Prisoner of War

An interesting read from Men's Journal about journalist Michael Ware –a reporter first for Time, now for CNN– and his demons of covering the stories of Iraq for the last six years.

It's a unique look into the mind of a journalist that's been on the front lines probably too long but highlights what it takes to be there in the first place. The best portion from the piece as a photojournalist:

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Among his maxims was that it’s one thing to film a soldier firing his weapon, but it’s a whole other thing to shoot the expression on his face as he does it.

“If you think about it, to get that expression on his face, what do you have to do?” Ware asks. “You have to break from cover and expose yourself. You have to get in front of the man who is shooting and being shot at. Because that’s where the story is, in that face.”

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Keep it short, sweet and interesting

So data mining is starting to show that online video consumers are the ultimate ADD
patient. (Yes, I know that could be taken as an oxymoron, but back to the point.)

Nearly half the audience of any video has an itchy trigger finger around 60 seconds into the show. So if you are going to be showing anything longer than that, it better be pretty darn compelling to keep them around. You are going to have only 23 percent of your audience sticking around past the two minute mark based on the study.

Web video services provider TubeMogul report after measuring 23 million streams on six top video sites over two weeks.

That's 23 percent of the people that even bothered to click play mind you. So like the fishing guides in Belize say about setting the hook on bonefish on the salt flats: "You gotta rip his lips off mon!" Then you take advertising into account, if it's not a pre-roll, it's not getting ANY eyeballs.

Typing Without a Clue

This is a great column about the absolute crap that gets published under the flag of writing. The author basically demands that actual wordsmiths have an opportunity to be published rather than the likes of Joe the Plumber or Barbara Bush's dog.

While I was at the checkout lane of the grocery store there were a couple different celebrity rags laying on an unused lane that had signs of being read and consumed. All I could think about was the news of just two days earlier about the Rocky being put up for sale – only a token notion to close it mind you. Why do people have enough interest to pick up a National Inquirer to read quasi truthful stories about Hollywood hacks, yet choose not to be informed about their community and their government's actions?

Is it because that is what media is giving readers? Or are do publishing companies dictate consumption more than we really perceive?