Joel Hyatt's (and Al Gore's) Version of Citizen Journalism

It's called Current TV. I was briefed on this a few weeks ago. What I heard was very promising from the user-created content perspective. Let's hope it lives up to its dreams.

The site's Press page is password-protected, as in requiring a request for a password. Baffling.

Comments

[Gabe]

Dan, I have a suggestion somewhat related to this post. Usually when I read about a new Grassroots/Citizens'/Open-source/User-created/etc. news site launch, I click through to find a welcome page mostly in the service of bootstrapping the operation. Which is fine. I'm not complaining. These notices are news in themselves.

But what I rarely see are links that show good examples of such journalism in action. You know, links to original stories, etc. The kind of links that show that things are well underway. (Are things underway?)

So, my suggestion is this: If you're interested in providing occasional roundups of good examples of grassroots media in action, then I (one of your readers) will be happy to read this! I am stating this in an indirect manner precisely because bloggers are often touchy, rightfully, about readers pushing them to change their blogging. Well, I don't want to push anyone, but I am saying there is an unmet demand for these kinds of examples.

[lcb]

My boyfriend works there. I'll mention this to him.

[Not a Yank]

Ok now how can I go short on this one. The CBC interactive no less, led by a man who has his fingers on the pulse of his father. The programming on this is going to really draw in the viewers.

On the plus side it will be one more evolutionary dead end that will help us figure out what will work.

[david]

For what it's worth I teach, and not for the money, film editing, history and theory at a local University in San Francisco. I am also a film maker (and yes I make a living at it). After looking at Current TV's website, especially it's video content, I lost all hope that this endeavor by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt would be a sort of Democratic "light on the hill" and intelligent response to conservative media outlets such as Fox TV. Tragically, the content is trite, self-indulgent, self-promotional, less than engaging, particularly uninformative and anything but original. It takes on a tone like that of an Entertainment Weekly show format for high school and freshman college students. This week's video highlight is a particularily uninteresting vanity piece documenting an "Opy" look a like's visit to a dominitrix. In the blurb about the piece it states that one of film maker Joe Hanson's goals for the making of the video was to test his "improvisational" comedy skills.
Instead of comedy what we get is a series of inane questions and D grade Seinfield like quips. I should not have expected anything more considering that the TV show "Seinfeld" (a study in inane 30-40ish white boy humor and pratfalls) is one of Hanson's favorites. One way I teach my students self-respect and critical skills regarding their viewing taste is by having them ask themselves, after viewing another student's work, whether or not they would pay 10 bucks to watch the film. I can't imagine paying anything for the content I have viewed on Current TV. Current TV looks like just another mediocre media outlet for an over saturated market (18-34 year olds). What a waste.