Media trends

The NY Times reports Yahoo! has hired a war correspondent, so-to-speak, to do a new kind of war coverage. Kevin Sites will travel the world and report from hotspots. There’s a lot of them–36. But, if actualized, it’s the style with which he’ll do it that’s interesting.

Sites’ Yahoo! boss says:

"If we execute this the right way, it is a great first step to show
people how we can present content in a different kind of way than
television," Mr. Braun said. "One that embraces the qualities of the
Internet." Those qualities, he said, including giving users the ability
to control what they see and how they see it, and also to interact and
respond.

As he travels to these places, Mr. Sites will write a 600- to 800-word
dispatch each day and produce a slide show of 5 to 10 digital
photographs. He will also narrate audio travelogues. There will be
several forms of video – relatively unedited footage posted several
times a week, and once a week, a more traditional video report, edited
in the style of a network news broadcast.

The combination of edited and unedited material, Mr. Braun said, is
intended to help counter the growing public distrust of network news,
which he says may be in part attributed to its slick packaging. "We
will have a transparency I think the Internet user wants and the news
audience is craving," Mr. Braun said.

I think that last remark applies to both network news and corporate communications.

A very interesting thing on the show’s website is a pretty detailed Statement of Principles. It’s got the mission, ethical principles,. I’m impressed.

This also reminds me of a Travel Channel show my wife and I became fascinated by this past weekend. "5 takes" is a series of one-hour travelogues shot last month by five early-twenties travelers at–you guessed it–5 major cities in Europe. Evidently they spent a week in each city, got advice on what to see from fans posting to their web site, shot the stories, edited the video footage on the fly on a Mac, and sent it to the Travel Channel for showing the next week. Last Sunday they had a marathon of the shows.

It was interesting, informative, fun, transparent and had that seat-of-your-pants feel. What’s amazing is that content by people who carry all the TV-program creation gear they need in a backpack is making it to the air and attracting a following.

Like I said in my little webcast: get your hands on the stuff and do it!