I travelled downtown Chicago today to hand-deliver my visa application to the Indian Consulate so that I may visit Hyderabad in a couple weeks and I had a couple of hours to kill before catching the Metra train back to Naperville.
I walked around Grant Park (See my annotated map above) (and I do mean AROUND as there was no ordinary privilege to pass through as a pedestrian today) with all the cops and fencing up already for the Obama Presidential Rally. That is the official name today of this venue formerly known as Grant Park. TV satellite trucks have long queued up on Columbus Drive and the ticketed and non-ticketed patron areas are clearly defined and defended.
Chicago Tribune editor quits her job today - and I found out through Twitter.
My dear friend Charles Apple does not Tweet on Twitter but he is somewhat surprised by all of the small talk taking place on the Internet - Who has time to Tweet, update your FB status and do all of the other things you are supposed to do?
I mean that is how I was alerted today that Chicago Tribune editor Ann Marie Lipinski was suddenly quitting the paper.
It just takes a few thumb clicks to insta-publish a breaking alert like this. that’s the power of microblogging. It’s instant.
The good news that some of this talk can be automated and since it is small talk - it can be done with your mobile while you are stuck in a boring meeting or sitting on a bus somewhere. So microblogging gives you the option to use time you were already wasting away.
Camp Video Journalism - the week-long Web video workshop in Chicago has ended - but the films from the events are still rolling out. The video above is David Dunkley Gyimah’s promo reel cut from footage that he and I shot in Chicago during our brief time together.
Special thanks go out to Michael Cooke and the Chicago Sun-Times crew (Toby, Brian, Jeremiah and all the rest) for hosting the week of training. True champs you are.
This is the brand new reel from my close colleague and master VJ instructor in the U.K., David Dunkley-Gyimah. David is joining Angela Grant and myself in Chicago May 5-9 to teach a week of video journalism classes. Visual Editors is planning more seminars like this at venues around the world, so stay tuned.
Future Visual Editors journalism training events will focus on multimedia blogging, social networking for reporters, advanced Web video and audio techniques and the mindset for mobile journalism. I am able to tap a global network of top instructors for these and I am fielding enquiries to host future events from heads of media groups in India, Oceania, Asia, Canada and Europe. Contact me soonest if you re interested in hosting a VizEds training event
VIDEO: Robb Montgomery chats with Michael Cooke, Editor-in-chief of the Chicago Sun-Times about the dramatic design treatment he used to draw attention to the sharp rise in shootings in Chicago’s inner-city neighborhoods. In a phone interview, Cooke explains the paper’s campaign and the inspiration for deploying this arresting design approach to the start of the paper’s coverage of the story.
Chicago’s children are dying. The statistics are undeniable, and they are staggering,” said Sun-Times Editor in Chief Michael Cooke. “The point of today’s front page was to grab readers and agree together that we can no longer turn our backs on this problem. We need to, as a city, pull together and put an end to the killing.
They also took an unusual step with their brand equity - they changed their flag (a.k.a. the nameplate, masthead) from white type on blue field to blue type only, curiously matching in the most obvious of choices (”color”), the nameplates of the paper’s primary regional competitors.
The inversion of color is a fairly dramatic brand-identity change and only a jaded consumer would think the paper did it to distract from the price hike and size reduction.
A nameplate extends beyond page one. The old blue stripe nameplate was plastered on delivery trucks, news boxes as well their marketing and advertising for decades.
Robb Montgomery produces new media workshops to train journalists and media professionals in more than 20 countries in writing for the Web, multimedia reporting, and Web video journalism.
His hands-on seminars include interactive learning techniques, live demonstrations and expertise in teaching new media concepts to professionals.
