I got up from my com­puter, shuffled into the kit­chen, put the kettle on, and had myself a little sob. I’d been writ­ing about women join­ing the protests in Iran, and of the import­ance of pic­tures of young, attract­ive, female pro­test­ers, when I saw the video. I had been glued to the com­puter, read­ing everything and any­thing I could about Iran. It was power­ful moment recor­ded in shaky video. Power­ful enough to change the world, and I knew it, but I didn’t tell any­one. There were a mere 300 views at the time, before the young woman had a name.  Watch­ing the reac­tion the next day in the news, I wished that I had kept on writ­ing. With time, the import­ance of that moment has only grown. With more time, it will come to be a defin­ing image, not just of the pro­gress move­ment in Iran, but for mod­ern soci­ety and the world in gen­eral. Neda Agha-Soltan’s death, and the way in which it was recor­ded, holds an import­ant mes­sage and a lesson.

–

A few months ago, I went to a con­fer­ence for pho­to­journ­al­ists. At that con­fer­ence, Brian Storm gave a stir­ring present­a­tion about the future of journ­al­ism. His com­pany, Mediastorm, is an industry leader in mul­ti­me­dia pro­duc­tion, and has been for some time. When Brian Storm talks about the future and poten­tial of mul­ti­me­dia, people pay atten­tion. They don’t always like what they hear, but they know he’s prob­ably at least half-right. I recor­ded part of that present­a­tion, and pos­ted the video online. In a few weeks, it received 12 view­ings, most likely all of them were by me and the two people I sent the link. Viral video, this wasn’t. No, it was a grainy, dark, and muddy sound­ing seven minute record­ing, eons by You­Tube stand­ards. Then I received this:

Hey man, I get paid lots of money to give my present­a­tions and it doesn’t help me to have this on You­Tube. Can you please remove it?

Brian Storm says the news­pa­per is dead. Actu­ally, he uses the words “death spiral.” I think he is right. As he would say, the busi­ness of ship­ping dead wood to sub­scribers is inef­fi­cient, out­moded, and old-fashioned. New, money-making forms of journ­al­ism have not yet come to fruition, but they will soon. To some, this is a scary time to be in journ­al­ism. For oth­ers, like me, it is most excit­ing. There is a real oppor­tun­ity to tell stor­ies in new and enga­ging ways. What I find inter­est­ing, and I think Brian would agree, is the abil­ity of new media to inter­act with audi­ences. Here, in the new, confabulatory, media, is where the death of Neda Agha-Soltan is a defin­ing moment.

Brian Storm makes “plat­form agnostic” videos and inter­act­ive mul­ti­me­dia present­a­tions. Although many involve pho­to­graphy, they are essen­tialy of three storytelling tra­di­tions: the slideshow, the doc­u­ment­ary film, and the map. The video of Neda Agha-Soltan is none of these things. It is a single shot, too short to give nar­rat­ive or con­text. Although details did emerge, the video itself lacks intro­duc­tion or nar­ra­tion. Like a pho­to­graph, the power of the video is in the raw emo­tional con­tent and the imme­di­ate impres­sion of the scene and events. In this way, the video is more like a pho­to­graph than a film.

There has been great pres­sure over these last few months and years for pho­to­graph­ers to pro­duce pho­to­graphs and videos at the same time. Clearly, we are poised for a revolu­tion of mul­ti­me­dia con­tent. Most of my cli­ents are ask­ing for video, even the most inter­net un-savvy ones. The appeal of video is undeni­able. But how are we sup­posed to do it?  How, after spend­ing years devel­op­ing ones’ eye for the still image, are pho­to­graph­ers sup­posed to make the trans­ition to video?  Neda shows that there is a third way. The qual­ity of the video is actu­ally sec­ond­ary, what mat­ters is that it is now pos­sible to make video any­where. Pho­to­graph­ers should leave the film-making to doc­u­ment­ary film makers, and focus on what pho­to­graphy is good at: giv­ing a power­ful impres­sion of what it is like to be in a place, as some­thing is hap­pen­ing. We can do this in video.

It used to be that gov­ern­ments had a near-monopoly on sur­veil­lance, or at least an easy time of stem­ming the flow of inform­a­tion. This is no longer true. Every­one, every­where, is now a watch­dog. Sur­veil­lance is ubi­quit­ous and ever present, and the abil­ity of indi­vidual people to dis­trib­ute inform­a­tion is unpre­ced­en­ted. Nowhere in pub­lic is there ever really pri­vacy any­more. As the video of Neda Agha-Soltan illustrates, surveillance and com­mu­nic­a­tion tools in the hands of indi­vidu­als do affect the beha­viour of gov­ern­ments in the exer­cise of power.

The role of open trans­mis­sion net­works is as import­ant as the dis­trib­uted pro­duc­tion of con­tent. How­ever, this omni­pres­ence of record­ing and easy dis­tri­bu­tion cre­ates a lot of “noise”. Bal­anced, researched, and trust­worthy report­ing is even more import­ant today, but lost in a sea of per­son­al­ized RSS feeds and status updates. News organ­iz­a­tions are bur­ied, they’re in a crisis of rel­ev­ance. They must adopt and adapt by first accept­ing that con­tent is more import­ant than style, speed trumps accur­acy but accur­acy is essen­tial, and invest­ment in innov­a­tion and youth are needed. If they are going to sur­vive, as Brian Storm would say, news­pa­pers need to recon­sider who they are talk­ing to, and remem­ber that advert­ising is valu­able only so long as it is rel­ev­ant. There is no reason, other than short­sighted­ness and cal­ci­fic­a­tion, that indi­vidual blog­gers should be more rel­ev­ant than news­pa­pers. They are, because news­pa­pers have failed to “talk” to an increas­ingly frac­tured and isol­ated read­er­ship. This needs to be over­come. Why can’t I read my local news­pa­per in Face­book? News­pa­pers used to have it right: they hit people where they lived. Now they don’t talk to any­one. People live online.

Neda Agha-Soltan died June 20^th, 2009. Events in Iran con­tinue to develop. While the world of news and inform­a­tion may be changed by her death, we will likely have to wait until the 40^th day of the mourn­ing cycle to see what she will mean for Iran. That day is com­ing soon, and there will be thou­sands of people with cell phones to record it.

bonus:

more on MediaStorm http://dwmojos.wordpress.com/interviews/brian-storm–mediastorm/