Media Soup

There is a definition of documentary attributed to John Grierson that I like:

“Documentary is the creative treatment of actuality.”

While cetainly not an end-all-be-all, I think it is a reasonable starting point.

I don’t have as good of a historical definition of Journalism. I did look it up on Wikipedi, which seems as good a place to start as any:

Journalism is a discipline of gathering, writing and reporting news, and more broadly it includes the process of editing and presenting the news articles. Journalism applies to various media, including newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. . . . [Read the entire entry]

Anyway, I’m not entirely sure where I am going with this, but I left in all of the additional Wikipedia links because the except is so inter-contextually dependant, it is almost not even a definition . . .

In this ongoing discussion, sometimes people substitute in “news” for “journalism.” To me, this is odd because I think the answer to the question, “Is Documentary Journalism?” is “Sometimes.” However, if the question becomes “Is Documentary News?” I think the answer should be “Almost Never.”

My students are constantly surprising and impressing me.

One unexpected thing that came out of this semester was some great examples of branding – catchy titles that are appealing, memorable, and aprapo:

“The Great White Mark” – DC’s premeire white rapper and radio personality

“Sons of Pitch” – an a capella group

“ESMNBC” – a spoof news network (creator’s initials are ESM)

More student work, this time by Evan Madow:

http://smpa.evanm.com/emsnbc.htm

A student project by Thomas Wall and Michael Riccio.

Amita is an Assistant Professor in the GW School of Public Health.

She’s the one mentioned in the earlier post who took a trip to India with YouthAIDS.

We had a great meeting this week. She has an amazing vision for making aid money in India more accountable. She is working with grad students this Summer in a planning workshop.

This is totally consistent with interdisciplinary praxis pedagogy and provides a new (huge) window to study and participate in the use of media for charitable goals.

To the discussion of documentary and journalism, I want to add the not-for-profit communications that I discussed in a previous post. When we make videos for cause related charities – tear-jerker fundraisers and retrospectives, we use every documentary technique in the book. However, I would not call these videos documentary.

I would call them corporate non-profit videos or issue advocacy, but why?

One reason is that the agenda of the organization is paramount, and I think that a true documentary should have an independent voice.

If the best fund-raising video for an AIDS prevention organization leaves out gut-wrenching scenes of poverty and prostitution or scenes of condoms being handed out, so be it. That video has a specific purpose and a specific audience.

Does that mean that a not-for-profit can never make a documentary? No. It depends (IMHO), on the Independence of the voice making the film. Can this become a slippery slope? Of course. Are there grey areas? Of course.

Consider, a comparison between An Inconvenient Truth and The Fog of War, both winners of the Academy Award for best documentary feature. Both are well executed films, but An Inconvenient Truth is much closer to issue advocacy, where The Fog of War has much more of an independent voice.

I don’t think that either one of these hold up as journalism, but I think both are great films . . .

Check out this interesting article from the Hatchet.

It’s about a GW prof on a humanitarian trip with the organization YouthAIDS. YouthAIDS has been a client of me and Rob’s at Amigo for some time.

Here’s a video we produced for them.

Next Spring I am co-teaching a new class at SMPA with Mike Shanahan.

This week, we had our first planning conversation, and I think we have the chance here to something really innovative.

I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, but one thing we talked about was a blog that starts very early in the process. In a reporter’s notebook style, we could use this to report on the process itself and solicit user input before we execute even the first iteration of the site.

One modle for this sort of thing is NPR’s Rough Cuts.

I’ve gotten that question pretty often this semester.

It is not typical to teach digital vidography, Final Cut Pro, and HTML in one class, and thus this is a relevant question to ask.

After one semester, and with some caveats, I think we can say it is a good idea.

I asked the class this, and they affirmed.