Presentation notes

Screenshot: vbs.tv

I had a look at vbs.tv for my presentation of nieche news for the online journalism class. Vbs.tv is not a hard news site, and some of the connetent is not news at all. On the other hand they have done some brilliant short documentries that are definitely worth watching, and provides a great insight into some of the worlds most important issues.

-  Vbs.tv is an online broadcasting network which is a product of vice magazine. The magazine also have an online version, viceland.com. The magazine is focusing on popular culture, and subjects as skateboarding, trends, music and fashion are the most common. Vbs.tv also has these kinds of topics for their videos, but they differ by having informative (as well as entertaining) short documentries where investigative journalism plays a major part

-  The network was established in 2007, after a deal had been made between Vice and MTV in 2006. The agreement was pretty much that MTV provided the cash and then had the right to show vbs.tv productions. Some of the documentries are shown on MTV 2 and MTV Latin America.


- Their journalism is Immersionistic, and they are aim is making the stories subjective. They are not trying to hide that, and by being honest and calling a spade for a spade, they get credibility, and people may look other places to get other sides of the stories Vice co-founder described the network “Traditional journalism always aspires to objectivity, and since day one with the magazine we never believed in that…Our ethos is subjectivity with real substantiation. I don’t think you see that on CNN.”


- The two main people behind vbs.tv are Suroosh Alvi and Shane Smith. Alvi is film-maker from Canada. He has worked on documentries in the Middle East, and is also a madia critic. Smith was together with Alvi starting Vice magazine in 1994, and is today working with vbs.tv. He is making videos, and are doing reporting and voice over in documentries. The creative director of the vbs.tv is Spike Joneze, who you probably know for directing “Being John Malkovich”, and co-director for Jack ass, the MTV series. He has also produced a bunch of music and skateboard movies.

- The design of the vbs.tv is nice and clean. It is based on a wall in a living room, with a flat screen TV and the movie titles organized in a shelf underneath. On the shelf it is also buttons that takes you to different categories such as “music” and “news”. It is only one advertising banner (even though some of the videos contain ads), which is placed on the top of the site. The design works practically as well as esthetically.

- The site has about 20.000 unique visitors per month in Australia and New
Zealand, and is constantly growing. VBS is in marketing partnerships with online networks like YouTubeand MySpace, which means that VBS content is reaching millions of users offsite as well as the ones that visit the actual site, carrying with it brand and sponsorship messaging. Brands like 20th Century Fox, Tooheys Extra Dry, Rockstar Games, Atari and many others have discovered VBS.TV to be an ideal platform for their online advertising efforts.

Time to think

Photo: countdown.org

As the smh.com.au reports today, the privacy commissioners from the Asia-Pacific region are today launching a video warning young people to upload private pictures and videos online. The “Think before you upload” campaign is meant to increase the awareness that pictures taken on a late after party, or in the heat of a moment might not be suitable for the general public.

Robyn Treyvaud, an Internet experts points out to smh.com.au, that even if material are meant to be private and not to circulate on the net, it is hard to control who is going to have a peek. Especially in these times when employers are using the facebook, myspace and youtube to a great extend in order to get information about potential employees. Even though it is definitely not right, people actually get fired from jobs, thanks to reckless posting of photos. This is an example from Switzerland where a nurse posed with some patients, might seem harmless, but it was found as a breech of the patient’s privacy, and she was fired

So as the society gets more and more transparent, I think it’s great that someone are taking action children’s and teens` privacy rights. Privacy is more and more turning from a human right into a learned skill, and it’s important to have some ground rules. Pictures and videos have a tendency of not disappearing, which young people don’t think about. With the access to all kind of things that the kids have today, I think this warning is an important step.

Media Swines

Photo: The Guardian.co.uk

The swine flu has been dominating the media picture this week worldwide. A whole bunch of countries has raised their pandemic fears to panic level, and if one are to take the headlines and the media attention seriously, it looks like a new black plague is coming to kill us all. In Norway the health minister made a public announcement saying that 1,2 million Norwegians couldt be affected, and that 13.000 may die from the flu. He was comparing it to the Spanish fever that killed millions in Europe in 1918-1920. So how bad is this thing, really? According to the news coverage we’re pretty much doomed.

I’m not saying that the media should not alert people of this decease so we can prepare ourselves for what might come. I think that is a good thing. Another thing is it when a potentially extremely critical situation like this one is blown out of proposition, and is creating fear amongst the masses. People are running to pharmacists buying vaccines and facemasks in panic after been reading about the swine flu. The thing is though; scientists have been saying that there is no help in facemasks. This fear is not only affecting people, the market is also feeling the negative atmosphere, and yesterday copper sank to the lowest price in three weeks. Experts are saying that it is not the swine flu itself that cause the market downs, but the fear of it.

In these times where journalism is hard to finance, and the battle for eyeballs are getting tougher by the day, I miss down-to-earth reporting. Screaming headlines about a global mortal plague is not helping people out. Rather the opposite. I think there is a time where publications should stop and think about the consequences of how they are presenting things, even though is no laws against spreading fear, and there is no formal punishment, it should at least be some ethical issues. I’m aware that politicians and leaders are fearing a worst case scenario, but I think it might be good to also seek a more balanced expert opinion side of the story as well.

Who is going to stand up to Russia?

Photo: Press photo from Free Republic

Recently we learned that Russia (and Georgia) used cluster bombs during their conflict last year. Cluster bombs are an extremely un-ethical and highly illegal weapon to use. In most countries. So who does not want to ban them? About 110 countries has stated that they no longer will use cluster bombs, except i.e the US, China, Israel, and of course –Russia. Pretty much everybody though thinks this is inhuman, and hurts civilian more than military targets.

Human Right Watch has been making it clear through various media channels that this is unacceptable. What I think is questionable is where is the support from people with real international authority? Barrack Obama is obviously avoiding the subject, because the United States has not signed an agreement for banning cluster bombs. Norway is to eager to get their hands on a share of the Stockmann field, which is an enormous gas reserve. Ukraine and Germany is afraid that their gas will be shut off. The list goes on, and the mentioned reasons are just snow on the top of the top of the iceberg.

So when is someone going to stand up and tell Russia that their arrogant policies towards the rest of the world is not acceptable? I guess maybe when the rest of the world stops being hypocrites and no longer need to suck up to them to get what they want. Russia is extremely powerful, some might argue too powerful, and they are not getting any weaker in the near future. Perhaps the only way that the tide could turn is if Europe could find a sustainable way to get self-supplied power, and not being dependent on Russia, which by when that is possible could be too late.

Viggo Mortensen: Aussie kid star Kodi Smit-McPhee is the new Marlon Brando

Photo: Promo picture Mortensen and McPhee as father and son

The Danish super star has compared Kodi Smit-McPhee to legends Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift after working together on upcoming film ‘The Road’.

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Incredibly talented

Mortensen, who is in Australia to promote his new movie ‘Good’, was full of praise for his “self-confident, daring and kind” co-star.

“He’s an incredibly talented actor, beyond his years,” the Eastern Promises and Lord of the Rings star told AAP.

“To me he was doing things, mostly just out of instinct and sheer raw talent, that actors like Montgomery Clift or Marlon Brando pioneered, (such as) having access to emotions
and naturalistic way of listening and really being present and really engaging with the other performer.

“I remember the scenes we were doing with Robert Duvall, who plays the old man we encounter on the road, and after just a few minutes he looked at me and said `where did they get the kid? The kid’s amazing’.”

Makes the relationship work

Mortensen, 50, and Smit-McPhee, 12, play the father and son in the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 post-apocalyptic novel

The Road tells of a journey taken by a father and his young son across a desolate landscape blasted years before by an unnamed disaster that destroyed civilisation and most life on earth.

Inundated with offers after his AFI Award-winning turn in Romulus My Father, Smit-McPhee dropped out of Wolverine to be part of it.

Mortensen said it was lucky for the filmmakers that he did.

“I know he was very good in Romulus, My Father but I think he takes it a step further in terms of acting in this movie,” Mortensen said.

“And he had to really because … one of the keys to making the movie interesting, to making that relationship work, is you have to have the best kid actor possible.

“The kid has to be really something unusual, and they were very lucky that he did it.”

The Road is directed by Australian John Hillcoat (The Proposition) and also features Guy Pearce.

Who Smashed This S4?

Photo: Tormod Spencer Austad

I thought it would be a nice change to get some personal experience into the blog as well, so this is what happened on Chalmer st, about 6 pm yesterday outside a pub called the Wool Pack: I was sitting down with a mate having a couple of pints while the guys at the next table was doing the same. A rather regular situation for a Redfern pub on a Sunday afternoon.

Then after a couple of hours, the people from our neighbor table got up and got in their car. Now, my impression is that Australians tend to do that, so I didn’t really think about it. The car took off in a pretty impressive speed, and seconds later it smashed into a blue Audi S4. Luckily it was parked, and even luckier that nobody walked past just then, as the car was pushed up onto the sidewalk.

Drunk driving is one thing; it is definitely responsible for a fair amount of accidents that could easily be avoided, and it takes a lot a lives. Another thing is taking off from the scene. As you understand this incident is a classic case of hit and run, which I am really not fond of. This time it went fairly good though, thanks to luck and an insured S4 owner that was having dinner in Surry Hills and not in his car.

Mailbox Racism

Photo: Cato Jorgensen

Yesterday I found this flyer in my mailbox. At first I thought it was quite funny, thinking it was just unserious propaganda. Then I realized it actually was a political message from a real party. The Australian First Party is a highly conservative party, I would say on the borderline of being right extremists. They have eight core policies; one of them is abolishing multiculturalism. But I guess this flyer is all about number 4; “Limit and reduce immigration.”

One of their arguments for getting rid of international students is that foreign students have contributed to the economic crises. This is, according to the flyer, because overseas students has driven up the property prices, and are squeezing young Australians out of the rental market. I find it hard to believe that a group of people, who contribute with about $3.8 billion a year to the NSW economy alone, is a blame factor for the financial crises. Sending the students home would have a major impact on the economy. This can hardly be considered as a sustainable policy, or a serious one.

Even though I am an international student, from Europe, I have a strong suspicion that I may not be on the first flight that the Australian First Party would send out of the country. The following quote says it all, and I would call it deeply racist and quite scary to find a political party standing for these kinds of ideas in 2009:

The overseas student program has been a part of a colonial and corrupt political-economic agenda to enmesh Australia in Asia as many enter as ‘elitist’ migrants and take up key roles in Australia’s economy.

The Coincidences of the Net

Browsing the web in search for topics for my blog, I stumbled across another Norwegian dude doing basically the same assignment as we do. He has a blog on wordpress as a part of his assesment in Online Journalism at Griffith College Dudblin, Ireland. This is of course a pretty cool discovery to me as fellow Norwegian, but I also found Lars’ blog to make interesting points about the media. Cool!