He explained, “That videotape to me had the potential of creating more bloodshed,” and that conflicted with the journalistic ethic of minimizing harm.

“We failed the public,” Sites admitted. “It wasn’t the government. It wasn’t the military… We censored ourselves.” Subsequently, Sites wrote a 2,500-word open letter to the Marines involved in the shooting on his blog, retelling the story of the shooting and putting it in context. That piece was picked up by newspapers and TV stations around the world.

“What that demonstrated to me was the power of online media in telling a more complete – and sometimes more accurate story than traditional media,” said Sites.

Focus on characters

After Sites’ return from the Hot Zone (and a year off scuba diving to decompress), he and Yahoo continued their foray into original reporting in May 2007, albeit with a dramatic change of subject. “People of the Web” is a series of articles and four to four-and-a-half-minute videos featuring people who use the Internet to “bypass the traditional world.”

He profiles people who circumvent traditional approaches to acting (lonelygirl15), music (bands on MySpace), and art (Phil Hansen).

“What I wanted to do was reach into the computer, and pull out that human being,” said Sites. He looks for stories that contain a strong Web component, a colorful central character, a compelling visual, and an element of social relevance.

For example, Hansen, an X-ray-technician-cum-artist became famous not through galleries, but by broadcasting his art-making process via YouTube. His art is interactive. One particularly impressive project – on a ten-foot, circular canvas-wheel canvas – was created with the words of his viewers. Hansen asked people to write him a moment that changed their lives. Each letter appears as a tiny dot on the canvas, but the blended result was that of a picture of the artist’s own face, cradled by four hands.

Sites said that he’s beaten the mainstream media on most of these stories. Fox News, for example, reported on an online dating service for farmers after Sites covered it.

Reporting in color

The media of video, print and photography contain finer shades that journalists could explore, Sites said.

Within solo journalist broadcast reporting, for example, are at least four techniques that “don’t compete with each other,” demonstrated Sites. Each technique offers a subtly varied angle ranging from micro-view to macro-view.

First, in a traditional first person stand up, the reporter holds the camera at arm’s length and films himself speaking over events in the background. A variation of this technique is one in which the reporter does not himself appear on camera. In both cases, the solo journalist can pan the scene using himself as the center, turning in place, and drawing a circle with his arm and camera.

A third technique uses POV plus nat sound. Sites showed an example of a video of a Sudanese woman singing a rebel fight song to lull her malaria-stricken baby to sleep.

Using a fourth technique that Sites calls “post-impressionistic narration,” the reporter provides a sort of director’s-cut commentary. He watches a video with the viewer, talking over the footage. The time lapse and informal narration offers a macro-view of the events on screen.

“Everyone talks about the Internet as the death knell for newspapers,” Sites said, “No, it’s TV that’s really bad online.” Whereas newspaper websites have become great sources of info, Sites said – they just need to learn how to monetize the Web – Sites criticized local TV websites for simply parking their aired stories on the Internet.

When asked if offering so many retellings of the same event would over-saturate the viewer, Sites replied, “It’s a matter of palette… It makes the journalist work harder.” And in the end, it benefits the viewers and the sources.

“The mediums are not displacing but enhancing each other, playing off each other in ways that are relevant,” Sites said. “TV didn’t kill radio. It transformed it.”

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »