I think you’re going to like this picture…..
Aaron Rockett.
What kind of person takes off for Afghanistan on his own with a video camera and a laptop and spends a year shooting their own stories?
Dedicated?
Talented?
A bit insane?
Aaron Rockett is a filmmaker.
He’s also a correspondent in the truest sense of the word. The kind of correspondents that made newspapers riveting reading in the early 20th Century. Winston Churchill was that kind of correspondent. So was David Halberstam. But they worked in print.
Today, the medium of choice is video.
He works without a crew, and without hair and teeth ‘talent’ to drag around.
The guy has guts.
And for the past six months, he has also been the Executive Producer for our hyperlocal video news service with Verizon in DC.
It’s a pilot, but its been a great success so far.
Aaron has run a small team of 6 VJs, plus himself.
It’s not exactly Afghanistan.
Some days its a bit tougher.
But it works.
5 Comments
Cliff Etzel May 20, 2007
Eric – I would have to disagree with you on the your position about fair and balanced reporting.
Look at Fox Noise versus MSNBC versus CNN… They all claim to have fair and balanced reporting – yet each is known for their political perspectives in reporting the news. The closes I have seen to fair and balanced reporting has come from the BBC which I feel is far and above anything U.S. news outlets have achieved.
I personally believe that unbiased reporting is a myth – each journalist goes in with a set of values that reflects their beliefs. They will report the “facts” as they perceive them – selective filtering I call it. And each perspective feels that they are reporting the facts in an unbiased way – this is one of those topics that can be argued ad nauseum.
Needless to say, one reports and let’s the viewer make their own conclusions based upon what they have gathered information wise.
rosenblumtv May 20, 2007
My own opinion is that balance comes overall, as opposed to in individual pieces. In a world of thousands and thousands of pieces the massive amount of material by definition gives a sense of ‘objectivity’ as all voices are heard. There is no long a need for ‘voice of God’, (and how balanced and objective is any of this reporting anyway?).
Eric Blumer May 20, 2007
I wonder where the “objectivity” will be in this future world of video journalists. I think in the past (fewer media outlets) there was more pressure to present fair and balanced reports. Can we expect balanced reports?
James Hazelwood May 19, 2007
It’s taken me a bit to fully grasp what mr. Rosenblum has been describing in this new VJ paradigm. But, today, I woke up and read this post that compared the early newspaper journalists of the 20th century al Churchill, Halberstam – and suddenly I GOT IT.
Can the modern VJ be the correspondant of a previous era? Probably. Steve McMurry was a PJ that did this in the late 70’s with his trips to Afghanistan, (where he photographed that iconic image) He was there on his own. The NY Times needed images and picked his up.
I think the real question going forward is distribution. Obviously, the web makes it more likely that more people will have an outlet. I wonder – with more channels, more viewing options, etc Are more people watching or are people so saturated they can’t take in any more info? But, that’s a different matter.
I’m off to my own equivalent of Afghanistan.
invitedmedia May 19, 2007
“it’s not exactly afghanistan”
yeah, although the gunfire in the streets sounds like kabul, afghanistan has fewer crackheads than dc.